By Edgar G. Hertwich, et. al. - National Academy of Sciences of the United States, September 3, 2014

Decarbonization of electricity generation can support climate-change mitigation and presents an opportunity to address pollution resulting from fossil-fuel combustion. Generally, renewable technologies require higher initial investments in infrastructure than fossil-based power systems. To assess the trade offs of increased up-front emissions and reduced operational emissions, we present, to our knowledge, the first global, integrated life-cycle assessment (LCA) of long-term, wide-scale implementation of electricity generation from renewable sources (i.e., photovoltaic and solar thermal, wind, and hydropower) and of carbon dioxide capture and storage for fossil power generation. We compare emissions causing particulate matter exposure, freshwater eco-toxicity, freshwater eutrophication, and climate change for the climate-change-mitigation (BLUE Map) and business-as-usual (Baseline) scenarios of the International Energy Agency up to 2050. We use a vintage stock model to conduct an LCA of newly installed capacity year-by-year for each region, thus accounting for changes in the energy mix used to manufacture future power plants. Under the Baseline scenario, emissions of air and water pollutants more than double whereas the low-carbon technologies introduced in the BLUE Map scenario allow a doubling of electricity supply while stabilizing or even reducing pollution. Material requirements per unit generation for low-carbon technologies can be higher than for conventional fossil generation: 11–40 times more copper for photovoltaic systems and 6–14 times more iron for wind power plants. However, only two years of current global copper and one year of iron production will suffice to build a low-carbon energy system capable of supplying the world’s electricity needs in 2050.

Read the report (PDF).

By John Farrell - Institute for Local Self-Reliance, August 18, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

When it comes to ownership, there are few better structures for keeping a community’s wealth local than a cooperative. So why is it that America’s rural electric cooperatives are tethered to dirty, old coal-fired power plants instead of local-wealth generating renewable power?

There are a lot of answers to this question, but it might start with this: electric cooperatives aren’t quite like other cooperatives.

The Seven Slipping Cooperative Principles

Cooperatives around the world adhere to the “Seven Cooperative Principles,” but electric cooperatives (at least in the United States) fail on several of these principles.

• Voluntary and open membership. Nope. If you want electric service in cooperative territory, you sign with the cooperative. While it’s no different than rules for other types of utilities in the 30 states that grant utilities a monopoly service territory, it violates the principles of cooperatives.
• Democratic control (one member, one vote). Not always. Some electric cooperatives award one vote per meter, and some customers (e.g. farmers, industry) have more than one meter. Furthermore, many cooperatives filter potential board candidates with “nominating committees.” And look, here’s a board election with no opposition!There’s also a big gap between cooperative member support for (paying more for) renewable energy and cooperative behavior. This 2013 survey in Minnesota, for example, shows little separation between urban and rural areas (where cooperatives are dominant) in support for renewable energy, yet cooperatives opposed every bill favoring clean energy in the 2013 legislative session.
• Members control the capital of the cooperative.
• Cooperatives maintain their autonomy and independence even if they enter into agreements with other entities. Questionable. Many cooperatives sign 40- or even 50-year purchase contracts with power suppliers to supply 95% of their entire sales, mostly from coal-fired power plants. Standard and Poor’s explains this in an evaluation of a Seminole Electric in Florida, a generation & transmission cooperative that sells to rural cooperatives. In their words, one of the utility’s credit strengths is, “A captive retail market and the ability to set rates through take-and-pay, all-requirements wholesale power agreements with nine of 10 members through 2045.”
• Cooperatives provide educational opportunities to their members and the public on the benefits of cooperatives. Questionable. If you read rural electric cooperative newsletters, you’ll hear a lot about climate change but you’ll often find the phrase in quotes
• Cooperatives work best when cooperating with other cooperatives. Questionable, refer to #4. Some of these power suppliers are “co-ops of co-ops,” but these long-term contracts have tethered the economic fortunes of cooperative members to the vagaries of the coal market (see below). More than any other type of utility (public or investor-owned), rural electric cooperatives are reliant on coal for their electricity fuel. The average U.S. utility is 38% coal-fired power.

By Nick Surgey - PR Watch, July 30, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

As the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) prepares to meet in Dallas this week, the Center for Media and Democracy has uncovered new evidence that Edison Electric Institute (EEI) -- the trade association for the U.S. utility industry -- has been funding ALEC's legislative assault on solar energy.

Although ALEC recently proclaimed that it was being falsely portrayed as "anti-clean energy," these latest revelations confirm that ALEC continues to pursue a polluters' wish list, despite its PR pronouncements.

"Solar Is Dumb," says ALEC Legislator

As documented by Suzanne Goldenberg and Ed Pilkington in The Guardian late last year, ALEC has been peddling legislation designed to increase costs for Americans who have invested in solar panels for their homes and businesses, which ALEC's rep attempted to label as “freeriders.” Through ALEC's bill and campaign, the group has been pushing changes to state laws that would increase costs for homeowners with solar who sell excess energy back to the grid, known as “net metering.”

