Alternative energy (or renewable energy) is a new manufacturing industry paradigm that is in its infancy. However, the discussion is not new, and it looks as if the United States has positioned itself to be behind history on what can be a very promising industry for a stumbling economy. After the oil shortages in the 70’s, government officials began discussing energy policy as a matter of national security, but this misses the point of a globally competitive economic world. It was too early then to begin thinking that China could out-invest the United States in order to produce an alternative energy manufacturing industry. Yet, now we must come to terms that the free market ideology is disallowing America from utilizing tried and true techniques of infant industry construction as laid out by Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury of the United States. This article will attempt to show that what is needed now and what will aid in rebuilding the economy, is a change in paradigm that constructs energy companies under regulatory principles so that America will remain competitive in a rapidly changing economic climate.

Let us begin with the thought process of Alexander Hamilton in order to frame the argument of building a new industry within the United States correctly in order to compete on the global market. The gist of the argument is that in order for new industries to start up losses have to be guaranteed by the government in order for industry, and at the time the merchant class, to take the risk of investing to be competitive. Governments are not businesses and have properties more like non-profit organizations. They have the ability to hold and maintain debt even above yearly revenue or GDP in order to stimulate economic activity. Hamilton called this the infant industry argument, and it was due to the fact that if America wanted to compete it had to be able to safeguard the industries it thought would be best positioned against other countries who were enacting similar policies. The free trade argument against this is to an extent quite ridiculous, because what person would not want their initial investments guaranteed. And also this does not mean supporting bail-outs of large banking institutions who are not a new industry, but only for infant industries. Nor does it mean remaining with centralized power plants that lose 6.5-7.5% of energy due to long distance transmission. Those things would be fallacious to the argument. What it means is that the government has a duty to utilize tax revenue in order to secure American economic competitiveness and not, to use the words of Ha-Joon Chang, “kicking away the ladder”, at such a critical economic moment in American history.

So, in America at the moment according to the Renewable Energy Status Report, in 2010 10.9% of domestic primary energy production was renewable with a 5.6% increase from 2009, which shows growth and also a demand in the market. As well, pointed out by Michael Heiman and Barry Solomon, “renewable energy is typically more labor-intensive per dollar invested in the construction phase and cheaper to operate.” Further along they also show that there exists a difference between saying and doing, where 40 percent say they would pay more for Green Energy and only 1 percent actually do. This brings us back to the argument of being willing to take a loss at the outset, having a cheaper price in order to produce clients until the price can come down because of the aggregate demand. The problem has been in states who have enacted market reform instant of infant industry creation policies to produce this change, such as New Jersey, did not move towards renewable energy and the market reform only raised the rates on clients. So, obviously business is not willing to take the risk and therefore government regulation, investment, and policy is needed in order to make these risky jumps onto new frontiers.

This had led to something quite astounding and should be ridiculous to every American, that China now leads the world in installation of wind turbines and solar thermal systems. With a $211 billion investment in 2010 for renewable energy, it is on the rise and should not be discounted to have conversations about drilling in the Gulf of Mexico or whether or not the EPA should remain. There is a reason T. Boone Pickens is investing heavily in wind farms, and another reason why they aren’t going to Texas, poor State and Federal Government policy. Companies do not do externalities or infrastructure, and when they do it is with government support and money, so without the transmission lines, Pickens sent his turbines to Canada. The overemphasis on tax cuts as the only way to spurn private business has become a mantra that is corrosive and harming American capabilities to deal properly with the economic crisis and get people back to work. As stated before, renewable energy is labor intensive and we have an employment rate at 16-17% if we include discourage and part time workers. That’s talking jobs.

To end this out, what we have in America is a political discourse and ideology that disallows proper economic domestic policy. Alternative energy is a boom industry that needs government stimulus in order to cover the initial losses that would be incurred by private industry. All the ingredients exist to utilize this industry to bring back manufacturing to America, a sector that has been rapidly losing jobs. In 2007 prior to the recession 217,000 manufacturing jobs were lost, a trend that is continued with more outsourcing every year. This isn’t because labor was priced out of the market, it is because high-technology has no domestic economic policy to support large-scale investment and construction. The argument is against both sides of the aisle in congress and the executive who have lacked the political will against the onslaught of propaganda. Alternative energy will not kill the petroleum industry, as long you have heard of something called plastic, nor will it be some socialist evil over-centralizing, but it will allow America to rebuild an economy that hangs on the edge of a cliff.

