In the news

The story is simple enough: foreign companies (read: countries) are buying up American coalmines and natural gas fields. But what really struck the BTLS braintrust about this story were people’s widely differing reactions to the headline. Some immediately picked up on the sensational energy security angle, while others immediately saw an outrageous hypocrisy in the very notion of "carbon offshoring". Could the United States potentially end up right back where we started in terms of cleaning up the environment? Shouldn’t we be worried about foreign companies taking control of our limited natural resources? Why should we bother with costly carbon capture and sequestration technology if we're just going to end up letting someone else burn our coal somewhere else?

For answers we talked to BTLS host and senior braintrustee-Scientific American's David Biello. David explains that even though we see a lot of stories in the news about countries like China making great strides building clean energy technologies (like solar panels), China’s energy economy is still far from 'green'. Because China’s economy is expanding so rapidly, and because coal is still their primary resource, they need more energy (read: coal) than ever before.

While China may still have a long way to go, keep in mind—so too does the United States. According to David, coal makes up for over 70% of China’s energy mix. In the United States we’re not much better...

Nuclear reprocessing. You often see it in the news, usually related to what countries are doing it and why. Reprocessing in India and China may get more ink, but the the U.K. & France do far more of it. In the United States, on the other hand, we do not currently reprocess our spent nuclear fuel. So why not? Now that many environmentalists are reevaluating nuclear power (thanks to its status as a low-carbon fuel), many are asking just that: why shouldn't we be recycling this stuff? Almost seems like the least we can do, given the complications of mining and transporting uranium, right?

Not so fast. The fellows at The Union of Concerned Scientists aren't quite so keen on reprocessing. In fact, they're actually quite...concerned about it. As scientists. In their own words, here's what their list of major concerns boils down to:

• Reprocessing would increase the risk of nuclear terrorism.
• Reprocessing would increase the ease of nuclear proliferation.
• Reprocessing would hurt U.S. nuclear waste management efforts.
• Reprocessing would be very expensive.

Very legitimate-sounding concerns, scary-sounding, even—but not everyone would agree. After all, France and Britain seem to be doing alright and they've been reprocessing for decades. To find out more about the argument for reprocessing, we talked to CEO of Duke Energy (and Beyond the Light Switch expert) Jim Rogers.

Jim Rogers knows energy. Just this past Monday he rolled out plans for a $13.7 billion megadeal that will make Duke Energy the largest electric utility in the nation. So how can he consider something that has raised such serious concerns in the past to now be no different than "recycling"? First, Rogers addressed fears that reprocessing will create a greater risk of nuclear terrorism, saying that he finds it much easier to mitigate the risk of proliferation "in the 

Is Global Climate Change to blame? After reading this story about the thawing of the permafrost layer, BTLS was surprised to learn that not only are falling rocks killing more people each year, the thaw is also jeopardizing their economic infrastructure. The rapidly changing geology of the area has been attributed to global climate change for years now, but that information would be much more useful if everyone could first agree on whether climate change is real or not.

Alas, there has been no agreement. So when the BTLS braintrust heard about melting glaciers spelling real trouble for the Swiss Alps, we decided to investigate a little further. Are a few falling rocks and some melting snow really that big of a problem? For answers we talked to BTLS’s resident artist (and Swiss connection), David Hartwell. And David immediately assured us that, yes, a little melting snow is a very big problem in his native land. How big of a problem is it?

Here are just a few of the pre-emptive measures the Swiss have tried so far:

• They've had to redirect natural gas viaducts because of falling rocks caused by the melting permafrost.
• Banks will not lend money to any resorts situated below 1500 meters due to the uncertainties of snowfall.
• They’ve tried covering glaciers with fleece blankets to limit summer UV exposure so that they will not retreat as fast.
• They’re having to redraw their borders with neighboring countries.
• Swiss villagers have even written to the Pope for help.

The Alpen town of Pontresina gained attention as one of the first places to take  precautions against the melting ice (like building a giant dam). Now they're offering nature hikes that promise to let you walk "in the footsteps of climate change". Still, the fact remains: experts estimate Switzerland will lose 70% of their glaciers within the next thirty years. And attracting some of the first GCC ‘disaster tourists’ seems like a pretty lame consolation prize for the Swiss, considering that they’re not one of the region’s big carbon emitters. David Hartwell tells us that the only leverage the Swiss really have is raising fuel and transit taxes to alleviate their growing climate problem. According to Hartwell, the Swiss have all but given up on the idea of making a dent in global carbon emissions—they’re now in the business of “building rafts and making foreign nations pay for them”. But how?

