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Solar crowdfunding project Mosaic sells out in under 24 hours

by greenenergy4 Posted on January 8, 2013

Solar crowdfunding project Mosaic sells out in under 24 hours

By Lisa Hymas

Yesterday we told you about the launch of Mosaic, a new Kickstarter-style service that makes it easy to invest in rooftop solar projects. Today comes news that it’s already sold out shares in all of its public projects. Talk about pent-up demand!

Solar MosaicThese people invested in a solar project and now they’re happy.

From a company press release:

Mosaic, an online marketplace that connects investors to high-quality solar projects, sold out its first four projects in less than 24 hours with over 400 investors putting in between $25 and $30,000. In total, investors put in over $313,000 with an average investment of nearly $700. …

To date, Mosaic has raised $1.1M from more than 700 investors to finance twelve rooftop solar power plants in California, Arizona and New Jersey. Mosaic’s latest projects were available to residents of California and New York as well as accredited investors from around the country. …

Mosaic’s first investment offerings for New York and California residents are in solar projects on affordable housing apartments for low-income residents in California and offer a 4.5% annual return, net of servicing fees, with terms of approximately nine years.

Mosaic still has one project left that’s open to “accredited investors who meet certain financial suitability requirements.” If you don’t know whether you’re an accredited investor, it’s a pretty good bet that you’re not.

While waiting for the federal government to democratize investing rules and let more people participate in Mosaic-style projects, the company says it’s “pursuing other avenues for crowdfunding clean energy.” Stay tuned.

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A new year, a new Keystone XL blockade

by hanhuogekennog Posted on January 3, 2013

A new year, a new Keystone XL blockade

By Susie Cagle

Late Wednesday night, the Keystone XL blockaders launched a new tree-sit in Diboli, Texas, coinciding with kickoff of a direct-action training camp.

Last month, TransCanada, which is constructing the southern leg of Keystone XL, got around an 85-day treetop blockade by rerouting the pipeline. With this new tree-sit, located 150 miles south of the old one, “blockaders have found a location around which the pipe cannot easily be rerouted,” activists said in a statement.

A number of protesters on the ground have been arrested so far today, but the two activists in the trees are still untouched, and there have not (yet) been reports of police using force against anyone. In the past, police have put blockade activists in choke holds, dragged them on the ground, and pepper-sprayed them into compliance.

Blockaders say this latest action is being done in solidarity with Idle No More, an ongoing movement of Canada’s First Nations peoples who have, among other battles, been fighting against tar-sands pipelines on their native land. “Rising up to defend our homes against corporate exploitation is our best and only hope to preserve life on this planet,” Tar Sands Blockade spokesperson Ron Seifert said in a statement. “We must normalize and embrace direct, organized resistance to the death machine of industrial extraction and stand with those like Idle No More who take extraordinary risk to defend their families and livelihoods.”

A diversity of tactics and an ability to roll with the punches pepper spray are necessary to any movement’s success. The sustained energy around this series of blockades in Texas is notable, especially after the group’s December defeat. As opposition against the Keystone XL pipeline heats up on the ground in 2013, it seems safe to say that it’ll stay strong in the trees, too.

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The feds fine Transocean $1.4 billion for Deepwater spill

by johnsmithwindows Posted on January 3, 2013

The feds fine Transocean $1.4 billion for Deepwater spill

By Philip Bump

Ever wonder how much it costs to have a subsidiary role in leaking millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 people and countless sea animals and gutting the regional economy for months on end?

It costs $1.4 billion.

Transocean has agreed to pay a total of $1.4 billion in civil and criminal fines and penalties for its role in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster in 2010, the Department of Justice just announced.

Under a federal court settlement, it will also plead guilty to violating the Clean Water Act. And Transocean will have to take steps to improve safety and emergency response procedures on its drilling rigs.

So there you go. $1.4 billion. Write a check, mail it to Washington, and get to polluting. That’s how capitalism works.

Source

Transocean to Pay $1.4 Billion in Gulf Spill Accord, The New York Times

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Wind-energy tax credit would get extension under ‘fiscal cliff’ deal

by hanhuogekennog Posted on December 31, 2012

Wind-energy tax credit would get extension under ‘fiscal cliff’ deal

By Lisa Hymas

Tennessee Valley Infrastructure Group Inc.

