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Why you should be skeptical of Walmart’s cheap organic food

by LesliJZAuqcp Posted on April 12, 2014

Walmarts and all

Why you should be skeptical of Walmart’s cheap organic food

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Walmart

Out on the mean streets of the U.S. organic foods industry, Walmart has stepped onto the corner with both guns drawn. On Thursday, the superstore behemoth announced its plan to partner with Wild Oats (which you may recognize as a former subsidiary of Whole Foods) to offer a line of organic goods at unprecedentedly low prices in 2,000 of its U.S. stores. To start, the line will offer primarily canned goods and other pantry staples that will cost up to 25 percent less than those of other organic brands.

At first blush, this appears to be great news. Cheaper, more accessible organic food – isn’t that one of the prerequisites for the kind of healthy food system we’ve all been waiting for? The New York Times notes that Walmart’s big move could ultimately create a larger supply of organic goods, pushing down organic prices in the long run.

From The New York Times:

“We’re removing the premium associated with organic groceries,” said Jack L. Sinclair, executive vice president of Walmart U.S.’s grocery division. The Wild Oats organic products will be priced the same as similar nonorganic brand-name goods.

If that sounds suspicious to anyone familiar with organic growing practices, it should. For those not as well-versed, we’re here to help! We spoke with Coach Mark Smallwood, executive director of The Rodale Institute in Kutztown, Penn., about how Walmart could manage to offer such low prices, and what that might mean for organic farmers across the country.

Smallwood explains that the concept of a “premium” associated with organic food is misleading, because the price of an organic good reflects the true cost of its production.

“The issue is that there aren’t the subsidies available to organic farmers that there are [for conventional farmers.] So there’s a question in my mind about how Walmart is going to pull this off and be able to make profit,” Smallwood said. “And for them to even come out and make that statement before they’ve started is a huge question mark. Somebody’s going to have to pay, and my hope is that it’s not the organic farmer.”

Smallwood also shared his concern that if Walmart were to incentivize large-scale organic production, industrial organic practices would become more widespread. In this model, farmers adhere to just the bare minimum of organic standards and ultimately end up depleting soil health on a piece of land, abandoning it, and moving on to another.

“Will a large agricultural operation come in and buy up tens of small family farms and put them all under one name, and then create that slash-and-burn model?” Smallwood said. “That’s what I’m afraid of. That’s the [possible] downside.”

For the optimists in all of us, let us remember that it’s too soon to know exactly which approach Walmart will take. As Smallwood says: “The potential is there for [organic farmers] to be treated very well, and paid handsomely for the wonderful artisan stewardship of the planet. What is that worth to Walmart? We’re going to find out.”

We reached out to Walmart specifically to ask if the company was planning to source from small-scale farmers, and where its farmers would be located geographically. This was their response via email:

Regarding your questions, we are working with our suppliers to create a surety of demand which ultimately helps us pass along savings to our customers. We’re using our scale to deliver quality, organic groceries to our customers for less. When we do this, it’s a win, win, win situation for our customers, our suppliers and our company. Our customers can trust that they will save money at Walmart, our suppliers can count on us for the demand and we are able to offer innovative new products.

Hey — we didn’t say it was a good response. Since it provides exactly none of the specifics that we sought out, we’ll just have to wait and see, and hope for the best.


Source
Walmart to Sell Organic Food, Undercutting Big Brands, The New York Times

Eve Andrews is a Grist fellow and new Seattle transplant via the mean streets of Chicago, Poughkeepsie, and Pittsburgh, respectively and in order of meanness. Follow her on Twitter.

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Why you should be skeptical of Walmart’s cheap organic food

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Russia Is Crushing Ukraine’s Hopes for Energy Independence

by OmarPtrppfziz Posted on April 9, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

This story originally appeared in The Atlantic and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk initiative.

Russian intervention in eastern Ukraine has never looked more likely.

In events that eerily resemble the prelude to Russia’s annexation of Crimea, pro-Russian demonstrators have overtaken government buildings in the eastern Ukrainian cities of Kharkiv, Luhansk, and Donetsk, proclaiming a “people’s republic” in Donetsk and snagging weapons and possibly hostages in Luhansk (Ukrainian police have regained control in Kharkiv). Oleksandr Turchynov, Ukraine’s acting president, has blamed Moscow-organized instigators for the unrest, as fears mount in the West that Russia, whose troops are massed along Ukraine’s eastern border, could seize Ukraine’s industrial heartland next.