...That is the question. But if we don't drill, how else are we going to secure the nation's supply of what many are calling the 'bridge fuel' that's going to help us go from a carbon-based (coal) energy economy to a low-carbon (or even carbon-free) one: natural gas.

In the documentary, BTLS focuses on two gas-drilling booms or gas 'plays', as the industry calls them-the established Barnett shale in Texas, and the gargantuin Marcellus shale, which covers much of West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York. Due to the recent discovery of the Marcellus shale's potential for natural gas production (once thought to be played out), gas drilling companies are making a mad dash to lease land and get wells drilled. And in many places (as BTLS documented in Houston, Pennsylvania) the gas boom has meant economic prosperity for many struggling farmers and local business owners.
 
Also resulting from the rush to drill: concerns over the environmental impacts of shale drilling, specifically those impacts resulting from a new technique of gas-drilling called hydraulic fracturing [also shortened to hydrofracking, or just fracking]. But the effects of getting that gas out of the ground aren't just going to impact the areas covering the Marcellus, there are many other gas-producing shale formations covering the rest of the continental U.S...including the state of Michigan.

Michigan's Antrim shale was the site of a large gas play in the 1990's, at the time making it "the most actively drilled shale gas play in the US, with thousands of wells drilled." That's over 10,000 wells drilled. So do Michiganders need to be worried about fracking-related water and air contamination? For answers I talked to Amy Mall, Senior Policy Analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Amy contributes to the NRDC's awesomely informative staff blog, 'Switchboard', and is the authority on anything and everything related to oil and gas production.

Right now, however, you may be asking yourself 'isn't drilling regulated by the government'? The BTLS Braintrust asked the same question of the NRDC, who reminded us that state regulators only know what we tell them. If communities and land-owners ask the right questions of regulators and drilling companies (preferably with a lawyer present, cautions Mall) we can all avoid a fate similar to that of DISH, TX.

According to Mall, gas drilling permits are issued by year, so in addition to the more than 10,000 active wells currently in Michigan, there were 270 new permits issued in the state last year alone. Each of those 270 communities could be the next to face an environmental clean up if drillers and land owners don't proceed with caution. So what are the right questions? And who should you ask?

Subsidies for renewable energy may be going away...again.

America's stormy love affair with renewable energy began in the 1970's, when President Jimmy Carter introduced subsidies for what were then termed 'alternative' energy resources. But the burgeoning wind and solar industries that grew under Carter were not fated to last long. Nurturing an infant renewable energy industry was not part of Ronald Reagan's presidential image, nor his platform. Beyond the Light Switch looks at this pivotal time in our nation's history as a means to understand the current state of our energy policy and energy politics.

Currently, the hopes of many long-suffering renewable energy supporters (and industry players) have been pinned on the Obama administration. And Obama did make good--by ushering in subsidies for renewables, known as the "1603 grants" (so-called for the section of the stimulus bill that created them). And just in case you were wondering what those grants actually do, today The LA Times was kind enough to lay it out for us--the 1603 grants "paid up to 30% of the cost of projects breaking ground by the end of this year. Renewable facilities generating a combined 4,250 megawatts (the equivalent of roughly four large nuclear plants) were supported by the program as of March, according to a report by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; that output is doubtless far higher now. The grants have created thousands of jobs, and helped clean the air and wean the country off fossil fuels. But all that may be about to stop".

Sounds scary, doesn't it? Well, what's happening is...

Last week the seemingly cursed Cape Wind offshore wind farm project finally made some headway, inking their PPA (Power Purchase Agreement) with National Grid for a hefty rate of 18.7 cents a kilowatt-hour. And that's the revised rate - down from 21.5 cents a kilowatt-hour.

But Cape Wind's still got support where it counts...hot on the heels of the contract's approval by state utility regulators, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar jumped to announce his comprehensive plan to expedite development of the project.

Or, in the words of the Department of the Interior, they want to help get those turbines in the water "in the shortest time period possible". It's a bad sign when the Federal Government itself gets fed up with all of the red tape.

The tension surrounding Cape Wind has left some experts worried that such vociferous resistance from the public does not bode well for future off-shore proposals elsewhere...