White House Listening Tour Slated for Pittsylvania County

Comment: Everyone Should Attend this meeting!

By Staff Reports on July 15th, 2009

The White House recently announced that President Obama has directed many members of his Cabinet to begin what it describes as a “listening tour” of rural America this summer. The tour will be in Virginia’s Blairs community on Saturday, 18 July 2009. Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Agricultural Secretary Tom Vilsack will be on a mission to develop “green jobs.”

The Obama administration stated they will focus on weatherization and carbon sequestration.

A town hall meeting will be held at Buddy Mayhew’s farm (1501 Carter Lodge Road, Blairs, Virginia). The public is encouraged to arrive around 12:30 p.m. with an anticipated arrival by the Secretaries at 1:00 p.m. The Secretaries plan to take comments and questions until approximately 2:30 p.m.

Directions to Buddy Mayhew’s farm from Danville: Take Route 29 North. Turn right onto Spring Garden Road (Route 640). Go 1.7 miles, then turn left onto Carter Lodge Road (Route 825). Go 0.2 miles to Buddy’s farm.

Directions to Buddy Mayhew’s farm from Chatham: At the ‘top’ of White Oak Mountain, turn left onto Carter Lodge Road. Go 1.4 miles to Buddy’s farm.

http://www.appomattoxnews.com/2009/white-house-listening-tour-slated-for-pittsylvania-county.html

Secretaries Steven Chu and Tom Vilsack will travel to Ringgold, VA

Comment: We need to greet Mr. Chu with open arms and explain to him we against uranium mining and milling in Virginia!!

President Announces Rural Tour
THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

JUNE 30, 2009

President Obama Announces Rural Tour with Cabinet Secretaries and Administration Officials

WASHINGTON D.C. – Today, President Obama announced the launch of his Administration’s Rural Tour. This summer, over the course of the next few weeks and months, top Administration officials, including Cabinet Secretaries, will fan out across the nation to hold a series of discussions on how communities, states, and the federal government can work together to help strengthen rural America.

Vice President Joe Biden and Secretaries Gary Locke and Tom Vilsack will kick-off the Rural Tour on July 1st by visiting Wattsburg, Pennsylvania, to discuss the issue of rural broadband.

“A healthy American economy depends on a prosperous rural America,” President Obama said. “Rural America is vast and diverse, and different communities face different challenges and opportunities. That’s why we’re going out to hear directly from the people of rural America about their needs and concerns and what my Administration can do to support them.”

Administration officials participating in the Rural Tour will hear about the diverse set of challenges and opportunities facing the small towns and rural communities that are so integral to the fabric of American life. They will share some of the Administration’s ideas about how to nurture strong, robust, and vibrant rural communities. And, when they have heard from the people, they will report back to the President about the state of rural America, and what the Administration can do to strengthen it.

These events, involving multiple Cabinet secretaries, will serve as listening sessions to focus on such issues as broad-based rural health, economic development, infrastructure, education, energy, natural resources, and agriculture. Events will be held in Alaska, Louisiana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin. And, Secretary Vilsack will hold listening sessions in additional states with local and state elected officials.

The entire tour will provide an opportunity for the Obama Administration to listen to diverse voices throughout rural America, and to highlight its broader vision for growth and prosperity in these regions of the country.

Rural Tour events planned so far include:

JULY 1ST

Vice President Joe Biden and Secretaries Gary Locke and Tom Vilsack will travel to Wattsburg, PA, to discuss rural broadband.

JULY 16TH

Secretaries Ray LaHood and Tom Vilsack will travel to La Crosse, WI, to discuss rural economic development.

JULY 18TH

Secretaries Steven Chu and Tom Vilsack will travel to Ringgold, VA, to discuss green jobs and a new energy economy, with a focus on weatherization and carbon sequestration.

JULY 20TH

Secretaries Kathleen Sebelius, Eric Shinseki, Hilda Solis and Tom Vilsack will travel to St. John’s Parish, LA, to discuss rural healthcare.

AUGUST 12TH

Secretaries Steven Chu, Shaun Donovan, Arne Duncan, Ken Salazar and Tom Vilsack will travel to Bethel, AK, to discuss rural infrastructure, green jobs and a new energy economy, as well as climate change.

AUGUST 16TH

Secretaries Ken Salazar and Tom Vilsack will travel to Zanesville, OH, to discuss green jobs and a new energy economy, with a focus on renewable energies.

AUGUST 17TH

Secretaries Arne Duncan and Tom Vilsack will travel to Hamlet, NC, to discuss rural education.

SEPTEMBER 28TH

Secretaries Ken Salazar and Tom Vilsack will travel to Scottsbluff, NE, to discuss production agriculture.

SEPTEMBER 30TH

Secretaries Shaun Donovan and Tom Vilsack will travel to Las Cruces, NM, to discuss rural infrastructure.

More details on the Rural Tour will be released as they become available.



http://www.ruralvotes.com/thebackforty/?p=1684

Sunday Bloggers Act: Top Ten List on Why President Obama Must Visit Appalachia and Launch War for Green Jobs

Comment: Virginia allows legal Mt. Top Removal; therefore, VA is destroying people lives for Corporate Mining! Therefore, Virginia will not have a second thought about blowing up the Piedmont, valleys or the area around interstate 95 where uranium is in abundance! The dust from uranium open pit mining will be falling on us in the Piedmont, near University of Virginia and all the main rivers in Virginia!