If that happens, Russian President Vladimir Putin would acquire various forms of leverage over the young, weak, and pro-Western Ukrainian government—including an often-overlooked one: Ukraine would have little hope of achieving energy independence from Russia.

Energy politics and Ukrainian politics are often the same thing. Around 40 percent of the energy Ukraine consumes comes from natural gas, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Three-fifths of the 50 billion cubic meters of natural gas Ukraine uses each year is imported from Russia, with the rest domestically produced. This gives Russia a significant bargaining chip in its relations with Kiev—one that Moscow isn’t afraid to use. Gazprom, a Russian energy conglomerate with close ties to the Kremlin, raised gas prices for Ukraine by 81 percent earlier this month, prompting Ukraine’s interim prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, to accuse Russia of “economic aggression.”

Even ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s pre-revolution government sought greater energy independence from Russia after bitter price disputes with Moscow and two gas-supply shutdowns in 2006 and 2009. A 2011 OECD analysis identified three major objectives for Ukraine’s energy strategy: doubling electricity production between 2005 and 2030, shifting thermal power plants from gas-fired units to ones fueled by domestically produced coal, and increasing nuclear-power generation. Last August, Kiev approved a new energy strategy through 2030 to reduce its dependence on foreign-energy sources through investment in renewable-energy sources and greater utilization of domestic energy reserves.

Unfortunately for Ukraine, the Crimean peninsula was crucial to the country’s energy-diversification plans. Yanukovych had opened negotiations with Azerbaijan, Russia’s last remaining ex-Soviet energy rival, as part of his effort to build a liquid-natural-gas pipeline terminal on Crimea’s Black Sea coast. The peninsula also sits atop vast underwater gas basins in the Black Sea, estimated to contain between 4 and 13 trillion cubic meters of natural gas. As Ukraine’s southernmost territory, the peninsula has the highest solar-energy potential in the country and already featured one of Europe’s largest photovoltaic parks. Its mountainous coastline holds strong wind-energy potential, with seven wind plants already built there and more planned before the crisis. But all of that infrastructure and investment now rests in Russian hands.

The main gas pipeline in the village of Boyarka, near the capital Kiev. AP Photo/Sergei Chuzavkov

The loss of Crimea only further weakened Ukraine’s already-tenuous energy security. Almost all of the fuel for Ukraine’s 15 state-owned nuclear reactors, which accounts for almost half of the electricity the country generates, comes from Russia. Ukraine’s domestic reserves of uranium are paltry, and it lacks the enrichment capacity to turn what it does have into usable fuel. Russia, by comparison, is a net uranium exporter to Europe and owns nearly half of the world’s enrichment capacity.

Ukraine still has some domestic-energy alternatives in the long term, but these require significant investment. The country possesses the third-largest shale gas reserves in Europe, estimated to hold nearly 1.2 trillion cubic meters, but commercial extraction isn’t slated to begin until 2020 at the earliest. That timeline might have been overly optimistic even before the revolution, considering the environmental impact of hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) and the public resistance that comes with it. Another complicating factor is location: one of the two large fields, the Yuzivska field, falls almost entirely within the Donetsk and Kharkiv oblasts, two of the eastern regions in which Ukraine has accused Russia of fomenting revolts.

Coal, the remaining option, is more readily accessible. It makes up almost 95 percent of Ukraine’s current domestic-energy resources and roughly 30 percent of Ukraine’s energy consumption. Viktor Turmanov, a Ukrainian lawmaker and head of the national coal industry’s trade union, boasted in 2012 that the country’s coal reserves would last for 400 years. Emphasizing Ukrainian coal over Russian natural gas became a priority even under Yanukovych. Now, it’s become a necessity. Ukraine’s Minister of Energy and Coal Industry Yuriy Prodan told a cabinet meeting last week that Ukraine is “now reviewing our electricity and fuel balance for 2014 with a view of using as much domestic coal as possible at the expense of natural gas.”

That won’t be easy, thanks to Ukraine’s haphazard coal-mining industry. Donetsk’s regional economy, which is driven mostly by heavy industry and the coal industry that fuels it, is responsible for between 10 and 15 percent of Ukraine’s GDP. But the region’s heavily subsidized mining companies suffer from limited modernization and chronic inefficiency. An abundance of illegal surface mines called kopanki also drive down prices, as the criminal syndicates that run them don’t bother paying taxes or spending money on employee health insurance and safety equipment, allowing them to sell their coal at one-fifth of the price offered by licensed mines. If coal is to become the future of Ukrainian energy, the government will need to make major investments and broad reforms in the sector.

