7.12.2010

Climategate- Climate Change- Set the Record Straight

from	Maggie L. Fox, Alliance for Climate Protection <info@climateprotect.org>
to		<scottscontracting@gmail.com>
date		Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 3:33 PM
subject		Set the record straight on so-called "Climategate"
mailed-by		bounce.bluestatedigital.com

hide details 3:33 PM (2 hours ago)

Scotty,

Last week, a third independent investigation exonerated the climate scientists whose emails were hacked last fall -- finding the attacks lacked foundation. That's right: Three full, independent reviews have found no wrongdoing on the part of the scientists -- and most importantly, affirmed the scientific evidence of climate change.

So you might think that any reputable media outlet would feel compelled to set the record straight. But you'd be wrong.

In particular, the Wall Street Journal has published more than 30 editorials and op-eds on climate change since November of 2009. All took the stance that climate science was unreliable, dishonest or questionable -- or minimally unimportant. And unbelievably, just today, the Journal published another op-ed about the reviews, calling them a "whitewash" by "global warming alarmists."

Send a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page demanding that they set the record straight on climate change science.

It's vital that we receive balanced coverage from all of the media, and the Journal's actions matter. As Congress works to craft comprehensive policies to address our energy and climate crises, public understanding of this issue is more important than ever before.

A news outlet like the Wall Street Journal relies on its reputation as a balanced, unbiased news source. With your help, we can convince the Journal editorial page to give equal space to the fact that climate scientists have been exonerated and their findings remain affirmed.

Demand that the Wall Street Journal cover the facts about climate science.

Few news outlets in the U.S. are as well regarded and widely read among opinion makers and politicians as the Wall Street Journal. It has a responsibility to its readers and the American public to be fair and accurate on one of the most important issues of our time.

Balanced media coverage today won't give back the precious time we've lost defending scientific facts that should not have been in question. But perhaps it will remind our media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, of their responsibility to the American people.

Thank you,

Maggie L. Fox
President and CEO
Alliance for Climate Protection

www.climateprotect.org

--
Scott's Contracting
scottscontracting@gmail.com
http://www.stlouisrenewableenergy.blogspot.com
http://www.stlouisrenewableenergy.com
scotty@stlouisrenewableenergy.com

News-Recycling Energy Production -Sugar can make electricity

Sugar can make electricity?
By Jake Richardson
Posted Thu Jul 8, 2010 7:03am PDT
Related topics: Biofuels, Electricity
More from Care2 Green Living blog

It's not exactly sugar juice, but the sugar cane fiber left over after the juice is extracted, which is burned to make electricity. The fiber is called bagasse, and is being used in cogeneration power plants. Once it dries, it is burned in boilers to make steam. The steam is used to create electricity. Emissions from burning bagasse are lower than for burning fossil fuels.

In Florida, a sugar mill facility called Florida Crystals powers their business operation and 60,000 homes with electricity generated from burning bagasse (and wood waste when it is not sugar cane season).

The reason sugar cane can be used to make sugar and generate electricity is that it is very efficient in converting sunlight into energy. Florida Crystals estimates it saves hundreds of thousands of tons of carbon emissions by burning bagasse to run its facility, rather than fossil fuels. It is one of the largest sugar producers in the U.S. and runs the largest biomass plant in North America.

Sugar cane production is a large industry in Brazil, and it uses bagasse power plants to provide about 3 percent of the country's electrical consumption. An estimate has stated that number could be increased to 15 percent by 2020.

Just last February, a deal was struck to begin construction of a 40 megawatt bagasse fueled power plant in Brazil. Other countries are using sugar cane fiber also. Kenya reportedly has the potential of producing 300 megawatts of electricity from bagasse. Currently it is producing 38MW.

A megawatt is one million watts. One megawatt could power between 400 and 900 homes depending on consumption rates.

Scott's Contracting
scottscontracting@gmail.com
http://www.stlouisrenewableenergy.blogspot.com
http://www.stlouisrenewableenergy.com
scotty@stlouisrenewableenergy.com

7.11.2010

News: FHFA and PACE-(Property Accessed Clean Energy and Federal Housing Finance Agency)

Lenders Have it Wrong and PACE Advocates Should Fight Back

Author:

John Farrell

Publication Date:

7 July 2010

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) issued guidance yesterday that drew a line in the sand against municipal energy financing, a.k.a. Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) programs. These innovative initiatives provide energy efficiency retrofits for homeowners that are repaid through a property tax assessment. Since homeowners falling behind on payments must repay their PACE assessment before their mortgage, giant lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will consider participating households in default on their mortgages for receiving an energy efficiency retrofit via PACE.

Their rationale is paper thin.

