Beth Locklear's Page
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- Are you interested in becoming an organizer in your area?
- No
- Tell us about your experience with alternative energy:
- I am on the bandwagon of going green. I have little experience with alternative energy but I have a great desire to see America go in that direction and you can be sure I will do everything I can to support it.
- What excites you about this campaign?
- I saw wind farms in west Texas 2 summers ago (2006) and was in awe wishing we had more and now thanks to TBPickens it may become a reality!
- What do you want to do to help?
- vote for the right leadership, spread the word, contribute $,...
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27FEB09
Honorable Speaker of the House Congresswoman Pelosi,
I am an Electronic Technician Chief in the US Navy with 27 years service stationed overseas. I’m outlying an idea to assist and work with current plans for achieving energy independence. I urge you, as speaker of the house and the driving force to form the select committee on energy independence and global warming, consider for discussion and introduction into the house US Treasury Savings Bonds for Energy Independance.
In WWII America sold war bonds supporting the war effort. When young, my mother told me her primary school raised enough money through bonds to build a tank to support troops. I am impressed with the patriotism and purpose of our greatest generation that accomplished so much.
Selling energy bonds for RE (Renewable Energy) development would lower foreign oil imports and assist with the complex problem of funding. Bonds sold as “Energy S” could support new solar trough plants, “Energy W” to support wind farms, Energy “H” to support hydroelectric plants, Energy “T” to support RE transportation such as electric bullet train routes powered by RE, Energy "C" COOPS for small communities only needing a small quantity of turbines, and Energy “I” for needed infrastructure high voltage power lines to the RE site. Bonds will have the project name and include an artist’s perspective of the project and an American flag. President Obama had great success with the internet during his campaign. In a similar manner, using the internet, energy bonds could have a website listing current projects and an “electronic checkout” could purchase a bond $25 or higher. Simpler methods of payment such as “PAYPAL” and credit cards would be available and after an electronic purchase is complete a color print out of the bond is available with a follow up of the bond in the mail. The website would limit quantity of projects for each category until funding is complete. After a project becomes funded, a new project will be available. A tab on the site will show history and status of previous projects. Purchasers may take great pride in “collecting” and displaying bonds of various RE projects and participating at different levels of financial support. Solar trough plants in the multi-hundred MW size capacity with molten salt energy storage in California, Arizona, and West Texas can provide a major portion of electric needs. North Dakota has potential to support 1/3 of our nations electric needs in it’s class 4 wind zone areas. There are plenty of suitable proposed wind turbine farms now around the nation to significantly increase our RE if funded. Mid sized hydro-electric has not been used in America to it’s full potential. Following the example of our neighbor, Canada, it would provide a significant increase in percentage of electric production. Developing all three we could provide the majority of our electric and heating needs through renewable energy in a "New New Deal" fashion allowing natural gas for transportation as T. Boone Pickens is working for. Bullet train routes have proven a viable alternative to commercial domestic air service and when powered by electricity provided by RE suppliers America would be in the forefront of world technology. Example, I heard of discussion for a commuter train from Denver to Colorado Springs. Such a route built as a renewable energy project with charter requirement legally requiring to only purchase electricity from available renewable energy sources would be a model example. There are many train routes, city bus systems, and government vehicles that can be converted to run from alternative energy sources and fuels. Jobs created would bolster the economy, lower trade deficit, and strengthen national security. I would take great pride in print outs of bonds with graphics of each project I supported and many other Americans would also. The energy bonds could have tax breaks. BLM lands may be a viable place to start for some projects.
I contacted the US treasury department and was told that the marketing department for savings bonds closed several years ago. I was told there would be problems because savings bonds are at the federal level while the projects will be at the state and local level. I disagree and believe that these can easily be figured out in the way of grants to the state and local level using money from the bonds for those specific projects. I was told to check out auctions on the www.treasurydirect.gov website and found them to not apply to citizens wanting to buy savings bonds to support a cause such as energy independance. I was told by the treasury department to look into CREB (Clean Renewable Energy Bonds). I found CREB to be large scale funding that a citizen would not be able to participate in as a US Treasury Energy Independance Bond would provide. If given the tools to participate directly, the power of the citizens of the United States to help achieve energy independance could not be denied. Americans mean well and the Energy Independance Savings bond program will give citizens the power at their level to make it happen. If marketed through a web page, commercials, and to federal employees the word would get out and participation would spread like wildfire.
Mr. Paul Gipe, a resident of Bakersfield CA, an author of several books about wind energy, and recipient of multiple awards as a pioneer in the industry since the 1970's has put a letter I wrote to Senator Dorgan on this subject as well as an older letter I wrote on wind COOP in JAN07. These websites are:
http://www.wind-works.org/coopwind/RenewableEnergyBondsforEnergyIndependence.html
and
http://www.wind-works.org/articles/AmericanEnergyIndependencethroughCooperativeInvestmentinWindEnergy.html
Sincerely and very respectfully,
ETC(SW/AW) Mike Kendall USN
Mailing address: PSC 476, Box 879, FPO AP, 96322 USA
Telephone (803) 265-4756, Email: ke6cvh@yahoo.com
Happy New Year Beth,
Last year I helped so many members of Pickens Plan learn about personal home energy plans. It's all about conservation of power, and home power generation, things I have been doing at my residence to lower my electricity costs. Send me a friend request a to add me Beth, I'd be honored to have you as a friend here.
