Governor opens Virginia energy conference; Sierra Club critical; Google Energy Grid; McAuliffe’s MyCar
By JR Hoeft | Wednesday, October 13th, 2010 | Catch-All
Lots of energy-related news in the Commonwealth, likely all related to Governor Bob McDonnell’s “Conference on Energy”, which opened yesterday and runs through Thursday in Richmond.
The conference, which is branded as making Virginia the “Energy Capital of the East Coast”, highlights:
- doing energy business in Virginia;
- information on state and federal regulatory activity;
- cutting edge projects;
- research and development currently underway at Virginia’s universities; and
- insights of business and government leaders about our energy future
The conference will hear from Gov. McDonnell and Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, both Republicans, on green jobs, so politics can’t be too far around the corner.
Reminding voters of his initiatives in green energy, and his personal investment in the Virginia economy, was former candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor, Terry McAuliffe.
McAuliffe wrote via email:
Terry’s plan to produce the electric MyCar will “create around 5,000 jobs” and his other projects, including investing up to $1 billion in wind power and planning to convert a closed factory in Virginia into a biomass power plant, are all big steps to bring new jobs to the United States while lowering energy costs for American families.
McAuliffe was recently featured in Bloomberg News.
Both Bolling and McAuliffe have been rumored to aspire for their respective party’s gubernatorial nominations in 2013.
But McAuliffe’s cars will need a first-class energy grid to power them, and that’s where Google comes in.
Yesterday, Trans-Elect announced that the search-engine giant Google is investing tens of millions of dollars in an ambitious, $5 billion east coast energy grid, which will purportedly make it easier for wind farms to be established up-and-down the mid-Atlantic.
Bob Mitchell, chief executive of Trans-Elect, said at a news conference that the venture constitutes “a huge, huge bold project” that would “stimulate development that is otherwise impossible” offshore along the East Coast. The grid would transmit 6,000 megawatts of offshore wind energy.
Rick Needham, director of green business operations at Google, cautioned that the project is in its early stages but said, “we’re willing to take calculated risks on large-scale projects that can move an industry.” He added, “It provides a smart, scalable platform for future expansion.”
While the governor has publicly said he is for a comprehensive energy solution, it is clear that he favored beginning offshore drilling for natural gas and oil. However, those plans were put on hold by the Obama Administration after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion and subsequent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico this past April.
Opposing any offshore drilling is the Sierra Club, who used the opportunity of the governor’s conference to highlight their own report on energy.
The report argues that McDonnell’s plan is too focused on oil, gas drilling and coal. The group supports more initiatives like McAuliffe’s and Google’s.
“The Sierra Club has willfully chosen to ignore this administration’s positive record of supporting alternatives as part of a comprehensive energy solution for Virginia,” said Tucker Martin, spokesman for the governor. “We favor an ‘all of the above’ approach that uses coal, oil, gas, wind, solar and all forms of energy, along with conservation and efficiency, to create good jobs while keeping energy affordable for our citizens. Our interest is the economic well-being of the people of Virginia, not the narrow ideological demands of one special interest lobby.”
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Conservative to the core; liberal with his opinion! J.R. has been involved in politics for over a decade and has worked on several campaigns in Hampton Roads. He has served on the Executive Committee of the Republican Party of Chesapeake and the Central Committee of the Republican Party of Virginia. He is also the director of “Blogs United” in Virginia. E-mail J.R.. Follow J.R. on Twitter.
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13 Responses to "Governor opens Virginia energy conference; Sierra Club critical; Google Energy Grid; McAuliffe’s MyCar"
The Sierra Club is no longer the group it was years ago. It has been taken over by Eco Fascists as well as Greenpeace. These groups have a Globalist political agenda.
Check out the Sierra Clubs endorsements:
http://www.sierraclub.org/politics/endorsements/
They endorsed 18 Senate candidates – ALL DEMOCRATS
They endorsed over 200 House candidates – ALL DEMOCRATS
100% Democrats – every last endorsement!
