They do!

A reader reminded me that I had promised to send defunct CFL bulbs to my Congressman, so I’ve dug the latest failure out of the kitchen trash can and will send it off to Jimbo in Washington, labeled “hazardous waste’. Blogging may be suspended while I arrange bail.

For Canadians, the process is different:
1. Address your package to a non-existent recipient
2. In the “from” corner, write: 219-2211 West 4th Avenue
Vancouver, BC V6K 4S2
3. Drop it in a mailbox without adding stamps.
But you didn’t hear that from me.
From the comments; “what can I mail the good Dr. if I refuse to have those twisty bulbs in my house?”
A brick is nice.

Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
Chicago Climate Exchange website;

CCX Members are leaders in greenhouse gas (GHG) management and represent all sectors of the global economy, as well as public sector innovators. Reductions achieved through CCX are the only reductions made in North America through a legally binding compliance regime, providing independent, third party verification by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA, formerly NASD). The founder and chairman of CCX is economist and financial innovator Dr. Richard L. Sandor, who was named a Hero of the Planet by Time Magazine in 2002 for founding CCX, and in 2007 as the “father of carbon trading.”

Chicago Climate Exchange website;

More…

Deere said the sale will allow it to get back to what it does best, which is manufacturing farm equipment.

A well done presentation for Saskatoon residents.
(The survey is here if you have the time.)

Oddly enough.

Via WUWT;

The coalition is watering down a commitment to tough new environmental emissions standards, raising the possibility of dirty coal-fired power stations such as Kingsnorth going ahead.
Green groups are aghast that a flagship policy called for in opposition by both Lib Dems and Tories, and which they last year tried to force on the Labour government, will now not be implemented in the coalition’s first energy bill to be published this year.

h/t Maz2

They’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse;

Organised groups linked to the Italian Mafia are among those to have infiltrated the industry, Jason Wright, senior director of Kroll’s consulting group, told The Times.
While emphasising that the overwhelming majority of European wind projects were “entirely legitimate”, he said that criminals were increasingly investing in the industry, both to qualify for subsidies and to launder profits from drug-running and other illegal activities.
Kroll, he added, was doing brisk business conducting due diligence on renewable energy projects on behalf of big banks and other potential investors.
The American-owned Kroll has detected a sharp increase since 2007 in the number of cases involving fraud and corruption in the wind energy sector – chiefly in Italy and Spain but also in Bulgaria, Romania and other parts of Central and Eastern Europe.
“Renewable energy is completely dependent on subsidies, so it is clearly an area for corruption,” Mr Wright said.

Related – “Under the Green Energy Act, renewable energy developers are supposed to consult with municipalities in advance of planning such as turbine developments. The Act, however, appears to take away the power of municipal councils to rule on such developments.”

Who needs windmills when you’ve got pumpjacks?

The tens of thousands of nodding pumpjacks scattered throughout Alberta’s oilfields could soon go green, generating electricity for the power grid while saving firms a cool thousand dollars a month in operating costs for each unit.
Edmonton-based Canada Control Works Inc. has devised a way to harvest gravity on the downstroke of the pumps, using the concept of kinetic energy found in braking systems for electric cars, where energy is fed back into the battery.

I love the smell of enviromarxist head explosions in the morning. And think of the profit potential in subsidy rich Ontario!
h/t Eric Anderson

Vancouver Sun;

[BCAA spokesman Trace Acres] said a Honda Civic hybrid cost only $290 more to operate over five years compared to its gas equivalent, whereas the Toyota Prius cost $1,718 more to operate than its gas equivalent, the Toyota Matrix. Over a five-year period, the cost to own and operate a Honda Insight was $38,326, a Toyota Prius cost $40,324 and the Honda Civic Hybrid cost $42,664.

Still, signs of progress. One model (out of 16 tested] has been found to produce actual cost savings over its gasoline powered equivalent!

The [Mercedes-Benz S400] cost $145,262 to buy and drive over five years, compared to the S450 gasoline model, which cost $150,622.

Because they sell it for less.

Uh oh…

Nova Scotia’s energy minister said Friday he thinks a variety of measures — including possibly revisiting emission standard goals — should be considered as the province grapples with potential energy rate hikes.
After meeting Tuesday with a number of business and community groups concerned about the effects of an increase, Bill Estabrooks wouldn’t take a position when asked whether emission targets needed to be eased in an effort to reduce costs.
But Estabrooks now says it’s his opinion that all options should be considered and that the government is obliged to do something to help many Nova Scotians make ends meet.
“Everything is on the table,” he said in an interview. “As a politician you can announce targets and state policies, but when it comes to people and policies it seems to me at times that people get lost in the shuffle.”
He suggested the government was “going to have to do something,” though he didn’t have a specific suggestion about what to do about emission targets.

