Company to explore ocean floor off Maryland’s coast for offshore wind farm

Some hopeful good news from Maryland's Atlantic coast line, as reported by the Washington Post and Baltimore Sun.

Dirty, dangerous, and expensive versus clean, safe, and affordable

As Dick Munson of Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) has blogged, a new report shows how Ohio can "net more than 20,000 jobs and $25 billion in investment...while enhancing productivity and lowering costs."

The report, by Synapse Energy Economics, is entitled Powering Ohio: A Vision for Growth and Innovative Energy Investment, and highlights five areas for growth: (1) Attracting investment from corporate clean energy leaders; (2.) Electrifying transportation, with a focus on electric vehicles; (3.) Building new clean electricity generation, like wind and solar power; (4.) Boosting Ohio's energy productivity through energy efficiency; and (5.) Investing in a 21st century electric grid. (As the photo above from downtown Cleveland shows, Ohio's Lake Erie shore has some of the best wind power potential in North America.)

Such a carbon-free, nuclear-free energy roadmap envisions not just a thriving economy, but energy justice and a healthy environment. As Dr. Arjun Makhijani of Institute for Energy and Environmental Research has shown with the Renewable Maryland Project, what is true in Ohio, is true in other states.

Such visions are an antidote to FirstEnergy's desperate appeal to President Trump and Energy Secretary Perry for $8 billion in public bailouts, per year, to prop up 80 coal and nuclear plants in the PJM grid across 13 states and Washington, D.C., including its own dangerously old Davis-Besse and Perry atomic reactors in Ohio, and Beaver Valley Units 1 and 2 in Pennsylvania.

For more info. on the corruption associated with FirstEnergy's "emergency petition" to the Trump administration, and similar attempted public money grabs in other states, see Beyond Nuclear's Nuclear Costs website section; for the good news about the potential of renewables and efficiency, see our Renewable Energy Renaissance section. (Beyond Nuclear spoke about this new report, and FirstEnergy's corrupt bailout lobbying, on the "Loud & Clear" radio show on May 31st, beginning at the 28 minute 20 second mark.)

Update on June 2, 2018 by admin

An article by Kathiann Kowalski in Midwest Energy News shows how the transformation from dirty, dangerous, and expensive energy industries like fossil fuels and nuclear, to clean, safe, and affordable renewables and efficiency, is reflected in the history of a single Ohio company, the Rudolph Libbe Group construction firm.

How a D.C. law firm installed solar panels to help low-income people save on utilities

As reported by Justin Wm. Moyer in the Washington Post.

Every one of America’s 57,636 wind turbines, mapped

As reported by Christopher Ingraham in the Washington Post.

The Battle for Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes On the Disaster Capitalists, Naomi Klein

As posted at Naomi Klein's website:

The Battle for Paradise

By Naomi Klein - March 20th, 2018

Published in The Intercept

Like everywhere else in Puerto Rico, the small mountain city of Adjuntas was plunged into total darkness by Hurricane Maria. When residents left their homes to take stock of the damage, they found themselves not only without power and water, but also totally cut off from the rest of the island. Every single road was blocked, either by mounds of mud washed down from the surrounding peaks, or by fallen trees and branches. Yet amid this devastation, there was one bright spot.

A Solar Oasis

Just off the main square, a large, pink colonial-style house had light shining through every window. It glowed like a beacon in the terrifying darkness.

The pink house was Casa Pueblo, a community and ecology center with deep roots in this part of the island. Twenty years ago, its founders, a family of scientists and engineers, installed solar panels on the center’s roof, a move that seemed rather hippy-dippy at the time. Somehow, those panels (upgraded over the years) managed to survive Maria’s hurricane-force winds and falling debris. Which meant that in a sea of post-storm darkness, Casa Pueblo had the only sustained power for miles around.

And like moths to a flame, people from all over the hills of Adjuntas made their way to the warm and welcoming light.

Already a community hub before the storm, the pink house rapidly transformed into a nerve center for self-organized relief efforts. It would be weeks before the Federal Emergency Management Agency or any other agency would arrive with significant aid, so people flocked to Casa Pueblo to collect food, water, tarps, and chainsaws — and draw on its priceless power supply to charge up their electronics. Most critically, Casa Pueblo became a kind of makeshift field hospital, its airy rooms crowded with elderly people who needed to plug in oxygen machines.

Read the rest of the article in the New York Daily News

Update on August 5, 2018 by admin

You can learn more about the book, and order a copy, at the publisher's website, Haymarket Books.

Update on August 5, 2018 by admin

Video, as well as Klein's writing, is posted at The_Intercept, another of the book's publishers, for which Klein serves as a regular contributor.

Update on August 5, 2018 by admin

On March 21, 2018, Klein was interviewed on Democracy Now! about her book and about the situation in Puerto Rico, marking the sixth month of aftermath from Hurricane Maria.

On April 7, 2018, The_Intercept posted a special video report.