(Bloggers across the nation are making a joint request this Sunday: It is time for President Barack Obama and CEQ chief Nancy Sutley to make their FIRST visit to a mountaintop removal moonscape and coal slurry impoundment and bear witness to the impact of the Obama administration's regulatory strip-mining policies on affected coalfield residents. For other posts, see Deviltower's DailyKos roundup: http://devilstower.dailykos.com/ )

First, let's us praise Charleston Gazette reporter Ken Ward, whose Coal Tattoo blog has become an indispensable forum for breaking news and debate in the coalfields. You haven't already, bookmark it:
http://blogs.wvgazette.com/coaltattoo/

Here's the beyond-the-Beltway truth: With millions of pounds of explosives ripping across the Appalachian mountains every day, and the Office of Surface Mining (OMSRE) still operating without a director, it is almost beyond belief that President Obama, CEQ chief Nancy Sutley and EPA head Lisa Jackson have made no attempt to visit actual mining sites under their jurisdiction.

Only through a firsthand look at the economic and environmental devastation wrought from mountaintop removal's 38-year rap sheet of pollution crimes and human rights violations, will President Obama, Lisa Jackson and Nancy Sutley truly understand three stark realities:

--stricter Obama mining regulations can easily be circumvented;

--as a vanishing carbon sink, the Appalachia coalfields are ground zero in any climate change battle;

--mountaintop removal destroys any chance at a sustainable economy or new initiatives for Green Jobs.

In the summer of 1964, President Lyndon Johnson made a trip to Tom Fletcher's porch in Martin County, Kentucky, to announce the launching of the "War on Poverty."

Forty-five years later, Martin County still ranks as one of the poorest counties in the country, with over 35 percent of the population living under the poverty level, while 67 percent of the coal mining jobs have disappeared due to strip-mining and mechanization in the last two decades.

This summer, President Obama should follow in LBJ's footsteps and journey to Martin County, Kentucky, a poverty-stricken area shamelessly ravaged by strip-mining and mountaintop removal (and the site of an ignored 300-million-gallon coal slurry accident in 2000), and announce his intention to launch a "War for Green Jobs and a Phase Out of Mountaintop Removal Operations."

August 3rd, the anniversary of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act that granted federal sanctioning of mountaintop removal in 1977 in a disastrous moment of compromise by liberal Democrats, would be a fine day for a visit.

For history on SMCRA, see: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-biggers/dear-mr-president-declare_b_202321.html

In the meantime, here's my top ten list on what President Obama, Sutley, Jackson and others in his administration would learn from such a fact-finding trip:

1) Stricter Obama Regulations Can Be Circumvented--Just Asked Bo Webb About Getting Your House Blasted Daily by ANFO Explosives, Shelled by Fly Rock and Rained on by Silica Dust and Heavy Metals: While Vietnam vet/businessman Bo Webb received a slight reprieve this spring on the daily blasting above his home in Clay's Branch, West Virginia, he just received notice that the violations noted by federal regulators will be circumvented by a WV state decision. Webb was told on Friday: While operators were ordered to stop blasting in Clay's Branch until they placed all the material, rocks, flyrock, boulders, downed trees and all back on their permitted area, the WV Department of Environmental Protection reviewed solution is to blast down to the next seam of coal, blasting closer to residents so they can get to all the material that is off the permitted area.

So much for stricter regulations from Washington, DC.

Webb wrote President Obama earlier this spring of this state of terror in his community: "As I write this letter, I brace myself for another round of nerve-wracking explosives being detonated above my home in the mountains of West Virginia. Outside my door, pulverized rock dust laden with diesel fuel and ammonium nitrate explosives hovers in the air, along with the residual of heavy metals that once lay dormant underground. The mountain above me, once a thriving forest, has been blasted into a pile of rock and mud rubble. Two years ago, it was covered with rich black top soil and abounded with hardwood trees, rhododendrons, ferns and flowers. The under-story thrived with herbs such as ginseng, black cohosh, yellow root, and many other medicinal plants. Black bears, deer, wild turkey, hawks, owls, and thousands of birds lived here. The mountain contained sparkling streams teeming with aquatic life and fish."

To read the entire letter, see:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-biggers/urgent-webb-letter-to-oba_b_168604.html

2) Mountaintop Removal Kills Green Jobs and Clean Energy Project, Just Ask Lorelei Scarbro, a Coal Miner's Widow in Coal River Valley, West Virginia: Facing an impending 6,000 acre mountaintop removal operation bordering her property, coal mining families like Scarbro developed a plan for an industrial wind farm that would create more energy, more tax revenues and provide more sustainable jobs than the destructive mountaintop removal operations on Coal River Mountain, and save their historic communities. See: www.coalriverwind.org

3) Coal Companies Receive A Lot of Welfare, and Martin County, Kentucky, Home of the War on Poverty, Lost 67 Percent of Its Coal Mining Jobs Due to Stripped Down Mountaintop Removal Operations: For a chart on the relationship between mountaintop removal, lost jobs and poverty in Martin County, see: http://www.kftc.org/our-work/canary-project/campaigns/mtr/county-profiles

Earlier this week, a new study found that the Kentucky coal industry is a major recipient of WELFARE: Coal companies in Kentucky take $115 million more from Kentucky's state government annually in services and programs than they contribute in tax revenues.