Article by Andrew Smolski, a contributor at Oilprice.com and specializes in Political/Economic Sociology. His work has been syndicated in many leading online publications and he can be reached at da.smolski@gmail.com.

Article appearing courtesy OilPrice.com.

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Three years after unveiling his plan for U.S. energy independence, which won praise from environmentalists for its reliance on wind power, Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens is back with a proposal to convert the U.S. trucking fleet to natural gas. But as his new plan gains traction, questions arise over how green it really is.

Remember the Pickens Plan?

Three years ago, with a flurry of national publicity, billionaire Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens outlined his vision of how to help wean the U.S. off imported oil. The crux of the plan was to build a massive, $1 trillion network of wind farms stretching from Texas to North Dakota, which would replace domestic natural gas used to generate electricity. The excess natural gas would then be used to power millions of American trucks and cars, thus freeing the U.S. from the shackles of OPEC oil.

Even some environmentalists swooned over the Pickens Plan, with Carl Pope, then executive director of the Sierra Club, saying, “To put it plainly, T. Boone Pickens is out to save America.”

Within a year, however, the wind-power scheme was all but dead, and soon Pickens – and his multimillion-dollar ad campaign – had largely faded from the airwaves.

Now, however, Pickens and his plan are back, although the Texan’s new version is a good deal less green, considerably more dependent on controversial methods of extracting natural gas, and focused tightly on a single immediate goal: converting 8 million of the U.S.’s largest trucks, including its 18-wheel, tractor-trailer rigs, from diesel fuel to compressed natural gas.

In the past two weeks, Pickens and his plan have gotten a boost from none other than President Obama, who in a March 30 speech on energy security praised Pickens’ goal of expanding the use of natural gas in the nation’s transportation sector and called on members of Congress to support legislation that would increase the extraction and use of natural gas “in a safe, environmentally sound way.”

Last Thursday, at Pickens’ urging, a bipartisan group of 76 members of the House of Representatives introduced a bill that would provide tax credits of up to $64,000 per truck or vehicle to convert the nation’s large trucks and corporate and government fleets to compressed natural gas. Pickens predicted that the bill would receive more than 300 votes in the House and could pass as early as May, before moving to the U.S. Senate, where Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has voiced support for Pickens’ new plan. The nation’s truckers are keeping a close eye on the legislation, saying much would depend on the size of the tax credit. Pickens repeatedly points out that recent events, including soaring oil prices and instability in the Middle East, have considerably strengthened his case for turning to natural gas as a way of breaking U.S. addiction to foreign oil.

With momentum building for the Pickens Plan, Part 2, the question is whether it is good for the nation’s energy security, good for the environment, or just good for T. Boone Pickens. Some transportation and energy experts say that the new Pickens plan indeed has merit and — with a significant caveat — is worthy of support. But other energy experts and environmentalists say it is a misguided attempt to impose a single “silver bullet” solution on the transportation sector and commits the U.S. to a long-term embrace of fossil fuels.

It was probably inevitable that Pickens would not remain the darling of environmentalists.

“It was a big disappointment when T. Boone Pickens walked away from the wind side of his plan,” said David Friedman, research director for the Clean Vehicles Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “He kept saying that this wasn’t about private interests, it was about the nation and the world. But to dump the part that actually had the greatest potential to cut global warming and pollution and help create new jobs in the U.S., in favor of the piece that really does most benefit his bottom line, was a disappointment.”

Although many environmentalists heaped accolades on Pickens when he announced his plan in 2008, it was probably inevitable he would not remain the darling of the environmental movement for long. At heart, Pickens is an oil and gas man whose fortune and business interests are grounded in fossil fuels. As a founder of Mesa Petroleum, he made billions in the oil business, starting in the 1950s. Today, he heads BP Capital, which invests in the oil, gas, and energy sectors.

