Tag Archives: solar

Rubio should do solar panels for jobs and resilience, not LNG

Senator Rubio’s small-scale LNG export bill risks more Florida sewage spills in the next hurricane while getting in the way of good solar jobs and reduced power bills for Floridians.

It seems like they never intended to listen. Two days after WWALS submitted comments at the deadline for the Department of Energy’s small-scale LNG exports, Florida Senator Marco Rubio introduced legislation to implement that rule.

Solar power for the Sunshine State will generate jobs right where they’re needed, in rural planning, delivery, and installation. That will also reduce everybody’s power bills, while making Florida much more resilient to hurricanes.

Crowley Maritime is already exporting LNG from Jacksonville to Continue reading →

WWALS Against Small-Scale Natural Gas Exports

Submitted by WWALS in Public Comment Concerning Unregulated Small Scale LNG Processing Facilities.

Duke and two canals to the Gulf, Crystal River, FL, 28.9420800, -82.7818000

From: Wwals Watershed Coalition <wwalswatershed@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Oct 16, 2017 at 4:21 PM
Subject: RIN 1901-AB43 and FE Docket No. 17-86-R
To: fergas@hq.doe.gov
Cc: WWALS Watershed Coalition <wwalswatershed@gmail.com>
WWALS Watershed Coalition, Inc. Against Small-Scale Natural Gas Exports

The path to U.S. energy independence is to finish the conversion of energy production from obsolete fossil fuels and nuclear power to clean, safe, renewable, solar, wind, and water power. Any resources spent on LNG would be better spent on getting on with real renewable power.

Proponents of pipelines often claim new pipelines will reduce the amount of natural gas shipped by road or rail. The Sabal Trail pipeline through Alabama, Georgia, and Florida, under the Withlacoochee, Suwannee, and Santa Fe Rivers, demonstrates that is not the case.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy (FE) has already authorized: Continue reading →

Agenda: Solar Rocks for the Equinox –Suwannee Riverkeeper will be speaking

Agenda sent by Chris Mericle, one of the event organizers:

When: Saturday September 23, 2017 9am – 5pm
Where: Rum 138, 270 SW CR 138, Ft. White, FL 32038
Event: facebook
Hosted by: North Florida Working Group, Suwannee-St. Johns Group of Sierra Club Florida

Old-style solar mounts on roof in 2006, by John S. Quarterman.

Solar Rocks for the Equinox Speaker and Music agenda
Continue reading →

The handwriting on the wall for Plant Vogtle: electric cars and South Carolina cancels its nuclear project –WWALS to GA-PSC

Sent in PDF via email today.

August 2, 2017

To: Georgia Public Service Commission
244 Washington Street, SW
Atlanta, GA 30334-9052

gapsc@psc.state.ga.us

Re: Electric cars and solar power are here now; South Carolina cancels its nuclear project

Dear Public Service Commissioners and Staff,

Since my letter of July 23, 2017, asking you to stop cost overruns for Plant Vogtle and to require Georgia Power again to buy more solar power,¹ there have been major developments that further indicate the desirability of these actions.

Tesla is now shipping its Model 3, which many consider the Model T of the electric car industry, affordable not just to executives, but to the masses. New York City changed in thirteen years from all but one horse-drawn carriages to all but one automobiles in its Easter Parade: 1900 to 1913,² and not much longer for the rest of the country, after the Ford Model T shipped in 1908.

We’re well past 1900 in the electric vehicle revolution, and that is a rapidly growing market for solar panels on business and house roofs.

In The Hill yesterday:³

South Carolina Electric & Gas Co. (SCE&G) and state-run Santee Cooper both said Monday they would suspend their plan to build two nuclear reactors at the V.C. Summer power plant northwest of Columbia.
The companies cited Continue reading →

Utilities have Opportunity to lead in solar power –Suwannee Riverkeeper in VDT 2017-08-02

They ran the op-ed last week online, and today the Valdosta Daily Times (VDT) put it on top of page 5A:

This newspaper op-ed has already resulted in a call about a water issue.

-jsq, John S. Quarterman, Suwannee RIVERKEEPER®

You can join this fun and work by becoming a WWALS member today!

Georgia Power has opportunities to lead in solar power –Suwannee Riverkeeper in VDT 2017-07-28

Op-ed in the Valdosta Daily Times today:

Thanks, VDT, for your Sunday solar story and editorial!