First, FHFA (and Fannie and Freddie before it) continue to erroneously call PACE financing a "loan." PACE uses longstanding benefit assessment powers of municipal government to provide infrastructure improvements for a specific property (e.g. new sewer lines, sidewalks, or street overhauls) and to assess that property its share of the benefits. In many states, the PACE enabling legislation literally tacked energy efficiency retrofits on to the existing assessment authority. If FHFA has a problem with PACE, they implicate the power of every city and county to invest in public goods and to assess benefitting properties for those goods.

Energy efficiency retrofits are also public goods, in contrast to Fannie and Freddie's claims. When a property in a city undergoes a significant energy efficiency retrofit, it reduces (indefinitely) the cost of living in that property and likely increases the property's value. It also reduces that municipality's dependence on imported energy sources, its emissions of harmful pollutants (like mercury) from fossil fuel power plants that supply that energy, and greenhouse gas emissions. See if a sidewalk or street (longstanding uses of assessment authority) can do that.

FHFA also falsely implies that PACE poses a significant risk to lenders. This is in stark contrast to the analysis presented in Todd Woody's July 2 article in the New York Times – Analysis: Energy Lien Is Little Threat to Loan Giants – which suggests that the seniority of a PACE lien would, on average, put the lender behind by $75 per property. If every household in the U.S. participated in PACE and every one of those properties was backed by Fannie and Freddie, that would be a total liability of $8 billion. But if that seems like a lot, consider that Fannie and Freddie back more than $6 trillion in mortgages and that they've accepted $145 billion in taxpayer assistance to cover bad bets during the housing bubble.

These spurious concerns with PACE also come as a stab in the back to many PACE advocates. In guidance last fall, Fannie and Freddie suggested that they were simply looking for a framework that would minimize the risk that PACE programs posed to their lending priorities. The White House and Department of Energy issued such a framework in October 2009 and have held recipients of stimulus dollars to those limits. State enabling laws have mimicked them. PACE programs have exercised due diligence.

Despite this, the guidance letters from the lenders have not only completely undermined the program, but have even suggested that the lenders may redline any borrower in a community with a PACE program, whether or not they participate in the program, because of the perceived risks.

Some states and PACE programs are already considering legal action. Congress may take up legislation to override the giant lenders. What's clear is that the arguments of Fannie and Freddie are paper thin and it's time for advocates to start punching holes.

--
Scott's Contracting
scottscontracting@gmail.com
http://www.stlouisrenewableenergy.blogspot.com
http://www.stlouisrenewableenergy.com
scotty@stlouisrenewableenergy.com

Solar Action Alert-Solar Financing PACE Funds


	Best Idea Yet for Financing Solar on your Roof ...and the Feds want to shut it down!

Now that some 22 states have embraced PACE - the municipal financing mechanism under which homeowners can install renewable energy or energy efficiency assets with few upfront costs, and with repayment based on property tax assessments - you'd have thought its obvious popularity would have spread joy to all quarters.

It hasn't, and perhaps you can help.

One quarter the joy hasn't reached is the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), the regulator of government mortgage corporations Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. According to a statement it issued on July 6, the agency 'has determined that (PACE programs) present significant safety and soundness concerns that must be addressed.' In urging state and local governments to reconsider these programs, FHFA has effectively brought the whole PACE movement to a halt.

Jonathan Hiskes has written in depth on this subject in Grist. The debate in the posts that follow his article show just how tense the whole issue is.

Which Way to Lien?

The basis of FHFA's objections is that most PACE programs establish a priority lien over existing mortgages, which could cause the original lender to take an unexpectedly large loss in case of default. There are arguments for and against this position, as you can see from the Grist article linked above. But what is most disturbing is that the mortgage corporations only seem interested in stopping the movement, not finding a way forward. The FHFA statement ends with the lukewarm comment:

"FHFA will... continue to encourage the establishment of energy efficiency standards to support such (energy retrofit lending) programs."

The statement contains not a scrap of detail about how FHFA would do this, yet in the same document, the agency acknowledges that "certain states have chosen not to adopt such priority positions for their loans."

Wouldn't you think, if it recognizes a potential solution, that an enlightened agency would work with states to iron out legal issues, instead of bringing a burgeoning program to an abrupt halt? You would, if you thought the agency were acting in good faith. But - and here's the really telling point - despite the fact that property tax assessments with priority lien status are very common in the USA (37000 special tax districts at the last count), FHFA insists on categorizing PACE arrangements as loans. This allows the agency to tell Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to forbid its customers to enter into PACE agreements.

Clearly, FHFA has no interest in resolving this issue to the benefit of renewable energy. Not its job, we suppose. But the Director of FHFA, Edward DeMarco, should certainly be left in no doubt that there are plenty of people very unhappy with what his agency has done to the most promising plan for residential solar we've ever seen.

Can you send him a message now, to let him know what you think?

Enter your ZIP code and press Go! to TAKE ACTION NOW.

with thanks, from Solar Nation