BTW, Texas: I just posted an article link on my pickens page about Home Wind Systems in Texas. Your state's representatives, governor, and public utility commission officials are not in your corner with this "weak policy" on Net Metering. Instead they have the tables turned against green power for businesses and homeowners. Texas has created multiple sets of rules for loopholes and you have less rights than people in other states. You should read that article, important.
mike_myrhow@yahoo.com Winnemucca
I just wanted to take a second of your time to invite you to view, a Solar Solution!
www.powur.com/homeenergy1 - click View Our Mission and if interested click the back arrow to Become an Ecopreneur.
Also you can see what we offer home owners - www.glenburniesolar.com
Thank You For Your Time
(Please feel free to add me as a friend)
* Claim: Barack Obama says his energy policies would create 5 million new "green-collar" jobs in the economy.
* Rocky Truth Patrol says:
* This is shaky only because it's an economic estimate based on a job category that no one officially tracks - at least not yet. And depending on which economic models are used to make these estimates, Obama's forecast of 5 million green-collar jobs might actually be too low, some experts think!
Obama says his administration would invest $150 billion over 10 years in a "clean energy economy" and "help the private sector create 5 million new green jobs."
Obama takes his figures from two recent studies. The University of California at Berkeley said energy efficiency alone could create 5 million jobs nationwide in the next decade. Note that this study counts jobs created directly in this field, but also indirect jobs created by the demands of the new workers and "induced" jobs created by overall growth in the economy.
The University of Tennessee recently estimated that 5.1 million new jobs could be created by 2025 if the nation got a quarter of its energy from renewable sources. That job number also includes indirect jobs.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that the nation should expect 15.6 million new jobs in the decade between 2006 and 2016. Adding 5 million "green" jobs would represent just a 3 percent boost in the total employment, which hovers at about 150 million.
The Apollo Alliance, a nonpartisan organization of business, labor, environmental and community leaders, has said they wouldn't count indirect jobs, as do the studies on which Obama relies. However, spokesman Keith Schneider said the alliance actually believes, based on analysis of these studies and others, that the 5 million figure might be too low.
"It's going to be more than that," Schneider said. "The demand for this sector of the economy way outpaces the capacity."
For example, Schneider said, wind energy - a big issue for Coloradans - is facing a capacity crunch because there is currently a three-year backlog for the plate steel needed to make the wind turbine blades. The industry needs people to make the steel, then the blades, then install them, then maintain them, he said. But federal policies - including a tax credit that has expired before and is about to expire again - have made business bumpy, he said.
"The Apollo Alliance's research on the jobs question shows us clearly that if the United States pursues a new national economic development strategy to replace fossil fuels with clean sources of energy and the tools to use them, the economy will generate 5 million new jobs, and likely much more than that," Schneider said.
Venture capital got a prime-time spot at the Democratic National Convention when Nancy Floyd, founder and managing director of Nth Power, a San Francisco clean-tech venture capital firm, addressed the crowd Tuesday.
She argued that Barack Obama’s energy policy would help energy entrepreneurs and the nation’s economy. Ms. Floyd lobbied on behalf of start-up companies with technologies that address the energy crunch. “There are thousands of entrepreneurs with new solutions and investors are lining up to back them,” she said. “What’s missing is leadership from Washington.”
She compared green technology to the early days of information technology. “Green technology is where the computer industry was in 1984, the year the Macintosh computer was introduced,” she said. “Think about how far we’ve come since then, and that’s how far-reaching and transformational green technology will be.”
Investments in solar and wind companies have already paved the way for the creation of 2.4 million new jobs, she said, but only 10 percent are in the United States, and alternative energy companies in the United States are turning to countries like Spain, Germany and China to manufacture and sell their products.
“That’s because other countries have smart, stable, forward-looking energy policies,” she said. Ms. Floyd, who is based in Portland, Ore., founded Nth Power in 1997, long before alternative energy became the hot sector for venture investors. The firm has $420 million under management in four funds.
Ms. Floyd founded one of the first wind development companies in 1982 and sold it three years later.
Watch a video interview with Ms. Floyd here: http://gallery1.demconvention.com/Default.html?VideoID=496#
* Provide multiyear tax incentives for renewable-energy production and energy-efficiency projects.
* Set national mandates that would require utilities to get at least 20 percent of their electricity from wind, solar and geothermal energy by 2020.
* Add and updating the building code to require energy-efficiency measures in the construction of new buildings and the renovation of existing buildings, and setting a goal to reduce buildings' energy use 50 percent by 2030.
* Set prices for carbon-dioxide emissions and creating a program that caps emissions from different industries and allowing companies to trade emissions allowances.
* Upgrade and expanding the nation's electric grid to enable it to support electric cars and the transport and storage of renewable energy.
* Provide incentives for utilities to invest in energy-efficiency technologies.