Your editorial’s “buyer beware” would better be directed towards the electric utilities, which set up the price mismatch that caused the problem for the customer in your story. The story says, citing John Kraft of Georgia Power, “The utility company offers to pay the producer only as much as it costs to produce solar power. If a utility company can produce solar energy at a solar farm for 5 cents per unit, it isn’t going to pay a residential producer a higher rate for energy it doesn’t need.”

If Georgia Power does not need new energy, why is it building two new nuclear units at Plant Vogtle and charging its customers in advance every month? Four years ago Google already bought more sun and wind power than that nuclear boondoggle would produce if it’s ever finished, and for less than the Plant Vogtle cost overruns. Those cost overruns keep going up, and the cost of solar panels keeps going down.

The story says Kraft asks people why they want solar power. Maybe to Continue reading →

Stop failed Big Bet on nuclear Plant Vogtle and go solar: WWALS to GA-PSC

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Hahira, Georgia, July 27, 2017 — On Monday, WWALS Watershed Coalition asked the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) to take Southern Company (SO) CEO Tom Fanning up on his suggestion that the PSC could affect the SO board’s August self-imposed deadline about the two new nuclear units at Plant Vogtle: to go ahead despite the bankruptcy of Toshiba, or not. WWALS also asked the PSC, like it did four years ago, to require Georgia Power to buy more solar power.

Suwannee Riverkeeper John S. Quarterman wrote to Georgia PSC: “The Mississippi Public Service Commission in June refused Continue reading →

Sabal Trail starts stagecoach line in an electric car world 2017-07-05

Let me fix some typos in Sabal Trail’s PR of yesterday, Sabal Trail Transmission Project Placed In-Service: New Pipeline System Increases the Reliability and Diversity of the Southeast U.S. Natural Gas Infrastructure.

Corrected headline: Sabal Trail starts stagecoach line in an electric car world.

Apologies to the 1877 Omaha Herald and True West.

Adding a third natural gas pipeline merely makes Florida even more than 60% dependant on natural gas, as Sierra Club Alabama, Georgia, and Florida pointed out three years ago. The people of Florida voted for solar power twice last year. Yet Sabal Trail is wasting $3 or $4 billion on Continue reading →

Video: Will you lead to sun and wind power? —John S. Quarterman to Tom Fanning, CEO, at Southern Company stockholder meeting 2017-05-24

Update 2017-07-28: See also VDT op-ed and letter to GA-PSC.

Five years ago I asked Southern Company (SO) CEO Tom Fanning what was his exit plan when the Big Bets on Kemper Coal in Mississippi and the two new Plant Vogtle nuclear units on the Savannah River go bad. This Wednesday SO stopped using coal at Kemper Coal after the MS PSC refused to authorize further cost overruns. Thursday GA PSC staff said Plant Vogtle is no longer economical. It is time for GA PSC to do for Plant Vogtle what MS PSC did for Kemper Coal.

As Suwannee Riverkeeper at this year’s meeting in May, I told Fanning we don’t want SO’s coal ash in any landfill on any river in the Suwannee River Basin; I asked him for solar panels at Moody Air Force Base to shut down a natural gas pipeline; and I questioned SO’s acquisition of Pivotal LNG with its deal to ship liquid natural gas in bomb trucks down I-75 and I-10 to Jacksonville, Florida.

I reminded our genial host of my question five years ago, with the handwriting already on the wall since the Atlanta Journal-Constitution had then just referred to Plant Vogtle as a financial quagmire. This time I asked Fanning to lead us all to sun and wind power.

In SO’s own video you can see them Continue reading →

Hard data on lack of need for Sabal Trail –SeekingAlpha

An analyst on a leading stock blog confirms what we’ve been saying for years: there is no need for Sabal Trail’s fracked methane pipeline. Instead, Sabal Trail is taking gas away from FGT and Gulfstream. The article does not mention all those LNG export operations right where this pipeline chain goes. It does get to the heart of what even FPL admits:

“The challenge is natural gas in Florida faces growing competition from residential, commercial and utility scale solar resources as well as power forecasts that are revising lower despite a growing population and customer counts….”

You can help fight Sabal Trail even now that its gas is on, and reform FERC so we don’t get any more pipeline boondoggles.

BTU Analytics, SeekingAlpha, 20 June 2017, Sabal Trail Adding Pipeline Capacity But Not Demand, Continue reading →

WWALS Watershed Coalition (WWALS) is Suwannee RIVERKEEPER®

A healthy watershed with clean, swimmable, fishable, drinkable water.