4) Like Coalfield Parents, President Obama Wouldn't Want to Send His Daughters to the Marsh Fork Elementary School Either: Unlike the Sidwell Friends School in Washington, DC, children at Marsh Fork school in Sundial, West Virginia, must play in toxic coal dust from a nearby coal silo, as 2.8 billion gallons of coal sludge held back by a precarious earthen dam stare down daily at the playground, as mountaintop removal explosions take place nearby.

5) Union-Busting Out-of-State Coal Companies Have Polarized the Coalfields and Inflamed Violence: With less than 1,000 United Mine workers employed at mountaintop removal sites in West Virginia, the truth is that most mountaintop removal operators are owned and operated by union-busting outside corporations like Massey Energy, a Richmond, VA company that celebrated record profits in 2008, paid millions in penalties for criminal and civil violations, and then slashed its union-busted workforce this spring.

Infamous Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship revels in mountaintop removal conflict and union-busting--and yet, his ruthless operations receive tacit support from the Obama administration.

Here's a clip of a violent Massey supporter attack on this week's nonviolent march with Goldman Prize Winner Judy Bonds from Marsh Fork Elementary School this week:

6) Flooding from Mountaintop Removal Operations Still Rolls Down Like Injustice: Living under a mountaintop removal operation, Goldman Prize winner Maria Gunnoe, in Boone County, West Virginia, has seen seven floods sweep by her home, where the natural mountain valleys and waterways have been destroyed and clear cutting and blasting have led to massive erosion. Here's a clip from one of the floods:

7) Mountaintop Removal Stripmines Black History Month and Appalachian Heritage: Just as our nation has quietly overlooked the Appalachian coal mining origins of Black History Month godfather Carter Woodson, whose coal mining tenure in Raleigh County, West Virginia inspired his work as a historian and moved him to launch Negro History Week in the 1920s, the 38-year nightmare of mountaintop removal mining and its origins of betrayal in the same county of Woodson's mining experience have led to the destruction of the rich Appalachian heritage. See:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-biggers/stripmining-black-history_b_83918.html

8) Mountaintop Removal Operators Are NOT Coal Miners, But Mostly Heavy Equipment Operators (Bulldozer and Truck Drivers) Who Could Easily Be Used on Infrastructure Projects, Waterworks, Highway Projects, Genuine Reclamation and Reforestation Projects, and a Lot of Green Jobs Initiatives and Manufacturing Plants (Building Wind Turbines, Solar Panels).

In fact, every mountaintop removal operator job has taken away 2-3 jobs from underground coal miners.

9) President Obama Might Share a Beer But Not a Glass of Water with the Residents of Prenter, West Virginia: In a community stricken by coal sludge contamination of their wells and watersheds, illnesses including gallbladder disease abound--and yet, despite the overwhelming evidence of coal company negligence, American citizens can still NOT drink their tap or well water and must pay to truck in bottled water for the next two years until a new water system is set up. See:
http://www.prenterwaterfund.org/about

10) And When President Obama Returns to DC, Mountaintop Removal Will Come With Him: The joy of President Obama's air-conditioner at the White House and Oval Office requires the devastation of Appalachian mountains and historic communities, where coal stripmined from mountaintop removal sites in Appalachia are trained into the Potomac River power plant, which generates the electricity for Washington, DC.

Bottom line: It is time for the President and his CEQ and EPA administrators to come up to the mountain.

For more information, see: ilovemountains.org

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-biggers/sunday-bloggers-act-top-t_b_221976.html

Photovoltaic systems growing faster than other renewable sources

Comment: more solar, wind, tide power not Nuke Power!!!

5:50 p.m., May 5, 2009----Photovoltaic power generation grew by 73 percent between 2007-08, making it the fastest growing source of alternative energy, Monica Oliphant, president of the International Solar Energy Society (ISES), said upon her arrival in Delaware from Australia to attend the 2009 Karl Böer Solar Energy Medal of Merit ceremony at the University of Delaware on Thursday, May 7.

The 2009 award will be presented to Hermann Scheer, a member of German Parliament, president of EUROSOLAR and chairperson of the World Council for Renewable Energy, at 3 p.m., in Gore Recital Hall of the Roselle Center for the Arts on UD's Newark, Del., campus. Those who plan to attend should RSVP to the Office of the Provost at [provost-office@udel.edu].

Oliphant said there are not many awards for scientists, especially for renewable energy, so the Böer award, which is given by the American Solar Energy Society (ASES), an independent chapter of ISES, is highly respected around the world.

Oliphant, who is also a board member of ISES and a member of the Böer award selection committee, said that Scheer stood out among all the applicants because of his role in developing and promoting the concept of feed-in tariffs, which pays up to three times the normal tariffs for photovoltaic energy that is fed into the grid in many countries.

“Because of that, Germany has moved to the forefront in the penetration of photovoltaic energy,” Oliphant said. “In the city of Freiburg, the penetration of photovoltaic systems is very high. You hardly see any house without a photovoltaic system because it is a good income earner.”

Feed-in tariffs have been accepted in about 70 countries and “it has been the single greatest incentive for the penetration of photovoltaic systems around the world,” Oliphant said.

Oliphant lauded the recent announcement by UD President Patrick Harker that the University would install photovoltaic systems that would eventually generate 6 MW of electricity.