In a recent meeting with reporters at Yale University, Pickens made it clear that he remains an enthusiastic booster of hydrocarbons, that he doesn’t foresee a transition to renewable energy anytime soon, that he isn’t convinced about human-caused global warming, and that he certainly doesn’t believe that hydrofracking — a controversial practice that extracts natural gas from shale — poses any serious environmental risks.

“You’re stuck with hydrocarbons — come on, get real,” Pickens, the 82-year-old Oklahoma native blessed with a silver tongue and a self-deprecatory, down-home charm, told the reporters. “I’ve been in meetings before where somebody says, ‘I want to cut out all coal-fired plants and go to wind.’ What are you talking about? I mean you’d run the price of electricity 10 times what it is [now]. Realistically you’ve got to use coal and you’ve got to use oil and, no, I don’t approach it from an environmental standpoint. But my record is good on the environment.”

When I asked Pickens whether human activity is causing the planet to warm, he replied, “I’m not saying that we’ve gone that far, but I’m saying we have caused some problems… I think we screwed around with the thing. I don’t know what we’ve impacted, but I’ve seen enough that I believe that we have messed up some things.”

At heart, his plan was not about going green, but about breaking our addiction to imported oil.

Pickens’ proposal has struck a sympathetic chord across the political spectrum, for reasons of both economic and national security. At heart, his plan was never about going green, it was about breaking our addiction to imported oil, and as far as Pickens is concerned, anything that helps end that addiction – natural gas, wind, solar, corn ethanol — is okay by him. “Anything American, I’m for,” Pickens told a large and enthusiastic crowd at Yale University Law School last month.

He said his plan to help jump-start the nation’s wind energy industry fell victim to a simple economic truth: with the growing exploitation of natural gas reserves trapped in underground shale formations, natural gas prices have fallen to the point where wind power is not economically competitive, especially considering the cost of connecting wind farms to the national electricity grid. In 2009, Pickens put on hold his own plans to create a giant wind farm in West Texas, and he is now in the process of selling roughly 250 turbines from his proposed project to other North American wind farms.

Pickens has now shifted his hopes of ending America’s dependence on foreign oil — at least in the next several decades — to the country’s abundant natural gas supplies. His arithmetic is simple. He argues that if a concerted effort is made to shift America’s 8 million tractor-trailers and large trucks from diesel to cheaper compressed natural gas (CNG), the U.S. can largely end its dependence on OPEC oil within a decade. (He refers to OPEC as “the enemy,” since Saudi Arabia and other OPEC countries have channeled money to Islamic fundamentalists.) By converting government and business fleet vehicles, and even some cars, to natural gas, Pickens says the country can begin to reduce oil imports from non-OPEC countries. “If we miss this opportunity,” he told the Yale audience, “all of us will go down in history as the dumbest crowd that ever came around.”

The House bill introduced last week would cost the U.S. treasury roughly $3 billion to $4 billion in tax credits for converting millions of trucks to natural gas, Pickens said, contending that the shift to CNG trucks and a national CNG fueling infrastructure would be a powerful engine of job creation. Pickens also is urging Obama to issue an executive order mandating that in the future all new federal vehicles run on domestic energy supplies, which Pickens says would further speed the transition to natural gas vehicles.

Vaclav Smil, an energy expert at the University of Manitoba, said he supported Pickens’ plan and the government tax credits. “Should have done it ages ago,” Smil said in an email interview.

Tyson Slocum, director of the energy program at the nonprofit government watchdog group, Public Citizen, said that even though Pickens is promoting an energy program that would be “enormously beneficial to his fortune,” the plan to convert the nation’s heavy trucks to compressed natural gas has some merit. Large tractor-trailers are too heavy to be powered by electric engines, and natural gas does burn more cleanly than diesel fuel, Slocum said.

The problem is that much of the natural gas Pickens is counting on would come from fracking.

The problem, said Slocum, is that much of the natural gas Pickens is counting on to power the U.S. trucking industry will come from the hydro-fracturing, or fracking, of shales — a process in which a mixture of water, sand, and chemicals is forced at high pressure deep underground to free natural gas trapped in shale formations. An increasing number of reports by the media and state regulators indicate that fracking, if poorly done, can contaminate water supplies.