The CMD documents underscore what Gabe Elsner of the Energy & Policy Institute has uncovered, which is that EEI is a prime player in ALEC -- footing the bill and calling the shots on the anti-renewable agenda. This shows that some powerful utilities -- which include public and private entities -- are backing ALEC's extreme agenda, not just global coal and oil corporations.

Chris Williams and Robert Pollin interviewed by Jessica Desvarieux - The Real News Network, July 30, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

Biography

Chris Williams is a long-time environmental activist and author of Ecology and Socialism: Solutions to Capitalist Ecological Crisis. He is chair of the science department at Packer Collegiate Institute and adjunct professor at Pace University, in the Department of Chemistry and Physical Science. His writings have appeared in numerous publications, including TruthOut, Z Magazine, Green Left Weekly, Alternet, CommonDreams, ClimateAndCapitalism, ClimateStoryTellers, The Indypendent, Dissident Voice, International Socialist Review, Socialist Worker, and ZNet. He reported from Fukushima in 2011 and was a Lannan writer-in-residence in Marfa, Texas over the summer of 2012, where he began work on his second book. He was awarded the Lannan 2013-4 Cultural Freedom Fellowship to continue this work. He has just returned from four months in Vietnam, Morocco and Bolivia, examining the impact of economic development and climate change in relation to energy, food and water issues.

Robert Pollin is professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is the founding co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI). His research centers on macroeconomics, conditions for low-wage workers in the US and globally, the analysis of financial markets, and the economics of building a clean-energy economy in the US. His latest book is Back to Full Employment. Other books include A Measure of Fairness: The Economics of Living Wages and Minimum Wages in the United States and Contours of Descent: US Economic Fractures and the Landscape of Global Austerity.

By Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, originally published by Guardian Earth Insight blog, June 10, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

The latest data from the International Energy Agency (IEA) and other sources proves that the oil and gas majors are in deep trouble.

Over the last decade, rising oil prices have been driven primarily by rising production costs. After the release of the IEA's World Energy Outlook last November, Deutsche Bank's former head of energy research Mark Lewis noted that massive levels of investment have corresponded to an ever declining rate of oil supply increase:

"Over the past decade, the oil and gas industry's upstream investments have registered an astronomical increase, but these ever higher levels of capital expenditure have yielded ever smaller increases in the global oil supply. Even these have only been made possible by record high oil prices. This should be a reality check for those now hyping a new age of global oil abundance."

Since 2000, the oil industry's investments have risen by 180% - a threefold increase - but this has translated into a global oil supply increase of just 14%. Two-thirds of this increase has been made-up by unconventional oil and gas. In other words, the primary driver of the cost explosion is the shift to expensive and difficult-to-extract unconventionals due to the peak and plateau in conventional oil production since 2005.

By Zane Alcorn, Translated by Anne K. Schulz - System Change not Climate Change, March 17, 2014. 

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

Can you tell us a little about Bremerhaven – how many people live here, what are the main industries, how has the city changed in the last 20 years?

Bremerhaven is part of the state of Bremen, a city state in Germany — two Islands within the bigger state of Niedersachsen. In 1990 there were 140,000 people who lived in Bremerhaven; nowadays we have 113,000. In the past few years the population grew by a couple of hundred people and this was cause for celebration.

The main industries here are fishing and shipbuilding. In the last 20 years we have lost 10,000 jobs, especially on the docks. We still have three wharves but two are threatened with closure. There was also a US military base here which also closed after unification.

More recently the wind-turbine industry has brought a welcome revitalization of the local manufacturing industry and created new jobs. It should also be noted that the industry is not without its downsides; there has been damage to a local marine park and the closure of the local airport as a result of the proliferation of wind farms here.

From libcom.org, February 22, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

Part of domestic living in Britain is receiving hot water and heating from a boiler that serves one property alone. In fact, around 93% of households have a single appliance in homes where typically the number of occupants per household is around 2.5. Natural gas is the majority fuel by far for all heat needs within homes and non-domestic buildings.

So, where's this going beyond pointing out that gas is king and there is a boat load of heating and hot water boilers per person? I hope to make a brief case for the immediate need to do away with individual boilers, replacing them as best practicable with a more communised form of heating, the district heating network (DHN).

The case against the crap we call cutting edge technology

Fuel, more specifically natural gas, is running out fast in Britain, and despite our dependence on a finite resource we desperately rely upon for industry and manufacturing, we burn the stuff in our own homes, regulated by nothing more than the ability to pay. The utilisation of renewable energy sources for heat production in Britain is, according to the Department of Energy and Climate Change "around 15%... in 2012; this equates to 2.3% of total heat demand" (DECC, National Renewables Statistics), a figure that flies in the face of a common misconception that problems around resources and emissions control are being adequately addressed by technology. Furthermore, whilst the trend for using renewable sources of energy have continued to impress for electricity production, for heat production less so. In 1990, renewables represented a replacement of around one million tonnes of oil for both electricity and heat production, a third of that figure being for heat. In 2012 renewables replaced around 7 million tonnes of oil for electricity production and one million tonnes heat; considering most energy use is for heat production overall, development in renewable energy for heat production has seen the smallest change in face of the biggest need.