It is all smoke and mirrors until long term tax credits for manufacturers and buyers become available to offset the low economies of scale. I have been to meetings like these all over the world and the only places they seem to generate anything of value are where they do not provide subsidies but they offer credits or exeptions for large scale demonstration.
Enercon stole the show at Husum, Germany at the worlds best wind energy trade fair last month. The leaders in wind energy were all there. If VB wants to be on the map for wind energy the pavillion should become a local icon and deploy small scale wind and medium scale solar ON the structure and grounds
The topic of discussion must be long term irrevocable tax credits or its another boom-bust.
The Sierra Club may have only endorsed Democrats, but that doesn’t mean everything they say or do is wrong. (I do tire of this sort of thinking–”Well, if they said it, I’m against” mentality.) I am absolutely opposed to offshore drilling in the Chesapeake Bay, and I bet I am not alone in that sentiment. The Chesapeake Bay is not the Carribean, nor the North Sea. It is an estuary and one that is already in a lot of trouble as it is. It is still home to our fishing, crabbing and oystering industry. Home to watermen and ten score more leisure boaters and yachters and lots and lots of tourism. It will be a cold day in hell when anyone plants oil rigs or windmills all over the bay. Guaranteed.
Craig Kilby,
I believe you are misinformed. When offshore drilling is discussed off Virginia’s coasts, generally what is being proposed is out in the Atlantic, not in the Bay.
It will not be a cold day in hell when that happens. Up until the spill in the Gulf, even President Obama was pushing to allow it. I predict that the Gulf spill only caused a setback, not a permanent ban towards drilling off our coasts.
I’ll also offer that if large oil deposits where available in the Bay, if I were the devil I’d be buying winter clothing.
It’s tough but Sierra is partially correct: pursuing new coal plants is going the way of the dinosaur. The recent VCERC study puts feasibility of offshore wind of the same power generation as a coal plant project at a less cost due to the increasing domestic technology in the US for such projects. With The Google spearheading an ambitious private investment, things are looking good for that track…and I hope for our sake that offshore wind will not see as much regulation.
Partially correct? What a high standard!
Sierra’s head idiot wants mandatory energy efficiency standards and massive government spending on “weatherization” – They are after bigger government, not better energy.
While I was roaming , I found two quotes and a very interesting site.
http://www.c3headlines.com/temperature-charts-historical-proxies.html
This site has a lot of data. This is data that the bomb making eco-terrorists that the democrats have been so warmly welcoming into their party do not want you to see.
Quotes
“The overwhelming paleoclimate evidence from around the globe is that the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), the Roman Warm Period and the Minoan Warming were synchronous, world wide and much warmer than today.
However, the MWP deniers, such as the IPCC, US EPA and the UK’s MET Office, will never admit the existence of the MWP because it means that their religious-like belief in AGW is exposed for the steaming pile of junk science that it truly is.
In total, climate change is complex and not well understood.
But this part is simple.
Since the world was warmer when CO2 levels were lower, CO2 cannot be the earth’s temperature regulator.
In the past, the Earth was warmer than it is today; before the social and industrial advances that have made modern people the healthiest and most prosperous in history. MWP deniers want us to believe that plant friendly and life giving CO2 is a bad thing to better advance their meglomanical desire to both boss around the developed world and further impoverish the poor while pocketing a lot of taxpayer money along the way.
Useless, misguided attempts to control carbon are not the answer to the ever changing climate.There is only one answer to changes in climate that has ever worked for humanity.
That is adaptation.”
“As a scientist, who DOES question the degree to which human activities are contributing to climate change but DOES NOT question that global climate change is occurring, the Al Gores are clueless about the science of global climate change as well as science in general and how science works to understand our world. This is particularly acute among journalists and politicians.”