Slocum said the only way the government should support the conversion of heavy trucks to compressed natural gas is if the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency begins to strictly regulate fracking under the Clean Water Act; fracking was exempted from the act under legislation passed in 2005 during the administration of George W. Bush. Federal oversight is particularly important, Slocum said, because state environmental agencies are overwhelmed trying to monitor pollution emanating from the fracking boom sweeping much of the U.S.

“I think natural gas has huge advantages if extracted in clean ways, and that is going to entail federal regulation,” Slocum said. “The national security issue of importing 65 percent of our oil is significant. But so are issues of drinking water contamination in a large number of states.”

In his Yale speech, Pickens said that water pollution from fracking is “not an issue” because the shale deposits are far below aquifers. “I do not know of any problems with freshwater aquifers being damaged by hydrofracking,” Pickens said.

Other transportation experts chiefly object to Pickens’ latest plan because it uses government policies to promote a specific technology, rather than leveling the marketplace to enable a host of potentially effective transportation and energy technologies to emerge.

“In general, I do not look fondly upon these technology winner-picking adventures that have been, and continue to be, a hallmark of America’s failed energy policy,” John M. DeCicco, of the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment, said. “The U.S. transportation energy market is way too huge to create a business case for anything through taxpayer subsidies.” Citing the synthetic fuel initiative of the Carter administration and other U.S. policies, DeCicco added, “How many times does the country have to get it wrong before realizing that such approaches don’t work?”

Friedman of the Union Concerned Scientists agrees with DeCicco that trying to pick a “flavor of the month” in transportation fuels, such as compressed natural gas, is unwise. The better course, he said, is to use natural gas to generate electricity, since new combined-cycle gas turbines at power plants are more than twice as efficient at converting natural gas to energy as a truck or car engine running on compressed natural gas. That electricity could then be used for electric vehicles or to power fuel cells for hydrogen cars.

The fundamental problem, Friedman said, is that Pickens’ plan ultimately represents a “stranded investment,” pumping many billions of dollars into a compressed natural gas technology that will eventually be phased out in favor of more sustainable, long-term transportation alternatives: electric vehicles, hydrogen vehicles, biofuel- or algae-powered vehicles, or a new technology altogether. For now, he said, a better approach would be to pass tax credits that would reward the trucking industry for reducing emissions, either through designing more efficient trailers, developing hybrid trucks, or improving the efficiency of diesel engines.

Pickens has heard these criticisms before, and as far as the former wildcatter is concerned, it’s time to quit talking and start acting. “With the Mideast in turmoil, you go to sleep at night and you don’t know what you’re going to get in the morning,” he said. “The solution is to get on your own resources.”

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(Reuters) – U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will unveil as early as Monday a slimmed-down energy bill seeking to make offshore drilling safer and convert trucks to run on domestic natural gas.

The full Senate could begin consideration of Reid’s bill on Tuesday and Democrats would like to pass it by the early part of the following week.

With time running short ahead of a month-long recess starting Aug 6, Democrats abandoned efforts last week to put climate-control measures in the bill. Reid said then that he had no Republican votes for items such as carbon caps and mandates requiring utilities to generate some of their power from alternatives sources such as wind and solar.

Reid said Congress could revisit climate legislation in September but lawmakers and analysts doubt there will be much appetite ahead of the mid-term elections in November.

And if Republicans pick up seats, as expected, the effort to put a price on carbon and cut emissions could be stalled for years, which would also hamper the Obama Administration’s efforts to take a lead role at the world climate talks.

The narrowed-down bill would hold BP Plc accountable for the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and seek to prevent similar disasters, Reid said last week.

It will very likely include provisions to force companies to dole out more money to cover the costs of oil spills. The liability cap, which is currently $75 million, will likely be raised to $10 billion or more. One Senate committee passed a bill last month to lift all caps on liabilities.

The bill will also contain incentives to convert trucks to run on natural gas and to increase energy efficiency.

Analyst Kevin Book of ClearView Energy Partners LLC, said he expects the energy efficiency measure known as Home Star to include $5 billion in incentives for plugging window leaks and insulating attics.