But none of that will matter if Russia moves west. Losing the Donets Basin would sever Ukraine from nine-tenths of its coal reserves, the sixth-largest national reserves in the world overall, and losing the Yuzivska gas field would rob it of a large portion of its remaining shale-gas reserves. Without those, and with Crimea already lost for the foreseeable future, Ukraine’s hopes for energy independence would be lost.

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Russia Is Crushing Ukraine’s Hopes for Energy Independence

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Brits may ban new onshore wind power

by XNYMelisajdeots Posted on April 8, 2014

That blows

Brits may ban new onshore wind power

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Britain’s conservative government is preparing to make an unusual pledge — a crackdown on clean energy.

Prime Minster David Cameron, leader of the bluntly named Conservative Party (aka the Tories), is overseeing the drafting of a “manifesto” ahead of next year’s national election. That manifesto might come dressed up in a stifling windbreaker. The Guardian explains:

The Guardian understands that Cameron has brokered a compromise between warring Tories by agreeing to include measures in the manifesto for next year’s general election that will in effect rule out the building of onshore windfarms from 2020. …

The Tories will be working out the details of the pledge, which could involve an absolute cap on the output from onshore turbines. Lesser measures, which would all come into force in 2020, would involve lower subsidies or introducing tighter planning restrictions.

The senior Conservative said it was important to act because onshore windfarms had become so unpopular.

But Cameron’s party understands that renewable energy in general is popular in the country, so the manifesto might offset the anti-onshore wind pledge with strong commitments to solar power and offshore wind farms.

“We are not going to allow the [opposition] to characterize us as anti-clean-energy just because we want to control the number of onshore windfarms,” one party source told the newspaper. “We are mindful that uncontrolled expansion of onshore wind is alienating people from the whole clean energy debate.”


Source
Conservatives to promise ban on new onshore windfarms, The Guardian

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Europe wimps out again on airlines’ carbon pollution

by PorfiriBidencop Posted on April 4, 2014

Europe wimps out again on airlines’ carbon pollution

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Shutterstock / Lukas Rebec

European efforts to force international airlines to pay for their carbon pollution will stay parked on the runway for at least several more years.

Airlines are covered by the European Union’s Emissions Trading System. Airfares for flights within Europe have included a carbon fee under that system since the beginning of 2012. The plan has been to expand the program to include international flights that begin or end in Europe, but that proposal has been vigorously opposed by China, the U.S., and other countries. China had put a large order for aircraft from Europe-based Airbus on hold over the dispute.

On Thursday, amid promises that the climate-unfriendly airline industry will soon launch its own climate program, the U.S. and China prevailed, again, clinching a years-long delay. Members of the European Parliament voted 458 to 120 to exempt flights in and out of Europe from the emissions trading program until early 2017. A bid to delay the program until 2020 was rejected by the lawmakers.

“We have the next International Civil Aviation Organization assembly in 2016,” parliamentarian Peter Liese said. “If it fails to deliver a global [climate] agreement, then nobody could justify our maintaining such an exemption.” But so far the aviation industry’s efforts to develop its own climate plan have been feeble.

“The [European] Commission would of course have preferred and fought for a higher level of ambition,” E.U. Climate Commissioner
Connie Hedegaard said. “It would’ve been better for Europe’s self-respect and reputation and even more important, for the climate. But we are where we are.”


Source
EU drops plan to extend CO2 rules to international flights, Reuters
EU Lawmakers Limit Carbon Charge on Airlines, The Wall Street Journal
EU backs compromise on plane CO2 emissions, BBC

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Europe wimps out again on airlines’ carbon pollution

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Republicans join Democrats in trying to revive wind energy incentives

by KendraSoileau Posted on April 4, 2014

Republicans join Democrats in trying to revive wind energy incentives

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The political winds in the nation’s capitol shifted on Thursday in favor of wind energy.

A Senate committee passed a bill that would restore two key tax credits for the wind industry. Both credits have helped spur the sector’s rapid growth in recent years, but Congress allowed them to expire at the end of last year. Uncertainty over whether the incentives would be extended into 2014 was blamed for a startling decline in wind farm construction last year, when just 1 gigawatt of capacity was installed — down from 13 gigawatts the year before.