* Increase the fuel efficiency of cars and trucks and investing more money in private-public partnerships that would develop transportation systems that rely on little or no oil, such as electric cars.
* Provide incentives to consumers and small businesses to buy plug-in hybrid cars and alternative fuels, including natural-gas-powered cars.
* Invest more federal dollars in cleantech research and development, including ways to capture and store carbon-dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants.
* Speed up the process of setting aside public lands and improving the permitting process for renewable-electricity projects on public lands.
* Shift from ethanol made from corn to ethanol made from wood chips, agricultural waste and other nonfood feedstock, and encouraging a joint U.S.-Brazil partnership to turn sugar cane into ethanol in the Caribbean.
Please join our group:
http://push.pickensplan.com/group/greenjobsnow
Last December, Congress amended the national Renewable Fuel Standard, setting a goal that the U.S. will produce a whopping 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel by 2022. It's no surprise that much of this renewable fuel will be ethanol.
Given the rapid industrialization of Asia, global demand for fuel ethanol is steeply increasing and is expected to do so in the foreseeable future. In order to satisfy this big demand, let alone meet the Renewable Fuel Standard, there is a growing concern that the standard U.S. practice of mass producing fuel ethanol from corn won't be feasible. There simply isn't enough corn acreage available in America to meet the future domestic and international demands for fuel ethanol.
Scientists contend that the answer to this problem is cellulosic ethanol, a technology that is now under furious research and development at many universities, national labs, and private industries across the globe.
This is an interesting technology, because it makes ethanol from cellulose feedstocks such as ordinary trees, perennial grass and cropland residues instead of food crops such as corn or sugar cane.
Scientists contend that cellulosic ethanol, once it is perfected, can significantly reduce America's imports of foreign oil, while creating a big variety of "green collar" jobs including farmers, truck drivers, business professionals, engineers, and scientists.
Before cellulosic ethanol becomes a commercial reality, there are many technology hurdles to overcome. Crop scientists and chemical engineers are furiously studying the genetics, the molecular structure, and other biological aspects of trees and plants in order to improve the efficiency of cellulosic ethanol production.
Last year, our country embarked on a once-in-a-generation effort to study the underlying science needed to improve processing efficiency. In the meantime, scientists are making great headway. For example, the U.S. Department of Energy recently awarded $125 million to establish the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, a partnership between Michigan State University and the University of Wisconsin, to study the science of processing cellulosic ethanol.
Also, Michigan State University and Michigan Technological University recently partnered with the Mascoma Corp. (a Massachusetts company), to build a cellulosic ethanol plant in the Michigan Upper Peninsula.
Last May, at a scientific lecture in Copenhagen, Denmark, by Dr. Niels Lagvad of Danish Biogasol Corp. (www.biogasol.com). It was revealed that this company now has a proven, turnkey system to mass produce ethanol from a big range of perennial grasses and hemicellulosic feedstocks. He referred to the process as a "bolt-on, second-generation ethanol plant" which, in essence, attaches to the back end of a conventional plant making ethanol from food crops. "Second generation ethanol" refers to the use of non-food feedstocks to make ethanol, whereas, "first generation ethanol" refers to traditional methods that use food crops such as corn and sugar cane.
The immediate U.S. market for this Danish technology is to retrofit American corn-to-ethanol plants. In this concept, corn stover (corn leaves, stalks, and cobs) and distillers' grain (a voluminous, natural by-product of the corn-to-ethanol process) would be used as inexpensive feedstocks for ethanol production. The technology is now in the demonstration phase; a full-scale plant is planned for 2010 in Boardman, Ore., as part of a joint effort between the U.S. Department of Energy and the Pacific Ethanol Corp.
Danish Biogasol also markets the same technology to electric power plants, regardless of whether the electric plant is fueled by coal, nuclear, natural gas or oil. Why this terrific market? Electric plants routinely produce massive amounts of waste heat. This waste heat is harnessed by the ethanol plant, which in turn greatly reduces the cost of ethanol processing. Imagine a line of semi-trucks, all loaded with massive bales of locally grown perennial grass, driving to the local electric plant - which makes fuel ethanol too.
I am excited to imagine where this technology is headed because America is blessed with abundant trees and native grass. I believe we're in for some hopeful times ahead: new jobs from locally made auto fuel with no imported oil.
TRANSPORTATION is the master key to basic survival, and the cornerstone of the economy. We all know that transportation presently depends on oil production, and oil production is peaking. We must focus first on transportation – it is the highest priority. The PickensPlan to transition vehicles to natural gas is a great start toward 100% energy independence, but is a stop-gap measure till we can transition to all electric transportation. Electric energy is strained without adding transportation demands; so we must drastically improve efficiency .
Evacuated Tube Transport (ETT) is a patented technology where travel occurs without air friction or rolling resistance (like “Space Travel on Earth”); ETT can accomplish 50 times more transportation per kWh (or carbon credit) than electric cars or trains. ETT is silent, low cost, safe, faster than jets, and is electric so it can make maximum use of wind or PV power. I invite you to visit my page to learn more about ETT
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