It appears that a deal in the works to avert the so-called fiscal cliff would extend a critical tax credit for the wind-power industry for one year.

“The potential agreement that’s being talked about … would extend tax credits for clean-energy companies that are creating jobs and reducing our dependence on foreign oil,” President Obama said at a press conference today.

The production tax credit (PTC) for the wind industry expires today. With its status up in the air, wind companies across the country have been laying off workers and putting projects on hold. If the PTC isn’t renewed, 37,000 jobs could be lost, according to the American Wind Energy Association.

Clean-energy advocates had been hoping for a deal that would extend the tax credit for multiple years. After all, the fossil-fuel industry doesn’t have to come crawling back to Congress repeatedly to beg for renewal of its subsidies — the main dirty-energy perks are ongoing. But a one-year extension would be better than nothing. And the terms of the tax credit might be changed so that new wind projects don’t have to be finished in 2013 to qualify, but just have to be started, which would mean a bigger boost to the industry.

Of course, the whole fiscal-cliff deal is still totally up in the air. “Today, it appears that an agreement to prevent this New Year’s tax hike is within sight, but it’s not done,” Obama said at his press conference. So don’t raise a toast yet. You might want to pour a stiff drink instead.

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Lead-bullet ad targets NRA, misses the point

by RubinkJoseph Posted on December 21, 2012

Lead-bullet ad targets NRA, misses the point

By Susie Cagle

Gun violence is America’s lurking health crisis. But not exactly the way the Center for Biological Diversity means in its full-page New York Times ad today.

Click to embiggen.

None of this is untrue! A drop in environmental lead has even been correlated with a (moderate) drop in violent crime — but that is cold comfort for the people who live in poor urban areas that are afflicted by both gun violence and environmental pollution that isn’t born from hunted meat or shooting ranges.

On a day when the National Rifle Association called for armed guards at every school in America, maybe getting rid of the lead in those would-be guards’ bullets shouldn’t necessarily be our first priority?

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Walmart bribed its way around Mexico’s environmental rules

by RubinkJoseph Posted on December 19, 2012

Walmart bribed its way around Mexico’s environmental rules

By Susie Cagle

BREAKING: Walmart did another terrible thing!

grass_stained_feet

The retail giant is not just the biggest employer in the U.S. — it also dominates Mexico with 2,275 outlets. And it got there by playing very, very dirty. According to the second part of a New York Times investigation, Walmart de Mexico routinely bribed officials not just to get its plans bumped to the top of the pile, but to “subvert democratic governance.” This is how the company successfully built a Walmart in a Teotihuacán alfalfa field a mile from ancient pyramids that draw tons of tourists. (Now those tourists get a view of a boxy Walmart supercenter when they climb to the top.) The local leaders said no, so Walmart de Mexico paid a guy $52,000 and redrew the zoning map itself.

Frankly, this is not very surprising. But it’s damning as hell. From the Times:

Thanks to eight bribe payments totaling $341,000, for example, Wal-Mart built a Sam’s Club in one of Mexico City’s most densely populated neighborhoods, near the Basílica de Guadalupe, without a construction license, or an environmental permit, or an urban impact assessment, or even a traffic permit. Thanks to nine bribe payments totaling $765,000, Wal-Mart built a vast refrigerated distribution center in an environmentally fragile flood basin north of Mexico City, in an area where electricity was so scarce that many smaller developers were turned away.

But there is no better example of Wal-Mart de Mexico’s methods than its conquest of Mrs. Pineda’s alfalfa field. In Teotihuacán, The Times found that Wal-Mart de Mexico executives approved at least four different bribe payments — more than $200,000 in all — to build just a medium-size supermarket. Without those payoffs, records and interviews show, Wal-Mart almost surely would not have been allowed to build in Mrs. Pineda’s field.

The Times seems eager to point out that this is a Walmart problem, not a Mexico problem. These bribes were not, as Reuters puts it, “routine payments.” Except that in effect they actually were.

Walmart now says it’s all kinds of ready “to fully cooperate with the competent authorities in whatever investigation,”  Fox helpfully reports (even though the company abandoned its own internal investigation years ago). Perhaps this is because it could be facing “sizable fines.”