“I think it's a great initiative, It's really something special. It will be the first University in the world to generate such an amount of photovoltaic power, and it will offset quite a lot of carbon emissions,” Oliphant said. “It is also worth noting that a lot of photovoltaic systems, particularly thin film technology was developed at the University of Delaware at the IEC, which was started by Karl Böer.”

The medal and a cash award of $50,000, funded by the Karl W. Böer Solar Energy Medal of Merit Trust, is given every two years to an individual who has made significant pioneering contributions to the promotion of solar energy as an alternate source of energy through research, development or economic enterprise or to an individual who has made extraordinarily valuable and enduring contributions to the field of solar energy in other ways.

The award is given in honor of Karl Wolfgang Böer, a longtime University of Delaware faculty member, founder of UD's Institute of Energy Conversion and a distinguished scientist in the field of solar cells.

The recipient of the award is chosen by a panel of commissioners composed of scientists and presidents of several solar energy-related professional societies, a representative of the U.S. Secretary of Energy, the past recipient and a member of the Böer family.

Scheer, who has been a member of the German Parliament since 1980, was named president of EUROSOLAR in 1988 and was made chairperson of the World Council for Renewable Energy in 2001.

He has a doctorate in economic and social science from the Free University of Berlin.

Scheer was an assistant professor at the Technical University of Stuttgart in the Faculty of Economics from 1972-78 and worked as a system analyst at the German Nuclear Research Centre from 1978-
80.

Since 1980, when he was first elected as a member of the German Parliament, he has served as chairperson of the Arms Control and Disarmament Committee and since 1983 has been delegated by the German Parliament to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. He also served as chairperson of the Committee on Agriculture between 1994 and 1997.

Scheer holds two Doctor honoris causa, one from the Technical University of Varna (Bulgaria) and the other from the University of Luneburg (Germany).

He has chaired as well as initiated numerous international research and development conferences, such as the first and second World Renewable Energy Forums in 2002 and 2004, the International Parliamentary Forum on Renewable Energy in 2004 and the World Renewable Energy Assembly in 2007.

Scheer was awarded the World Solar Prize by the second World Conference on Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conversion in Vienna in 1998 and received the Alternative Nobel Prize in Stockholm in 1999.

He was named Hero for the Green Century by Time magazine in 2002, received the Global Leadership Award from the American Council on Renewable Energy in 2004, the World Wind Energy Award from the World Wind Energy Conference in Beijing in 2004, and the SolarWorld Einstein Award by Solar World in 2005.

The first Karl W. Böer Solar Energy Medal of Merit award was presented in 1993 to former President Jimmy Carter, who was cited as an individual who spurred development and focused world attention on solar energy.

Other recipients of the Böer medal include:

1995, David E. Carlson, vice president of the Thin Film Division of Solarex, an AMOCO subsidiary;

1997, Adolf Goetzberger, founder of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems;

1999, Stanford R. Ovshinsky, a pioneer in the science of amorphous semiconductors resulting in the development of low-cost, thin-film silicon solar cells;

2001, Allen M. Barnett, a pioneer in high-performance, thin-crystalline silicon solar cells and currently senior scientist in UD's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering;

2003, Martin A. Green, Inaugural Scientia Professor at the Centre for Photovoltaic Engineering in Sydney, Australia, and foundation director for the Centre for Third Generation University of New South Wales in Sydney;

2005, Yoshihiro Hamakawa, adviser professor to the chancellor at Ritsumeikan University in Shiga, Japan, and a prominent scholar in the field of solar photovoltaic energy; and

2007, Lawrence L. Kazmerski, director, U.S. Department of Energy's National Center for Photovoltaics and a pioneer and leader in the field of solar electricity.

Article by Martin A Mbugua

http://www.udel.edu/udaily/2009/may/oliphant050509.html

Iowa: Investors see bright future in wind energy

There has been a spike in 'green' revenue, and the federal government is exploring alternative energy sources.

BY DAVID PITT THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Saturday, May 2, 2009

DES MOINES -- When President Barack Obama stood in front of wind turbine towers in a Newton, Iowa, factory last week he was not only pushing his green energy policies but promoting an industry that has been growing rapidly and gaining favor with investors.

Revenue from solar, wind power, ethanol and biodiesel fuel grew 50 percent to about $116 billion last year, according to Clean Edge Inc., a research firm. The spike in green revenue, and the backing of the federal government to explore these energy sources has excited investors.

"They favor green investment right now because they think that's the way the world is going," said David Wood, director of the Institute for Responsible Investment at Boston College's Center for Corporate Citizenship.

The federal stimulus package includes $17 billion for the current fiscal year to upgrade and expand the antiquated national power grid. It also allocates $11 billion to develop a smart grid -- an electronically controlled distribution system that will be much more efficient.

All told, last year global investments in energy technologies expanded by 4.7 percent to $155 billion, according to research and consulting company New Energy Finance Ltd.

"The smartest investors put their own personal prejudices aside," said Jeff Siegel, managing editor of Green Chip Stocks, an investment advisory service. "Many people think global warming is propaganda, but they're aware that the bottom line is climate change legislation is going to happen. Investors smart enough to realize this know there's an opportunity there."

