As the economy shows early signs of picking back up, commentators are abuzz about whether the revival will be a “job less” recovery.

Green advocates hope the recovery with come not just with jobs, but with new employment in clean energy, alternative power and other green industries.

Green jobs will be back atop the agenda at the Clean Energy Summit 2.0 next Monday in Las Vegas. The second annual summit, again hosted by  US Senate Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nevada) and the Center for American Progress Action Fund has attracted a long list of dignitaries and green leaders.

Summit leaders announced today that former President Bill Clinton will attend, along with Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

Others already on the list of those expected:

• Vice President Al Gore
• United States Secretary of Energy Steven Chu
• White House Council on Environmental Quality Special Advisor Van Jones
• Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell
• Tim Wirth, President, United Nations Foundation and Better World Fund
• T. Boone Pickens, energy executive
• General Wesley Clark, Co-Chairman, Growth Energy
• Denise Bode, CEO, American Wind Energy Association
• John Woolard, CEO, Bright Source Energy
• Marc Porat, Chairman of the Board, Serious Materials
• Dr. Stephanie Burns, President and CEO, Dow Corning
• Terry O’Sullivan, President, Laborers’ International Union of North America
• Lucien Bronicki, Founder, Ormat Technologies
• Stephen Roell, President and CEO, Johnson Controls
• Rose McKinney James, Energy Foundation Board
• Nevada State Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford
• Danny Thompson, Nevada AFL
• Michael Yackira, President and CEO, NV Energy
• Keith Schwer, UNLV Economist

Pity the American public trying to figure out where to stand on natural gas. There’s a cacophony of appeals to our patriotism, pocketbooks and desire to be eco-correct.

The latest twist comes from politicians in Congress, accompanied by oilman and clean energy trumpeter T. Boone Pickens,  who are promoting big tax breaks for natural gas-powered cars and fueling stations. The Natural Gas Act (Sen. 1408), proposed last week by Sen. Robert Menendez of (D-New Jersey) and co-sponsored by Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nevada) and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), would increase tax breaks for people and groups that buy vehicles that use compressed natural gas (CNG). It also would offer incentives to those developing CNG infrastructure, for example, doubling the property tax break for building a fueling station from $50,000 to $100,000.

SOOOO GREEN

This move has got some serious environmental potential: Compressed natural gas vehicles put out almost no harmful tailpipe emissions. Compared with traditional gasoline vehicles, they win the clean tailpipe competition hands down. Don’t believe me, take it from this synopsis by the Union for Concerned Scientists comparing emissions from CNG, diesel and gasoline engines.

Of course, you can’t easily fill up on natural gas because there are only a few hundred stations in the US. So this technology works better for government fleets that can refuel at a single source. This is a problem that could be solved in a couple ways, by converting gasoline cars, which is not very difficult, and by offering big government bonuses to people who can build more stations (people like T. Boone Pickens).

This could be good for Americans because natural gas, if the price holds, is cheaper than gasoline. Yea! And it’s mainly (for now) domestically sourced in the US and elsewhere in North America. Rah!

SO NOT GREEN

And yet, from an environmental perspective, the idea of gearing up for a future based on natural gas, another finite fossil fuel, really smells. In fact, it’s flammable. Ask the people in Ohio whose house exploded when leaking natural gas filled up their well and then their basement.

OK, call that an accident. It still leaves the question of environmental contamination from the whole process of natural gas extraction. Natural gas drilling causes significant air pollution. Last year, a researcher at Southern Methodist University determined that air pollution from natural gas drilling operations was nearly as great as that from autos and cars in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area. State environmental quality experts reviewed the SMU study and … concurred.

Natural gas drilling also can compromise groundwater, or at least, the under ground regions near groundwater, when dozens of chemicals (many of them known carcinogens like benzene linked to certain leukemias) are injected deep into the ground during the “fracking” process to access natural gas deposits.

These are serious environmental consequences, and we don’t even really know how serious because oil and gas companies have been exempted from disclosure on their hydraulic fracturing “fracking” formulas under the Clean Water Act.

In another turn of rich Washington D.C. irony, a different set of lawmakers has recently asked that this Clean Water exemption be overturned, so we can find out more about the chemicals being unleashed near our groundwater. So as Menendez and crew are pushing for more tax breaks for natural gas, another group is asking for more disclosure from the same industry via the Fracturing Responsiblity and Awareness of Chemicals Act. These aren’t mutually exclusive movements, necessarily, but they do illustrate how we Americans might suffer whiplash trying to follow natural gas developments.

Meantime, natural gas has wide support as a “bridge” solution while other technologies such as the batteries for all-electric vehicles and the wind and solar installations capable of powering buildings are developed.