The natural gas trucks incentives could cost the government $4.1 billion, compared to the $19 billion price tag for an earlier bill that had been endorsed by energy tycoon T. Boone Pickens, Book said.

To pay for these measures, lawmakers may consider raising taxes on the oil and gas industry.

“One possibility would be to raise the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund tax from 8 cents per barrel to 49 cents per barrel, which would raise approximately $18 billion,” said analyst Whitney Stanco of the Washington Research Group.

This fund, created in the aftermath of the Exxon-Valdez accident, helps pay claims for financial or property losses caused by oil spills.

Many expect the bill to pass as lawmakers may be eager to take action on the oil spill ahead of the elections.

Interest groups are lobbying to get measures boosting various energy sources attached to the bill. Environmentalists and clean energy advocates, in particular, are pushing to add a renewable power mandate, saying that without such measures, China would surpass the United States in alternative energy. But it’s unclear whether the groups have the support to accomplish this.

Article by Timothy Gardner and Ayesha Rascoe; edited by Eric Walsh; appearing courtesy Reuters.

photo: David Paul Ohmer

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A period of extremely cold, windless weather has brought home to the British the drawbacks of relying on wind power and the need to keep a supply of natural gas in reserve. While the cold spell has strained natural gas supplies, leading in some cases to cutoffs to industrial users, it also has highlighted the unpredictability of wind power. Although Britain’s wind farms are supposed to provide 5 percent of the country’s electricity, they were in fact only providing 0.2 percent during the recent run of frigid, still days.

This pitfall was on display as the government announced last Friday that it had awarded licenses for several offshore wind projects with the potential to generate 32 gigawatts of electricity — enough to power all the homes in Britain. But, as the Telegraph noted, the government should ensure there are plentiful natural gas supplies “for a future windless, icy day.”

In the U.S. two people on the opposite ends of the political spectrum — conservative billionaire T. Boone Pickens and John Podesta, president of the liberal Center for American Progress — called on the country to convert its fleet of heavy trucks and buses from gasoline to natural gas, which they said would reduce oil imports by 8 percent.

Article appearing courtesy of Yale Environment 360

photo: Gizdy

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The “locavore” movement is big, especially in California. With the bounty of food found locally in the Bay Area, living off the land — and sea — is not only possible, but also a delicious exercise.

But there’s another, less obvious, revolution brewing here in the Bay Area: the “locavolt” movement. In response to high gasoline and natural gas prices, global warming and an increasingly unstable, scary world, people are looking to generate power right in their own homes and neighborhoods with free energy from nature.

Technology advances in computers, telecommunications, generators, inverters, and even cars, are all giving the locavolt new tools to harness renewable energy and lead a fairly normal life.

Within the next few years, plug-in hybrid cars in California will be able to serve as a mini-power generator for your home and store renewable energy from your solar photovoltaics system or your small wind turbine. Plug-in hybrids may also help balance out a smarter electricity grid capable of easily sending power back and forth between generators and consumers, much like we send and receive e-mails on the Internet today.

The locavolt movement actually has its roots in the ‘70s and ‘80s in places such as Mendocino County, when solar power was the best option for rural homesteads not yet connected to the grid. Then, in the 1990s, solar costs decreased while state incentives for home and business installations increased. Unlike the old school purists, these newer locavolts have cooperated with the local utility, using its grid as backup whenever necessary. The downside to this modern arrangement is that when the utility grid goes down, so does the solar power system — and modern life as we know it.

One of the cutting-edge members of the locavolt movement is Jerry Lunsford, who lives completely off-grid on less than 1 kilowatt (kW) of solar power on the outskirts of Point Reyes Station in Marin County. Lunsford works at the Dance Palace, a community center that literally sits on the San Andreas fault line on the edge of PG&E’s grid.

Worried about the next power outage, which can last for days on end in this rural area, he installed the nation’s first “solar safety net” this past spring. The battery back-up system allows part of the solar power system to provide basic services — lights, telecommunications and refrigeration — when power goes out during emergencies. The rest of the time, he’s connected to the grid like most everyone else.

“Self reliance should be the goal here,” Lunsford said. “Being responsible for our own electrical generation is a large part of the puzzle when it comes to global climate change.”