THE WIND INDUSTRY

Investors looking to put their cash into an area that's seen tremendous growth might look to wind energy, said Ron Pernick, a spokesman for Clean Edge Inc. Wind has jumped ahead of other green energy sources because innovations in turbine technology (think: windmills) have improved the efficiency and made systems the most cost-effective alternative. Turbines can generate electricity with wind speeds starting at 8 to 16 miles per hour according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Turbines are typically built in groups on wind farms where the wind is the strongest. The largest U.S. wind farm is near Abilene, Texas, with 421 turbines scattered across 47,000 acres.

"Of all renewable energy sectors, this is the one reaching the largest scale right now," Pernick said.

THE PLAYERS

Because it's an emerging technology, investors might choose to get involved by owning a piece of larger conglomerates such as General Electric Co. Its energy division lead the industry in newly installed turbines in the U.S. last year. It provided roughly 48 percent of the more than 5,000 turbines installed according to the American Wind Energy Association. This added an additional 3,657 megawatts.

In its 2008 annual report, GE said its energy division brought in 21 percent of revenue for the year. That includes technologies developed to harness wind, oil, gas and water.

Trinity Structural Towers, the Iowa company President Obama visited last week, is a division of Dallas-based Trinity Industries Inc. (TRN), a diversified company with railroad car, highway construction materials and wind turbine tower divisions.

Shares of the company have gained nearly 18 percent since Obama's visit.

Many are traded in the United States including Vestas Wind Systems (VWSYF), which was second only to GE in terms of the wind power it supplied last year -- some 1,120 megawatts.

Siemens AG (SI), the German industrial conglomerate, with 791 megawatts, was third in terms of installed capacity.

http://www.thonline.com/article.cfm?id=241994

First Wind seeks huge project permit to generate green energy in Maine

Comment: County Leaders, we want jobs like building WindMills or Solar Panels, not uranium mining!

First Wind filed an application permit with the Maine Department of Environmental Protection for a project that will power more than 20,000 homes using wind energy.

The wind project will be in the town of Oakfield in Aroostook County and will consist of up to 34 turbines with the capacity to generate a total of 51 MW of electricity.

It may also have positive effects in the local economy by lowering taxes and employing residents for its construction, the company said in a statement.

"Maine continues to foster the development of renewable energy, and we are excited to continue work to provide indigenous renewable and clean wind power," said First Wind's Vice President of Development for New England Matt Kearns, in a statement Wednesday.

First Wind owns two more wind projects in the state; the 42 MW Mars Hill Wind project in the same county and 57 MW Stetson Wind project in Washington County - which will be expanded with an extra 25.5 MW facility.

New Kansas law aims to attract green energy firms

Comment: The below article is something the State of VA and our County should do, attract true green jobs, not uranium mining!

(AP:TOPEKA, Kan.)

A new Kansas law taking effect next week is designed to attract firms manufacturing equipment for solar and wind energy production.

The new law will permit the state to issue up to $5 million in bonds to help such firms.

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius pushed the measure as a way to make Kansas a center of research and development for renewable energy technology.

Legislators passed a bill unanimously, and she signed it Monday.

It takes effect April 16.

Companies will be eligible for the state's help if they expect to invest at least $30 million in Kansas and have at least 200 full-time workers within five years.

Also, a company will have to pay an average salary of $32,500 to its Kansas employees.

Home-Grown Power

Comment: We want Real Green Power, no Nuke Plants, no uranium mining, no Clean Coal(joke-clean coal is a joke)!!

By IAN BOWLES
Published: March 6, 2009
Boston

PRESIDENT Obama has laid out an ambitious agenda for dealing with our energy needs and climate change: he proposes to double the supply of renewable energy within three years, establish a cap-and-trade program to reduce carbon emissions and use federal stimulus dollars to help homes, businesses and governments use energy more efficiently. This is the right blueprint for increasing the number of green jobs, encouraging economic growth, ensuring that the United States has the energy it needs at reasonable prices, and reducing the risk of global climate change.

But as Congress translates this grand plan into legislation, lawmakers should resist calls to add an extensive and costly new transmission system that would carry electricity from remote areas like Texas, the Great Plains and Eastern Canada to places with high energy demands like Boston, Chicago and New York. This idea is being promoted by energy companies and by elected officials who see it as an economic development opportunity for their particular state or region. Long-distance transmission lines are needed, they argue, to ensure that the president’s energy goals are met.

But there are better — and cheaper — ways to get more clean power flowing to the big cities.

Renewable energy resources are found all across the country; they don’t need to be harnessed from just one place.

In the Northwest, the largest amount of green power comes from hydroelectricity.

In the Northeast, the best source may be the wind over the ocean, because it blows harder and more consistently there than on land. Offshore wind farms have been proposed for Delaware, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island.

In the Southwest, solar energy can be tapped on a large scale.

And in the Southeast, biomass from forests may one day be a major source of sustainable power.

In each area, developing these power sources would be cheaper than piping in clean energy from thousands of miles away.

Unlike our federal highway system, which is needed to transport goods across the country, or the “information superhighway” of the Internet, which is the fastest way to carry information around the world, long-distance transmission lines have no inherent value.

On the contrary, the farther electricity is transported, the more of it is dissipated. “Line loss,” as this is called, gobbles up an estimated 2 percent to 3 percent of electricity nationally.
And of course, the longer the power line, the more expensive it is to build. In New England, we estimate the cost per mile at $2 million to $10 million. The closer electricity is generated to where it’s used, the better.