This is both vindicating and infuriating, like most times Walmart gets caught doing something terrible. The Securities and Exchange Commission and Department of Justice might be investigating, but they aren’t commenting on the story, at least not yet. Meanwhile, shares of Walmart’s stock rose 30 cents today.

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Will the FDA keep hiding most data on farm antibiotic use?

by RubinkJoseph Posted on December 18, 2012

Will the FDA keep hiding most data on farm antibiotic use?

By Susie Cagle

Livestock antibiotics may beef up our meat, but they may also create drug-resistant bugs that could one day kill us. Unfortunately, the FDA doesn’t want to tell us what it knows about how much antibiotic use is happening on American farms.

Animal Equality

Antibiotics bottles on a pig farm.

Tomorrow, the FDA will hold two public meetings on reauthorization of the Animal Drug User Fee Act, which is due to happen in 2013. One question up for discussion: how much antibiotic info should be publicly released under the act. First passed in 2003, ADUFA took money from frustrated drug companies that wanted to speed up their review process and gave it to the feds to hire more reviewers. (Hiring federal drug reviewers with big drug dollars — not sketchy at all!) The 2008 reauthorization of the act added a provision requiring the FDA to release compiled data on livestock drug use. But this is hardly an open government effort, as Maryn McKenna writes at Wired.

[I]n each year, the FDA released only summed amounts, in kilograms, of all the drugs sold, by all the companies, for all livestock species, across all agricultural uses: growth promoters, prevention, and treatment.

The veterinary pharma companies are not getting together, adding up their sales by drug class for the entire year, and delivering the totals to the FDA. The companies report to the agency individually; they report their data by month, not year; and they report how the drugs are administered, in feed, in water, or by injection.

The FDA receives all this data but is not releasing it, presumably for reasons having to do with its initial ADUFA negotiations with agriculture.

The FDA has already compiled some recommendations for the reauthorization. McKenna:

The recommendations do include a number of things that the agency agrees to change on behalf of veterinary-antibiotic manufacturers, such as agreeing to shorter review times for drug applications, and other “enhancements” of its performance. But there is no sign it has responded to any of the requests made by organizations concerned about the off-farm, downstream, human health effects which occur when those antibiotics are used.

If the FDA doesn’t want to take the public’s comments seriously, it might have to taste the public’s wrath. Earlier this month, the Government Accountability Project filed a lawsuit against the FDA for withholding the animal drug data, despite Freedom of Information Act requests. The FDA claims it’s protecting “confidential commercial information,” a.k.a. trade secrets, which kind of tells us everything we need to know about ADUFA in a nutshell gelatin capsule.

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San Francisco’s private-public spaces go public-public

by RubinkJoseph Posted on December 18, 2012

San Francisco’s private-public spaces go public-public

By Susie Cagle

It may be one of the most expensive places to live in the country, but San Francisco is still sticking to its hippie roots and trying to look out for its commoners. A city mandate requires that downtown developers include a space in every new building for the city’s scruffy thousands who can’t afford Financial District condos. Some of these privately owned public spaces, or POPOS, look especially nice and fancy. Some have weird but glorious monster head sculptures. All languish relatively unused — but that may be about to change.

Scott Beale

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

The provision of privately owned public open spaces is governed by the city’s 1985 downtown plan. The formula “to meet the needs of downtown workers, residents and visitors” requires 1 square foot of public space per 50 square feet of office space or hotels.

At least 15 such spaces have been created since then because of the program. In addition, at least two recent projects not covered by the downtown plan include distinctive publicly accessible spaces: the San Francisco Federal Building with its three-story “sky garden” cut into the 18-story tower, and an expansive landscaped passage between the clover-shaped towers of the Infinity condominium complex. …

The 1985 plan states that when public spaces are located within or on top of buildings, “their availability should be marked visibly at street level.” But because the guidelines are so vague, it’s easy to fulfill their letter but not their spirit.

C’mon: If you were a downtown developer, would you want the street rabble accessing your luxury loft building’s glorious roof garden, even though the city requires it? Hell no. They must build it, but they can make it very difficult for you to come. ”Stay in the streets, plebes!” the developers cry as they ash their cigars off the 101st floor.

