I have just returned from AWEA’s annual conference and exhibition – WINDPOWER 2011 – at the Anaheim Convention Center.
Viewing Posts in "Energy Policy"
I play with numbers all the time and understand how one can forget their real meaning. As you tinker with spreadsheets or pull together forecasts, it’s easy to become divorced from reality and forget that the numbers represent real people doing real things.
A few months ago, I began drafting a blog post on a Clean Energy Standard and what I believed would be a slippery slope of compromise for the renewable energy industry.
Cycle Begins Again
I may not have lived through the Arab Oil Embargo, but I am old enough to know that we’ve been here before on national energy policy.
Remembering Fall 2010Late last fall at the AWEA Fall Symposium, I had the fortune to hear former Secretary of State General Colin Powell’s plenary address. He was terrific — insightful, witty and articulate.
Context
As I write this, the nuclear power plants in Fukushima, Japan have poisoned the farmland and homes on the northeast coast of Japan for at least a 15 mile radius and now threaten to release significant radiation into the ocean on the northeast coast of Japan with unfathomable damage.
As a finance guy, I love to harp on the importance of long-term financial planning (which I’ll do in a moment) but I’m thinking about it today from a global energy standpoint. Our addiction to oil has been discussed for ages.
Last week I landed at Washington National in D. C. on one of the windiest days the city could remember. At the airport, 40 mph winds jounced and bounced our modest-sized jet from Burlington. Quite fitting, I thought for the wind energy lobby day on Capitol Hill.
This is a political battle which may end up in federal court, but in terms of the alternatives presented below, there has been one startling change in the Vermont context — strong public resistance to the construction of wind farms.
In an online debate run by The Economist, Robert Bryce of the Manhattan Institute and Steve Sawyer of the Global Wind Energy Council have been debating the effectiveness of natural gas vs. renewables in limiting the world’s carbon emissions.