Another component of President Obama’s clean energy vision is the creation of a smarter power grid. But that has little to do with high capacity transmission lines that carry electricity in bulk over hundreds of miles.

Building a “smart grid” means upgrading the local grid from a simple delivery system to an information system that can let consumers know the times when power is cheapest, thus enabling them to adjust their use to save money.

This flattens out electricity loads and minimizes periods of peak demand. Smart grids will also be able to identify and fix power failures instantly, and someday may even send signals to specific household appliances like thermostats, washing machines and refrigerators to switch them on when demand is low or turn them off during times of peak energy use.

The cost of building transmission lines to connect new power plants to the grid ought to be covered the way we cover it in the Northeast, by folding it into the price of the power that the lines deliver. That allows the market to help keep prices as low as possible.

In Massachusetts, we get about 5 percent of our power from hydroelectric plants in Quebec. Our distribution utilities are negotiating to install a second transmission line for Canadian hydropower, which would be paid for through long-term power-purchase contracts approved by the New England states whose residents use that power.

Developers of remote wind-power farms in eastern Canada have said they would also like to sell us electricity, but unless the combined cost of the power they could provide and its transmission is competitive with our other renewable energy choices, their projects won’t get approved.

That’s the way it should be.

For a clean energy future, we need a smart grid and we need more renewable energy.

The Obama administration is offering welcome support for both. Beyond that, what we need is a level playing field that enables energy providers to compete fairly with one another.

The cost of transmission should be incorporated into the overall cost of bringing clean energy to market.

Then let the chips fall — and wind turbines rise — where they may.

Ian Bowles is the secretary of energy and environmental affairs for Massachusetts.

Energy Justice In Native America and The Next Administration

Comment: America needs to turn to Real Green Jobs, No Uranium Mining, No Nuke Plants, write all our Leaders to provide "True Green Jobs"!

OVERVIEW
When considering energy production, resource extraction, housing and energy efficiency, it is essential that the incoming administration take into account the disproportionate impacts of climate change and energy development on American Indian reservations and Alaska Native villages, and the potential for catalyzing green reservation economies.

We ask that the incoming administration consult with Honor the Earth, Intertribal Council On Utility Policy and the Indigenous Environmental Network, representing a network of 250 grassroots tribal organizations and tribes, to ensure input from impacted communities is fully taken into account and to ensure Native American participation in the green economy of the future.

A just nation-to-nation relationship means breaking the cycle of asking Native America to choose between economic development and preservation of its cultures and lands; renewable energy and efficiency improvements provide opportunity to do both simultaneously.

A green, carbon-reduced energy policy has major national and international human rights, environmental and financial consequences, and we believe that this administration can provide groundbreaking leadership on this policy.

The reality is that the most efficient, green economy will need the vast wind and solar resources that lie on Native American lands. This provides the foundation of not only a green low carbon economy but also catalyzes development of tremendous human and economic potential in the poorest community in the United States- Native America.

HISTORY OF EXPLOITATION AND ENERGY INJUSTICE
The history of resource exploitation, including conventional energy resources, in Indian Country has most recently been highlighted by the Cobell lawsuit against the Department of the Interior on behalf of individual Indian land owners, which requires both accountability of the federal trustees and a just settlement for the Indian plaintiffs.

The programmatic exploitation of conventional energy resources has run an equally long and often deadly course in Indian Country, tribes have supplied access to abundant natural resources under trust protection at rock bottom prices , yet often go un-served or underserved by the benefits of such development.

Even the most recent federal energy legislation and incentives are still designed to encourage the development of tribal resources by outside corporate interests without ownership or equity participation of the host tribes.

The toxic legacy left by fossil fuel and uranium development on tribal lands remains today and will persist for generations, even without additional development.

Mines and electrical generation facilities have had devastating health and cultural impacts in Indian country at all stages of the energy cycle- cancer from radioactive mining waste to respiratory illness caused by coal-fired power plant and oil refinery air emissions on and near Native lands.

Native communities have been targeted in all proposals for long-term nuclear waste storage.

Compensation for uranium miners and their families has not been fulfilled from the last nuclear era, and every tribal government with uranium resources has opposed new uranium mining developments, including in the Grand Canyon, as an immoral and untenable burden for Native American communities.

In addition, energy-related deforestation has serious climate change and human rights impacts for Indigenous communities globally. Approximately 20% of climate change-inducing emissions come from deforestation and land use, often from unsustainable energy projects, biofuel (agrofuel) and other monocrop development fueled by a need to satisfy tremendous foreign and World Bank debt obligations. On an international level, the US has yet to sign onto the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, we believe signing onto this important agreement is an essential early step in the context of next administration’s dealings with Native America.

When considering energy and climate change policy, it is important that the White House and federal agencies consider the history of energy and mineral exploitation and tribes, and the potential to create a dramatic change with innovative policies.

Too often tribes are presented with a false choice: either develop polluting energy resources or remain in dire poverty. Economic development need not come at the cost of maintaining cultural identity and thriving ecosystems.

Providing incentives to develop further fossil fuels and uranium in Indian country will only continue the pattern of ignoring the well-being of tribes and Alaska Native villages in favor of short-sighted proposals that exploit the vulnerabilities of poor, politically isolated communities.