But not anymore! An update to the city’s ordinance now requires much clearer signage for the public benefit. From Atlantic Cities:

“It should create a branding to get to the question, ‘does the public understand what these spaces are?” [city manager of legislative affairs AnMarie] Rodgers says. “It should really help people to see it as not just one space, but a network of downtown open spaces.”

A new online tool maps all the POPOS and lets you sort by open hours, food availability, and public restrooms. Many have seating and views of the city, and some even have power outlets for your new pop-up flash-mob coworking space.

Can you imagine if all cities did this? We’d have public bathroom maps for every downtown!

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Senator famous for shooting cap-and-trade bill argues for gun control

by RubinkJoseph Posted on December 17, 2012

Senator famous for shooting cap-and-trade bill argues for gun control

By Philip Bump

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) pledged to always defend West Virginia. To that end, in an infamous 2010 campaign ad, the good senator (then governor) loaded up his rifle and shot a hole in the already-dead cap-and-trade bill.

In Manchin’s mind, that’s defending West Virginia — halting policies that would demand coal companies incur the costs of their pollution. And what better visual metaphor than the gun? Blam. Shot dead.

But Manchin’s had a change of heart. Now, it seems, he sees the error in that ad. No, not the part about how he was arguing against a policy that held coal to account. No, now Manchin thinks we need more limits on guns.

From Politico:

West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin — who has an “A” rating from the NRA and is a lifetime member of the pro-gun rights group — said Monday that it was time to “move beyond rhetoric” on gun control.

“I just came with my family from deer hunting,” Manchin said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “I’ve never had more than three shells in a clip. Sometimes you don’t get more than one shot anyway at a deer. It’s common sense. It’s time to move beyond rhetoric. We need to sit down and have a common-sense discussion and move in a reasonable way.” …

“I don’t know anyone in the hunting or sporting arena that goes out with an assault rifle,” he said. “I don’t know anybody that needs 30 rounds in the clip to go hunting. I mean, these are things that need to be talked about.”

These are things that need to be talked about. With the memory of dead first-graders all too fresh in mind, we need to talk about how unchecked gun ownership, the unlimited ability to own weapons and ammunition, is a threat to public health.

Meanwhile, coal killed some 13,000 people in the U.S. in 2010 — and there will be uncountable future deaths resulting from the carbon dioxide that coal leaves in the atmosphere.

Manchin is right about revisiting gun laws, of course. But one can’t help but wonder what evidence he’ll need before he sees that casually shooting anti-pollution legislation was a misjudgment in more than one way.

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Tiny twisters could power your town — someday

by Myrna Posted on December 14, 2012

Tiny twisters could power your town — someday

By Susie Cagle

You thought you were cool with your wind turbines, hippies? Canadian inventor Louis Michaud sees your wind turbines and raises you a freaking tornado.

m_bridi

Yes, climate change may be unleashing monster tornadoes upon us now, but those aren’t the tornadoes Michaud wants to “control and exploit.” Today the inventor won a grant through the Thiel Foundation’s “revolutionary” Breakout Labs to develop power-generating twisters.

The Toronto Star reports:

[B]y today’s measure, Michaud’s idea is the definition of radical. Through his company AVEtec — the AVE standing for “atmospheric vortex engine” — the long-term plan is to take waste heat from a thermal power plant or industrial facility and use it to create a controllable twister that can generate electricity.

Here’s how it works: Waste heat is blown at an angle into a large circular structure, creating a flow of spinning hot air. We all know heat travels upward and as it does it spins itself into a rising vortex.

The higher the twister grows, the greater the temperature differential between top and bottom, creating stronger and stronger convective forces that act like fuel for the vortex, eventually allowing it to take on a life of its own.

The result is that hot air initially blown into the bottom of the structure starts getting sucked in so forcefully that it spins electricity-generating turbines installed at the base …

Given the destructive history of naturally formed tornadoes, many people might be freaked out by the thought of having man-made tornadoes intentionally scattered near cities and power plants.

Michaud assured that his twisters are much safer to operate and control than, say, a nuclear plant. And because they’re fuelled by the waste heat that’s initially supplied, all the operator has to do is throttle back or cut off that heat to weaken or stop the vortex.

True to its self-proclaimed radical spirit, Breakout Labs has also backed meat and leather 3D printing from Modern Meadow. Essentially it funds magic.

So hey, is anyone out there working on a protective forcefield for cyclists …?

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