Just up the road in Petaluma is Stubbs Winery, which brings the concepts of “locavolt” and “locavore” together in one place.  There, Mary and Tom Stubbs grow organic grapes to make premium wine. They live off-grid, completely powered by 2 kW of wind and sun, consuming only 5 percent to 10 percent of the amount of energy of you or me. “I like the independent aspect of not being beholden to anybody,” acknowledged Tom Stubbs.

He noted being a locavolt isn’t always fun. “Our best time for wind power production is spring, but our energy supplies are at their lowest in winter,” he said. “I become a bit of a tyrant with our children, following behind them turning off lights.”

Grid-connected solar power was the fastest growing power source in the world over the past two years, growing at a 50 percent growth clip. More than 1.5 million homes around the world now feature solar power systems feeding into the electricity grid. California’s share of the U.S. grid-connected market is 60 percent, by far and away the national leader.

And a study from Europe solar companies and Greenpeace projects that with strong government support as much as 10 percent of the world’s total population could be solar powered by 2030. According to their number crunching, 40 percent of these solar customers — 2.8 million people — will be off-grid solar locavolt purists, primarily located in developing nations.

Just how many locavolts are really out there? Is this just a California fad? There is no inventory of locavolts, but one thing is for sure: If they are to successfully challenge our status quo approach to powering up our lives, they must still overcome a few obstacles:

• change existing regulations precluding the sharing of solar power with neighbors
• access smarter energy storage systems
• reduce the costs of solar PV, currently the most expensive of all energy choices

What about T. Boone Pickens, and his massive $4 billion investment in wind power? Is he a locavolt? That is a matter of opinion. Purists would say no, but if one take a broad national perspective, one could argue that giant wind farms sporting machines over 300 feet tall is still promoting home-grown energy, albeit Texas-style, which means BIG PROJECTS.

There are many factions of locavolts. Boulder, Colorado, and New York City represent the urban high-tech crowd, as does Silicon Valley. At the other extreme are folks in rural areas installing small wind turbines (not the giant machines in wind farms, but the small ones, like at the Stubbs Winery). About seven of eight sales of small wind turbines went to an off-grid locavolt last year. In Minnesota and Iowa, the preference is “community wind” projects owned exclusively by local farmers, schools and your other neighbors. This more neighborly approach to being a locavolt is catching on with solar PV in the Pacific Northwest and in Sacramento, California.

Within the next year or so, the Bay Area may bolster its locavolt credentials with a California program that allows local governments to choose power supplies for its constituents. The program is called “community choice aggregation, the San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and Marin County are all investigating this option that would allow them to stay with PG&E for billing, distribution and repair service, but allow their local elected officials to choose more locally-produced green power. In Marin County, for example, the long-term goal is go 100 percent renewable energy.

If truth be known, the technology is now available to secure up to 40 percent of our electricity from local, distributed renewable energy sources like wind and sun, if we stay connected and get creative with storage from batteries, cars and maybe fuel cells. It will take a long time for locavolts to challenge the powers that be, yet something tells me the locovolts are on to something big.

[photo credit: Flickr, Stubbs Winery]

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In a move that will surely provide an additional boost for the alternative energy industry, and perhaps T. Boone Pickens‘ plan, the US Department of Treasury has finally released guidelines for claiming the grants instead of the federal tax credit. Applications will be submitted online. However, the Treasury will not be accepting applications at this time.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed in February allowed for business taxpayers to apply for direct payments instead of claiming a tax credit on their income tax return. This applied to the credit under Internal Revenue Code (“IRC”) Section 45 (Energy Produced for Certain Renewable Resources) and IRC Section 48 (Energy Credit). Property that applies to this includes geothermal, biomass, micro wind turbines, and solar amongst others.

While the guidelines and terms and conditions are too numerous to mention, here are a few highlights:

The grants apply to property which is “placed in service” during 2009 and 2010. The grant is also available to property, which is placed in service after 2010 where construction began in 2009 of 2010 so long as the application is submitted before October 1, 2011.