• ‘Clean coal’ is an oxymoron: mining coal is never ‘clean,’ coal plant emissions add to climate change impacts and carbon capture and sequestration technology is unproven financially and technically. Coal expansion on and near Native lands should not be incentivized by the administration.

• Nuclear power is not a solution to climate change: from mining to nuclear waste, the nuclear cycle is far from carbon neutral and disproportionately impacts Native communities. Nuclear power is also economically unfeasible, and will not address climate change at the speed required to mitigate the devastation ahead.

• Oil drilling in sensitive Arctic regions, including the off shore Outer Continental Shelf areas of the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas, threatens Alaska Natives’ way of life, and perpetuates the nation’s addiction to oil and GHG emissions. It is of utmost importance to institute a federal time-out on the proposed offshore development within the Outer Continental Shelf areas in Alaska. It has not been proven whether or not cleaning up spills in broken ice conditions is possible, the implications to subsistence ways of life and human health of coastal communities have not been reviewed extensively and impacts to Polar Bears and other threatened and endangered Arctic marine species have not been studied.

• Importing 80% of the Alberta Canada tar/oil sands crude oil to feed US energy needs encourages unprecedented ecological destruction in Canadian Native communities and the use of a fuel far more carbon intensive than conventional oil. This tar sands expansion has been called the tip of the nonconventional fuels iceberg. This iceberg includes oil shale, liquid coal, ultra-heavy oils and ultra-deep off shore deposits. Extraction of these bottom-of-the-barrel fuels emits higher levels of greenhouse gases and creates ecological devastation.

• Unchecked expansion of biofuels (agrofuels) production and agricultural monocrops threaten biodiversity and food security and contribute to climate change and the destruction of rainforests, impacting Indigenous communities worldwide.

• Impacts of climate change are greatest in Native communities because of the close cultural relationship with the land and subsistence farming, hunting and fishing. In Alaska, the entire Indigenous village of Shishmaref will need to relocate (at a cost of $180 million) because rising temperatures have caused ice to melt and rapid erosion of the shoreline. Shishmaref is one of some 180 villages that will either move, at an estimated cost of $1.5 million per household or be lost. All of these burdens fall on tax payers, although one Alaskan Native Village- Kivalina has sued 14 oil companies for the damages.

Native organizations and the communities and tribes we serve believe the Obama Administration should request the new Congress and direct the departments of interior, energy and treasury to review all energy subsidies that go to coal, gas, oil and nuclear industries which have climate or toxic waste impacts on Native communities and to redirect the billions in subsidies to actualize clean sustainable energy development in Native America. Subsidies for the nuclear, coal, gas and oil industry should be rapidly phased out with a proportional ramp up of subsidies for renewable technologies and locally administered

conservation/efficiency improvements.

In particular, we believe that any climate change legislation should not allocate funds for nuclear or clean coal technologies, and proposals to provide liability guarantees to nuclear plants and capitalize research on uranium in situ mining practices must be eliminated.

NATIVE AMERICA: IN NEED OF GREEN ECONOMIC

DEVELOPMENT

Ironically, while some Native Nations and their reservation communities have borne the brunt of destructive energy development that has reaped massive profits for some, they are the poorest in the country, with high unemployment rates and inadequate housing.

• The unemployment rate on Indian reservations is more than twice the national rate.

• The median age in Indian Country is about 18 years, with a young and rapidly growing population in need of both jobs and housing.

• The poverty rate for Native Americans is 26%; more than twice the national average.

• More than 11% of Indian homes do not have complete plumbing. About 14% of reservation households are without electricity, 10 times the national rate.

• In rural Alaska where Alaska Natives predominately reside, 33% of the homes lack modern water and sanitation facilities.

• Energy distribution systems on rural reservations are extremely vulnerable to extended power outages during winter storms, threatening the lives of reservation residents.

• Reservation communities are at a statistically greater risk from extreme weather related mortality nationwide, especially from cold, heat and drought associated with a rapidly changing climate. • Reservations are waiting on more than 200,000 needed new houses.

• About 1/3 of reservation homes are trailers, generally with completely inadequate weatherization.

• Inefficient homes are a financial liability, leaving owners vulnerable to energy price volatility.

• Fuel assistance programs provide millions of dollars of assistance to tribal communities. While necessary in the short term, they do nothing to address the cycle of fuel poverty due to leaky inefficient homes, and the need for a localized fuel economy.

• Internationally, the present levels of deforestation and climate-related disasters are creating huge populations of environmental refugees. It is anticipated that within 20 years, we will be spending some 20% of world GDP on climate change related mitigation and disasters.

Unemployment rates, poverty and the need for efficiency improvements and renewable energy provide an ideal opportunity on tribal reservations and Alaska Native villages for maximizing the impact of a green jobs initiative.

Local jobs weatherizing buildings and constructing, installing and maintaining renewable energy technologies could be created. Such an initiative would have huge financial implications for rural economies, and for the overall US economy.

The Obama Economic Stimulus Plan that incorporates a green economy and green jobs portfolio must include provisions for access of these resources by our Native Nations, our tribal education and training institutions and Native organizations and communities.

GREEN ECONOMIES IN NATIVE COMMUNITIES: MASSIVE POTENTIAL, MAXIMUM IMPACT
Providing clean renewable energy development and reversing the trend from exploitation toward energy justice should be a top priority in administration energy decisions.