“Natural gas is an important alternative fuel to help pave the way to energy independence, which will not only help keep us safer, but will also help reduce the high cost of fuel and, thus, high utility bills across the board,” said Hatch, at the news conference announcing SB 1408. Needless to say, Utah and Nevada contain extensive natural gas reserves. Menendez’s New Jersey sits astride a swath of reserves in the Northeast.

And there are more reserves in shale rock, now accessible, according to the industry, via new drilling methods.

But do we need it (or a better question may be, who needs it?) and at what environmental price? While there have been opposition groups to past surges on natural gas, and there are active pockets of local opponents, the large environmental groups appear to be undecided or at least uncharacteristically less vocal on this topic. (Except on the shale issue, which has louder opposition.)

If you want to know more about the potential downside of natural gas drilling, see the article Buried Secrets: Is Natural Gas Drilling Endangering U.S. Water Supplies?

And stay tuned, we’ll try to keep a nose out for the fumes too.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

A high-powered conference on the future of energy in America was held Monday in Washington; while it produced some consensus about the foundation necessary to meet future needs, it suggested there might be conflicts ahead in getting there.

Attendees, who ranged from former president Bill Clinton to officials at state utilities, heard plenty about the necessity of a new “smart grid” capable of shuttling electricity cross-country from renewable sources like wind and solar farms to the high-density cities that need the juice.

But not everyone was optimistic about the nitty-gritty of building such a grid, and most reports from the event are emphasizing differences of opinion over whom should control its design and placement. As this story from Bloomberg explains, regional authorities don’t want to see the federal government trying to dictate from above. Frederick Butler, of the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, warned against using imminent domain to implement a nationwide plan, even while admitting that waiting for cooperation from a patchwork of utility fiefdoms isn’t conducive to quick movement on an issue widely understood to be critical.

Expressing his frustration with those delays, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that he plans to introduce legislation putting the Smart Grid on a fast track.

“We cannot let 231 state regulators hold up progress,” he said, ensuring that he would be quoted in almost every story about the meeting — making him for the moment more colorful than Texas oilman-turned-wind-evangelist T. Boone Pickens, whose most widely quoted utterance was a self-deprecating remark about being seated between two Nobel laureates, Al Gore and Steven Chu.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Nevada Senator Harry Reid joined forces this week with former President Bill Clinton, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Texas oilman-turned-wind-advocate T. Boone Pickens and other notables at the University of Nevada/Las Vegas for the National Clean Energy Summit.

The summit also brought together business chiefs and experts in renewable energy, including speakers from Google and General Electric. Google used the opportunity to talk up its lastest clean energy investment in a new technology called Enhanced Geothermal Systems which efficiently taps the earth’s heat. “EGS could be the ‘killer app’ of the energy world,” said Dan Reicher, director for climate change and energy initiatives at Google.org, the firm’s philanthropic arm.

All in attendance were supporters of renewable energy, and focused the discussion on how to make it happen. A national energy agenda is in the works to bring to both the Democratic and Republican conventions. (So here’s hoping that what happens in Vegas, Won’t Stay in Vegas.)

Two major points were raised at the conference. The first: if renewable energy could be made cheaper, it would become more widespread. And two: renewable energy creates more jobs.

Google’s Reicher said that renewable energy will not be taken seriously unless its costs are reduced to make it competitive with other power sources such as coal. In announcing Google plans to invest more than $10 million to develop technology that will generate energy from rocks below the earth’s surface, the EGS program, he said the goal is to produce one gigawatt of renewable energy capacity, which is enough to power a major city.

The Google announcement on GNS explains the potential power of the new tech method:

“EGS expands the potential of traditional geothermal energy by orders of magnitude. The traditional geothermal approach relies on finding naturally occurring pockets of steam or hot water. The EGS process, by comparison, replicates these conditions by fracturing hot rock, circulating water through the system, and using the resulting steam to produce electricity in a conventional turbine.”

For more info see the website of developer Geodynamics.

Other speakers, such as Keith Schwer, a professor at UNLV, noted that developing wind and solar industries in Nevada means work and stability for all companies involved.

“When we buy domestic, we are creating jobs. Those jobs are local. You are boosting your local economy,” said Schwer.

All participants agreed that they hoped the summit would not lead to more meetings, but to substantial recommendations.

Sen. Reid said one way to make renewable energy a reality is to have the country’s legislators develop tax incentives that will make renewable energy a wise investment choice.

Congress has repeatedly tried, and failed, in recent months to extend soon-expiring federal tax credits for wind, solar and other renewable energy projects.

Reid supports the tax credits, as he notes on his website:
“Congress should pass a long-term extension of tax incentives for private sector entrepreneurs who are standing by, ready to invest billions of dollars in renewable energy and energy efficiency projects.”

He noted that Nevada was an apt locale for the conference because the state utilizes all three major forms of renewable energy: wind, solar and geothermal. “There’s no better place for this summit than in Nevada, the Saudi Arabia of renewable energy,” Sen. Reid told one Las Vegas news source.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media