Once the completed application is submitted to the IRS, the IRS will make a payment to qualified applicants within 60 days. However, the IRS will only make a final determination and payment if the property is placed into service. You can send an application in early, but you will have to provide supplemental information to the Treasury within 90 days after the property was placed into service.

Lessees of qualified property can also claim the grant, however the lessor must expressly disclaim any rights to the grant and the applicable federal tax credits.

Supporting documentation such as final engineering design documents stamped by a licensed professional engineer and other specified documentation is required. If the cost basis of the property exceeds $500,000, an independent accountant’s certification attesting the accuracy of all costs claimed as part of the basis must be submitted.

REIT’s are eligible to receive the grants as long as they meet other requirements set forth by the Department of Treasury.

In addition to the application procedures, those who ultimately qualify and obtain the grant monies must file an annual project performance report.

The full terms and conditions, guidance, and sample application are available at the Department of Treasury.

[photo credit: flickr]

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Even as the irrepressible T. Boone Pickens had to scrap his “Pickens Plan” on Tuesday, in part due to a paucity of transmission capacity, last week brought another hurdle for the chances of building out the transmission infrastructure that Pickens and the country will need to bring more renewable power on-line. Why am I not surprised that we are not all rowing in the same direction here?

Earthjustice and a dozen other environmental groups filed suit against the feds on Tuesday, challenging the designation of the national interest corridors called for in the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

Readers who are really dialed-in to the latest in transmission litigation will remember that the Fourth Circuit already gave FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) a slap on the wrist this spring and limited the powers the feds could claim to site lines in the corridors in the face of local denials. This suit challenges the whole designation process and is another attempt to chip away at more federal control over siting transmission.

The cause of action is based on the violation of the administrative process that is required by NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) and other (most environmental protection) statutes. Earthjustice and the co-plaintiffs claim that had the feds undertaken these notice and comment and other requirements, they would have recognized that the corridors declared would only serve to facilitate coal and other fossil-fueled power sources to proliferate in the West. As such, the lines would not have been environmentally defensible.

Earthjustice’s attorney says that they don’t necessarily see the suit as a legal action against the new Obama administration, but instead hope it is taken as an “invitation” to sit down and discuss the transmission issues. Politically, I have to question the strategy since there is plenty of opportunity for discourse on these issues right now as it is with the Senate taking up the climate change bill.

Also, I return to what I believe to be the fundamental question right now in climate change politics: how much are conservationists willing to surrender in local impact in exchange for real action on global climate change? A big picture approach is essential, which is why I think that this Earthjustice suit is both bad environmental advocacy and a bad political miscalculation.

For the legal geeks and political wonks out there, cruise on over and check my post at EnergyWorks for all the gory details on where I think this suit fits within the emerging legal context and how the Democratic politics plays out.

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What would you do if you were worth $3 billion? T. Boone Pickens? Propose to build one of the largest wind farms in Texas, of course!

T. Boone Pickens, American financier and Chairman of BP Capital Management, ironically grew his wealth initially through mergers and acquisitions of oil and gas companies. From there, Pickens expanded his company, Mesa Petroleum, to be one of the largest independent oil companies in the world by 1981.

With his continued success came much criticism. During his peak, Pickens has been accused of being a “corporate raider” – investors who essentially direct or execute a hostile takeover of a company, often with the agenda of breaking up and selling various assets of the company to gain large profits. Though most of his attempts at corporate raiding failed, his endeavors drove the targeted company’s stock up, making Pickens and other investors millions of dollars.

So what does the once “most hated man in corporate America” named by Fortune Magazine do with his spare time today? Advocate for less dependency on foreign fuel and more towards renewable natural resources. With this change of heart, of course, comes scrutiny. Criticized as being a hypocrite, Pickens is accused of “morphing from a free-market capitalist into a panhandling socialist when it fits his financial needs.”

Now, Pickens is urging America to quit its addiction to foreign oil, proclaiming it to be the “greatest threat to our economy and to our national security.” Using the latest figures by the Department of Energy, the US has imported 68% of its oil, or nearly $19 billion to foreign countries, and Pickens argues this trend will only continue upward.

His answer to America’s growing need is to look at our natural resources. In comes the Pickens Plan.