Thursday’s move by the Senate Finance Committee doesn’t guarantee that the full Senate will support resurrection of the credits, much less the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. But encouraging signs emerged after Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) tried to kill the credits. He argued that restoring them would amount to picking energy-industry winners and losers and forcing taxpayers to “subsidize inefficient, uncompetitive forms of energy.” (Meanwhile, taxpayers continue a century-long tradition of subsidizing fossil fuels.) CleanTechnica reports on the encouraging bipartisan response to Toomey’s effort:

The PTC [wind energy Production Tax Credit] and the alternate Investment Tax Credit were added overnight to a modified “Chairman’s mark,” after an earlier draft released Monday left them and several other provisions for further negotiation.

They prevailed on a critical 18-6 vote during the committee markup late Thursday morning, on a motion by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) to strip them out. Five Republicans joined the committee’s Democrats in voting down that amendment: Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), John Thune (R-SD), Rob Portman (R-OH), Mike Crapo (R-ID), and John Cornyn (R-TX).

A number of Senators on both sides of the aisle highlighted the success of the PTC and ITC. Grassley spoke at length in favor of the tax credits, and called Toomey’s arguments against their extension “intellectually dishonest,” considering billions of dollars a year in permanent incentives for other forms of energy with which renewable energy competes.

The wind energy industry cheered the development and called on the full Senate and the House to follow suit. “Passage by the full Congress will preserve an essential incentive for private investment that has averaged $15 billion a year into new U.S. wind farms, and create more orders for over 550 American factories in the supply chain,” said Tom Kiernan, chief executive of the American Wind Energy Association.


Source
Renewable Energy Production Tax Credit Gets Important Last-Minute Push, CleanTechnica
Wind tax credit survives Senate Finance markup, The Hill

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Mexican gangs learn that lime pays (also crime)

by LYZPhiltyouwwfc Posted on March 27, 2014

Grocery cartel

Mexican gangs learn that lime pays (also crime)

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“I could just kill for a margarita right now,” you sigh, apparently ignorant of the fact that it is March, and the consumption of an iced beverage is nothing short of an act of insanity. It’s also probably the middle of the workday, so that in itself should be cause for concern in most circles.

You’re also probably unaware that someone may have actually killed – as in, committed murder – for the limes that go in your hypothetical margarita. Cartels are invading the Mexican citrus trade, hijacking trucks, and forcibly taking over farms to sell the now-valuable fruit. Another day, another ring of organized criminals making the transition from eight balls to tasty treats!

NPR reports that unprecedented rainfall in the states of Michoacán, Guerrero, and Veracruz and a widespread bacterial infection in the state of Colima have resulted in minimal lime yields this year. As a result, farmers can charge a high price for their harvest, no matter the quality.

The demand for delicious citrus fruit has not escaped the attention of former Mexican drug lords. Canadian CBC News reports that the Knights Templar (Caballeros Templarios) cartel, an offshoot of the defunct but infamously brutal La Familia Michoacana, has been forcing farmers in the Tierra Caliente region to pay “protection taxes” to the cartel, which drive up lime prices even further. In some cases, the Knights Templar will seize citrus farms and take over production, sometimes killing farmers in the process. And according to NPR, lime producers are starting to hire security details to protect shipments of limes from organized hijackers at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Knights Templar have been active in the region for years preceding this lime crisis, but it’s only provided further opportunity for them to profit. Organized crime in the Tierra Caliente region, which includes parts of Michoacán and Guerrero, has wreaked havoc on its agriculture. A recent evaluation by the National Chamber of Business, Services, and Tourism of Apatzingán, a central city in the Tierra Caliente valley, showed that the cost of restoring the local citrus farming industry alone would exceed $130 million (link in Spanish).

Raúl Millan of Vision Import Group expressed surprise to NPR that customers are still buying up limes at prices that are double or triple what they normally are. Have you ever tried to separate the average American from her guac, Raúl? Come on. You know better.


Source
In Mexico And U.S., Lime Lovers Feel Squeezed By High Prices, NPR
Mexican drug cartel behind increase in lime prices, CBC News

Eve Andrews is a Grist fellow and new Seattle transplant via the mean streets of Chicago, Poughkeepsie, and Pittsburgh, respectively and in order of meanness. Follow her on Twitter.