James Hawkins,
Interesting, I hope this avenue is taken up and considered by climate scientists.
I linger with one certain fact: the Red Planet, Mars, is experiencing melting of her (his?) CO2 polar ice caps as our blue one is experiencing melting of our H2O icecaps.
But I am convinced that greenhouse gasses might amplify natural (probably solar) causes. What the heck, decreasing greenhouse gasses won’t be bad and might actually help lesson the impact.
If all else fails, we can always fall on our knees and pray to God. But I think there is some truth that God helps those who help themselves. If we try and fail, God is more apt to render assistance. If we are selfish, greedy, and unworthy of assistance, God is apt to allow us to suffer the consequences of the bad choices we make. God is merciful, but sometimes our species might learn more quickly if we are forced to live with the consequences of our decisions.
God is good, God is great, but God ain’t no fool.
Arctic sea ice melt in July,2010 was the slowest and smallest ever recorded!
Milankovitch Cycles are quite interesting.
With or without Sierra or other groups, the clean car of the future is clean diesel (hybrid cycle) with flexible (integrated, reverse compatible) hybrid powertrains. Low cost of operation and low pollution operation in the ULEV range is no longer a big hurdle. Sierra seems to be coming around a little on nuke and that is a promising sign but the problem with that group still seems to be their proclivity to hold fast to the hard left thereby self defeating their potential influence among centrist and conservative environmental pragmatists.
Running on 120/220v charged battery/capacitor, diesel or gasoline involves reasonable compromises and that is what hydrids are. This is all a bridge to purely electric which will remain “someday if” until better battery and or reversible cycle fuel cell technology is developed. As is so often the case, the technical hurdles have been or will be breached, (the economic hurdles will be breached in asia due to our suicidal labor prices) and the holdups to market entry are political. I do not hear about any work on this aspect from Sierra clubs and this is one of their failings.
Long Term Tax Credits or No Deal.
Same goes for stationary electric. Long term (20-30 yr) STATE tax credits and permanent federal tax exemptions for about 250 common design nuke plants is long overdue. If Va is on the ball and we get it right in Richmond, we become the Saudi Arabia of domestic nuke fuel. Yeah I said it.. BIG utilities new nuke plant programs should be fed tax exempt long enough to overcome the long road to new nuke plant profitability. Credits, Not one cent of state revenue until well after the powerplant is solidly in the black and revenue positive. Cheap energy is an arsenal of domestic manufacturing and every incentive should be offerred to use it to produce goods right here.
It is quite revealing how much emotion people will expend to justify conspicuous consumption of resources, and especially energy. Driving alone down the interstate at 70mph to buy one more piece of plastic for the landfill is our ‘way of life,’ and it is shamefull. Even if the details of climate change are debatable, then SO WHAT! It is still stupid how we live, it is still smart to turn down the thermostat and put on a sweater, it is still smart to share a ride to the store, and it is still smart to drive 55 and it is still true that we are running out of crude oil, one barrel at a time. I have NEVER owned a clothes dryer, except a clothes line, and never will. I turn off the water heater when I am not using hot water (most of the time), or use the tea kettle to wash dishes.
It is also shameful that there is no database out there to get continuous updates on who is driving the same way you are, so that rideshare could be the rule and not the rare exception. We have plenty of brainpower for inane conversations about NOTHING, but we can’t see the waste that we are awash in. There is enough energy/resources to run several small countries and it is all being wasted by us every day, just so that we can assert our right to be STUPID and LAZY. We need to ACT LIKE gas is $10/gal. and electric is $1.50/kw hr., then we will begin to see how we need to live. Until then, we and our bad habits are a disgrace to this planet and it’s creator.
I have heard a lot of horrible things about the Cypress Creek Power Plant recently and want to say that I believe this is a good source of jobs and infrastructure to a region that needs it badly. The data from the report by the CBF was false and was on old data and not a atually scientific research. Go ODEC!
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