Tribes must be provided federal support to own and operate a new crop of renewable electricity generating infrastructure providing the dual benefits of low carbon power and green economic development where it is needed most. Tribes should be targeted with efficiency programs to reduce consumption of fossil fuels for heating and cooling and creating local jobs weatherizing and retrofitting buildings, helping reduce the tremendous amount of money that exits communities to import energy.

• Tribal lands have an estimated 535 Billion kWh/year of wind power generation potential.

• Tribal lands have an estimated 17,000 Billion kWh/year of solar electricity generation potential, about 4.5 times total US annual generation.

• Investing in renewable energy creates more jobs per dollar invested than fossil fuel energy.

• Efficiency creates 21.5 jobs for every $1 million invested.

• The costs of fuel for wind and solar power can be projected into the future, providing a unique opportunity for stabilizing an energy intensive economy.

Efforts should be made to invest locally first- from training green jobs workers locally to using local building materials to producing energy locally, as closing the financial loop will help revitalize Native America’s strangled economies, making them less vulnerable to volatile external costs and maximizing the positive impact of the new green revolution.

A green jobs economy and a new, forward thinking energy and climate policy will transform tribal and other rural economies and provide the basis for an economic recovery in the United States. In order to make this possible, we encourage the Obama Administration to provide incentives and assistance to actualize renewable energy development by tribes and Native organizations.

• Increase the capacity of tribes, tribal colleges and tribal institutions to train the next generation of green job workers and continue to boost the capacity of technical training programs. Included in these programs should be training to use natural local materials with lower embedded energy costs and greater passive survivability in the face of climate extremes.

• Create financial support for efficiency in federal fuel assistance programs and for the installation of solar heating panels and other innovations which deflect rising fuel costs and provide for local employment, especially in rural areas.

• Ensure the Production Tax Credit for renewable projects is renewed for at least 10 years and made applicable to tribes to encourage tribal ownership, as currently it penalizes tribal ownership of projects.

• Provide a renewable production refund for tribal projects that can’t utilize tax credits. A refund at face value of the tax credit (valued at 2.1 cents) would be more economic to the federal government than the applied tax credit (valued at 3.5 cents).

• Provide special financial matching grants to capitalize renewable energy potential in tribal communities.

• Create a renewable energy specific Investment Tax Credit for tribes to attract the decreasing number of investors that have tax credits.

• Resolve timeline issues with Clean Renewable Energy Bonds (CREB); history shows that predicting the timeline for any kind of major energy development can be difficult; a reasonable amount of flexibility ought to be built into the program to ensure that project delays don’t result in payback starting before a project is completed.

• Ensure priority access to the electrical grid for green energy, particularly in the Western Area Power Administration (WAPA) and Bonneville Power Authority (BPA) regions.

• Direct the WAPA and BPA to regard tribal projects as a “governmental instrumentality” much like the federal dams in terms of transmission preferences on the federal grids. (See: Sovereign Power decision (Sovereign Power, Inc., 84 FERC P 61014 (1998)).

• Fully authorize the reconducting of the WAPA transmission system in the Upper Great Plains and the integration of tribal wind power and federal hydropower on the WAPA grid to supplement diminishing federal hydropower and reduce regional carbon emissions.

• Fully authorize the implementation of a tribal solar project to cover the 355 miles of an open federal Central Arizona Project canal with solar photovoltaic cap to reduce 50,000 acre feet of evaporation, generate over 1500 megawatts of clean, efficient solar power in the desert Southwest and provide a just transition for tribal economies displaced by the closing of dirty coal plants.

• Continue Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) consideration of destructive dam projects like those on the Klamath, Snake and other rivers, and replace such hydroelectric sources with renewable sources from tribal communities.

• Support Tribal Energy Resource Agreements (TERA) only if funded sufficiently to develop standards at least as strong as federal law, hire qualified staff, and not make approval any slower than it is now for tribal projects with US Fish and Wildlife Service and Bureau of Indian Affairs approval. Tribes need to have the legitimate ability to implement and the capacity for enforcement.

• Ensure international debt reduction programs to reduce the pressure on governments and Indigenous communities to cut down their forests or issue large lease holdings. Support preservation of biodiversity and Indigenous rights in these areas.

• Impose international sanctions and wood tariffs to prevent deforestation.

A GREEN ECONOMY IS KEY IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF JUST RELATIONS WITH NATIVE AMERICANS- AND CAN PLACE THE US IN AN EXCELLENT LIGHT INTERNATIONALLY.

Now is the time to act to ensure that the next Presidential legacy is one that provides for the nation’s power needs while empowering this continent’s First Nations with sustainable economic development.

Tribally owned and operated renewable energy, along with green jobs that help reduce dependence on fossil fuels, are central to a sustainable and affordable low-carbon energy future. Energy decisions made by this administration will have significant domestic and international implications for many generations to come.

The most recent climate research indicates that it will be necessary to completely eliminate anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions as soon as practical to stabilize the climate.

Over 80% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions are associated with fossil fuel use and it is technically and economically feasible to phase out fossil-fuel-related CO2 emissions from the U.S. economy by mid-century.

The U.S. should adopt this as a goal. Taking bold steps toward creating a clean sustainable energy future will enable the United States to both achieve energy independence and reestablish our country’s position as a respected international leader.

Respectfully Submitted,

Honor the EarthIntertribal Council On Utility PolicyInternational Indian Treaty CouncilIndigenous Environmental Network