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Mexican gangs learn that lime pays (also crime)

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Congress successfully took the wind out of wind energy’s sails last year

by JacelynZ96 Posted on March 27, 2014

Congress successfully took the wind out of wind energy’s sails last year

By

Kaj Iversön

America’s fossil fuel-smitten Congress helped China blow the U.S. out of the water last year when it came to installing new wind energy farms.

A little more than 16 gigawatts of new wind capacity came online in China in 2013 — nearly half of the 36 gigawatts installed around the world. Compare that with a little more than 1 gigawatt that was installed in the U.S. — down alarmingly from 13 gigawatts the year before.

That means American wind installations plummeted in a single year despite the falling price of wind energy, which is becoming lower than the price of electricity produced by burning natural gas in some parts of the country.

Dude, where’s our wind? Well, the latest figures were calculated by Navigant Research, and it blamed a “politically divided Congress” in a new paywalled report for the faltering wind growth in the U.S.

Congress allowed wind energy tax credits to blow away at the end of 2013 — so why would 2013′s installation figures be so bleak? According to the report, it was all about uncertainty. Lawmakers ”failed to extend tax incentives in time to positively impact the 2013 development and construction cycle.”

(Needless to say, Congress, which failed to extend the tax credits amid fossil fuel lobbyist whining that the wind energy industry needs to stand on its own feet, failed to do anything about the billions of dollars in subsidies doled out to fossil fuel companies every year.)

The new report contains some bleak news for those accustomed to reading about runaway growth in renewables. Less wind capacity was installed around the world in 2013 than had been the case in 2012 — the first time that such a decline has been recorded in eight years.

Still, thing are looking bright — particularly for the emerging offshore wind sector. Thirteen new offshore projects added 1.7 gigawatts of capacity last year — up by 50 percent compared with 2012. And 6.6 gigawatts of new offshore capacity is currently under construction.

The researchers forecast that the sector will rebound globally this year, with new installations expected to better last year’s effort by 30 percent. By the end of 2014, the researchers say wind energy will be meeting 2.9 percent of the world’s demand for electricity — a figure they expect to rise to 7.3 percent by 2018.

Navigant ResearchClick to embiggen.


Source
World Market Update 2013, Navigant Research

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Congress successfully took the wind out of wind energy’s sails last year

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Ohio lawmakers: All right, folks, we guess it’s okay for you to buy Teslas

by HelaineAtchison Posted on March 27, 2014

Ohio lawmakers: All right, folks, we guess it’s OK for you to buy Teslas

By

Tesla

If you live in Ohio, your lawmakers are poised to allow you to purchase a Tesla from a sales center — without forcing you to drive outside the borders of the Buckeye State to do your eco-friendly spending.

But legislative efforts to placate the Ohio Automobile Dealers Association will nonetheless cap the number of sales offices Tesla is allowed to operate inside the state at three – and other auto manufacturers will be barred outright from hawking their wheel-spinning wares direct to buyers. Here’s the news, courtesy of NJTV:

An Ohio Senate committee approved a bill formally barring automakers from selling directly to consumers except for a maximum of three outlets for electric-car builder Tesla Motors Inc.

The measure was a compromise between the company and the Ohio Automobile Dealers Association, which had sought to block Tesla from selling without a middleman, according to state Sen. Scott Oelslager, the committee chairman.

Tesla, based in Palo Alto, Calif., operates Ohio stores in Columbus and Cincinnati and will be permitted to add a third as long as the company isn’t sold or acquired and doesn’t produce anything other than all-electric vehicles, under the legislation worked out yesterday.

Why are states getting into the strange business of banning a wildly hyped, pretty cool, awfully expensive electric car manufacturer? Tesla’s direct sales model has drawn opposition from car salesmen — middlemen who fear becoming superfluous as Tesla champions a direct-to-consumer auto-marketing model. That opposition has led to sales bans in five states and restrictions in two others.

In New Jersey, for example, Grist’s Ben Adler explains that Gov. Chris Christie’s administration is forcing the electric-auto maker to shut down its two sales offices. The promising news there is that a Democratic assemblyman recently introduced a bill that would unshackle Tesla from Christie’s new ban on its sales model.