The Pickens Plan, costing approximately $10 billion, is a proposal of building the world’s largest wind turbine farm that “will produce 20% of our nation’s electricity while using our abundant domestic natural gas supply as a transportation fuel as well as for power generation.” Pickens spent about $58 million advertising his Plan and bought 667 wind turbines for the project.

However, this past Tuesday, Pickens has announced he has stopped his plans for building the 4,000-megawatt wind farm, citing several reasons including not being able to finance the project in today’s credit market, as well as being unable to build the transmission lines needed.

That, and China beat him to it. Not only does China’s wind project cost one-third less because of lower prices in manufacturing turbines and installation, it is expected to produce five times more power than Pickens’ proposal.

And just like that, the Pickens Plan was blown away. Or has it? Though his plans have been halted for the massive project, Pickens insists he’s committed to putting the wind turbines to good use. Now wanting to build multiple smaller wind farms, Pickens is eying possible locations such as Kansas, Texas, Wisconsin, Oklahoma and areas in Canada.

Though announced at a time when America really is in need of new alternatives, with growing demands and fluctuating prices for oil, one can’t help but to think: are his intentions genuine?

Greedy capitalist? Or caring environmentalist? You be the judge.

[photo credit: jurvetson, by derek, polytropos on Flickr]

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China will break ground this month on a gigantic, $17 billion wind power farm in the northwestern part of the country that will produce 5 gigawatts of power by next year and 20 gigawatts by 2020, according to the official Xinhua news service. The installation in Gansu Province is known as the “Three Gorges of Wind Power” after the gigantic Three Gorges hydroelectric dam on the Yangtze River. As the Wall Street Journal notes, the Gansu wind power installation is scheduled by 2020 to produce five times the power of T. Boone Pickens’ proposed wind power project on the U.S. Great Plains.

The Chinese are building wind farms at about one-third the cost of European and U.S. rivals because the price of manufacturing the turbines and installing them is so much cheaper in China. In addition to its huge installation in Gansu — which is expected to produce power for more than 10 million Chinese households by 2020 — the Chinese also are planning a half-dozen similarly large projects, many on the windy western plains. China is planning to boost its wind power capacity to eight times the current level by 2020.

This article originally appeared on Yale Environment 360 at http://e360.yale.edu

[photo credit: Kaj17]

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Until recently, T. Boone Pickens was better known for greenmail than green energy. Pickens – oilman turned corporate raider -  leveraged Mesa Petroleum and Michael Milliken’s junk bonds to make billions during the 1980’s hostile takeover craze.

But with his recent $10 billion tilt toward Texas wind farms and solar, who’s to say whether Pickens is an energy visionary  or just the consummate frontrunning egomaniac? One thing is certain: Pickens has always had a plan, and he’s been spotting trends and making fortunes in energy for over half a century.

The “Pickens Plan”  is basically a $58 million marketing campaign to wean the US off foreign oil  within 10 years by using natural gas for vehicles, and wind and solar for utilities – and for Pickens to receive as much credit for it as possible.

During his 30-minute pitch at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on March 25, Pickens hardly mentioned pollution or global warming, instead pushing national security and economics to close the deal. “I want to get off foreign oil,” Pickens says, “the biggest transfer of wealth in human history.”

The US spends $450 billion per year and climbing on foreign oil – which he forecasts selling for $70 per barrel in the near-term and $200-300 per barrel within 5 years – if we continue with “no plan” when the economy recovers. This, says Pickens, would bankrupt the US, already beholden to unfriendly state-owned oil producers.

Pickens is “wait and see” on cap and trade – hardly surprising for the long-time conservative who supported George W. Bush and underwrote the Swiftboating of John Kerry. But Pickens wholeheartedly endorses Obama’s stimulus, energy, and budget plans – especially investment and tax credits and focusing on new transmission lines first – claiming it’s “my plan.” His only caveat, he told Obama during the campaign, was to “think big.” For example, he asked, why pledge to have 10 million plug-in cars on the market within 10 years, when there are 250 million vehicles in the US?

www.pickensplan.com

www.commonwealthclub.org

Jim Rossi is a writer and consultant based in San Francisco: jimrossi.sf@gmail.com.

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