Source
Tesla may be nearer to a compromise in Ohio, NJTV

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Ohio lawmakers: All right, folks, we guess it’s okay for you to buy Teslas

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Ohio lawmakers: All right, folks, we guess it’s OK for you to buy Teslas

by ColemanPermewan Posted on March 27, 2014

Ohio lawmakers: All right, folks, we guess it’s OK for you to buy Teslas

By

Tesla

If you live in Ohio, your lawmakers are poised to allow you to purchase a Tesla from a sales center — without forcing you to drive outside the borders of the Buckeye State to do your eco-friendly spending.

But legislative efforts to placate the Ohio Automobile Dealers Association will nonetheless cap the number of sales offices Tesla is allowed to operate inside the state at three – and other auto manufacturers will be barred outright from hawking their wheel-spinning wares direct to buyers. Here’s the news, courtesy of NJTV:

An Ohio Senate committee approved a bill formally barring automakers from selling directly to consumers except for a maximum of three outlets for electric-car builder Tesla Motors Inc.

The measure was a compromise between the company and the Ohio Automobile Dealers Association, which had sought to block Tesla from selling without a middleman, according to state Sen. Scott Oelslager, the committee chairman.

Tesla, based in Palo Alto, Calif., operates Ohio stores in Columbus and Cincinnati and will be permitted to add a third as long as the company isn’t sold or acquired and doesn’t produce anything other than all-electric vehicles, under the legislation worked out yesterday.

Why are states getting into the strange business of banning a wildly hyped, pretty cool, awfully expensive electric car manufacturer? Tesla’s direct sales model has drawn opposition from car salesmen — middlemen who fear becoming superfluous as Tesla champions a direct-to-consumer auto-marketing model. That opposition has led to sales bans in five states and restrictions in two others.

In New Jersey, for example, Grist’s Ben Adler explains that Gov. Chris Christie’s administration is forcing the electric automaker to shut down its two sales offices. The promising news there is that a Democratic assemblymember recently introduced a bill that would unshackle Tesla from Christie’s new ban on its sales model.


Source
Tesla may be nearer to a compromise in Ohio, NJTV

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Ohio lawmakers: All right, folks, we guess it’s OK for you to buy Teslas

Posted in alo, Anchor, aquaculture, eco-friendly, FF, Free Press, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized, wind energy | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Ohio lawmakers: All right, folks, we guess it’s OK for you to buy Teslas

The clean energy industry is turning Nevada green

by Cass Barret Posted on March 21, 2014

The clean energy industry is turning Nevada green

By

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Few things could be less sustainable than an entertainment mecca in the middle of a desert. But there’s more to Nevada than the Vegas Strip, and investors in the Silver State are finding better ways of wagering their money than in slot machines.

On Thursday, leaders from both major parties joined forces to tout Nevada’s clean technology sector. U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval (R) held a press conference to laud the $5.5 billion that has been invested in the industry in the state since 2010.

The figure was calculated by the Clean Energy Project, a Las Vegas–based advocacy group for the renewables sector. The group credits state tax breaks for growing clean energy investment. From its new report:

Due to Nevada’s vast solar, wind, geothermal and biomass resources, the state has excelled at meeting demand in and out of its borders leading to significant clean energy capital investments. As of 2014, Nevada has 480 MW of clean energy developed or being developed to meet its energy demand and 985 MW of clean energy exported to other states.

The cumulative capital investments for both in-state and out-of-state clean energy projects, including transmission lines to move the clean electrons, total $5.5 billion since 2010. Nevada’s Investment of $500 million in tax abatements has attracted $5.5 billion of capital investment in clean energy projects to the state.

According to the report, $2.3 billion worth of solar projects are operating in Nevada, many of them installed by an 80-company-strong solar industry that employs 2,400 people. Geothermal energy has long been an important part of Nevada’s energy mix, and the report notes about $1 billion of investment in that sector since 2009. Wind energy remains nascent, though 66 turbines are spinning at the Spring Valley Wind project.

All of these projects will help Nevada meet its goal of getting 25 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2025. About two-thirds of the electricity sold in Nevada currently comes from natural gas, with a hefty dose of coal in there as well.

“Renewable energy is one of the focuses of our economic development,” Sandoval said Thursday against the backdrop of the solar-powered “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign. “I think that the taxpayers can be confident that they’re getting a good return on their dollar.”


Source
Going Green in the Silver State, KLAS-TV Las Vegas

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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The clean energy industry is turning Nevada green

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