After all, it’s only your money;

NORTH Vancouver’s hydrogen-powered car wash, part of the province’s touted Hydrogen Highway, has not been powered by hydrogen since the beginning of April.
The Easywash eco-friendly car wash at Main Street and Mountain Highway has been running on electricity from the public grid for the past 3* months, ever since government funding for the demonstration project expired.

Now witness as this massive real world fail undergoes transformation into “conceptual” success….

About 70 per cent of the fuel cell’s costs were covered by a grant from provincial and federal governments.
The car wash project was only intended to show the concept could work, which it did, said Armstrong.

Your takeaway Green Energy Lesson for Today – “Never underestimate the power in bullshit”.
h/t Helene

Just think of it as practice.

h/t andycanuck

Just think of it as practice.

Related… “Twenty thousand dollars invested in solar panels produces about $100 of energy per year.”
(Heh – “$20,000 invested in Canadian Oil Sands Trust returned $1480 a year.”)

Just think of it as practice.

That is all.

“…and we’re putting in more government to run things.”
h/t Sounder

Wind generation for Ontario in June… “In fact, there was a period of two hours where not one MW was recorded as being produced.”

Small wonder Britain is nearly bankrupt;

Energy firms will receive thousands of pounds a day per wind farm to turn off their turbines because the National Grid cannot use the power they are producing.
[…]
The first successful test shut down of wind farms took place three weeks ago. Scottish Power received £13,000 for closing down two farms for a little over an hour on 30 May at about five in the morning.
Whereas coal and gas power stations often pay the National Grid £15 to £20 per megawatt hour they do not supply, Scottish Power was paid £180 per megawatt hour during the test to switch off its turbines.

…’cause that ain’t how they do things in Texas!

During these negative price periods, suppliers are paying [Electric Reliability Council of Texas] to take their power. Consumers (at least at the wholesale level) are getting paid for using power, and the more power consumers use the more they get paid. These prices are a big anti-conservation incentive. You could, as a correspondent put it to me, build a giant toaster in West Texas and be paid by generators to operate it.
Infrequently, a power plant might choose to bid below the short term marginal price in order to stay in the market and avoid shutting down. It can be economically rational for operators of less responsive generation units to offer negative prices in order for it to avoid the costs of shutting down for just a few hours and then start up again when load increases – think coal-fueled or natural gas steam turbine. When energy load is very low, near zero or negative prices can result.
This isn’t the cast in West Texas. Instead, the negative prices appear to be the result of the large installed capacity of wind generation. Wind generators face very small costs of shutting down and starting back up, but they do face another cost when shutting down: loss of the Production Tax Credit and state Renewable Energy Credit revenue which depend upon generator output. It is economically rational for wind power producers to operate as long as the subsidy exceeds their operating costs plus the negative price they have to pay the market. Even if the market value of the power is zero or negative, the subsidies encourage wind power producers to keep churning the megawatts out.

The world is being run by crazy people.
h/t Larry

“How many golf carts will it take to dependably replicate the performance of one Mack truck?”

Show your math.

Lee Matthews, via email;

Workers are installing nearly 100 solar panels this week on the roof of a Snohomish County administration building in Everett….
At an installed cost of merely $4500.
Per solar panel.
In an area where hydroelectric power costs around 6 cents per kWh.
And the cloudiest place on Earth: the infamous Puget Sound Convergence Zone.

Disabusing Saskatoonians of the theory that local politicians are more grounded in reality than their provincial and federal counterparts: “The project marks the first time in more than 80 years the city has attempted to generate its own power.”
A reader sends this helpful note;

So that’s $5-mill for 1.5 to 2.0 megawatts of capacity (I am assuming capacity, but that is always how these projects are presented). Given Saskatoon is in a far-worse wind zone than the existing wind park near Swift Current, let’s use the low-end of the out-put at 1.5 megawatts, but let’s run it at 40% capacity like the Swift Current region turbines (which is being generous). That is therefore $5-mill for .6 megawatts of power. So the cost is $8.33 million per mega-watt.
A reactor complex can do 3,500 megawatts but at 90% capacity = 3,150 megawatts. Given the wind costs, the reactor should have a budget of: 3,150 megawatts x’s $8.33 million per mega watt = $26,239.5 million.
So, to be competitive with wind, the reactor complex needs to be built for less than $26-billion. With that budget, a few could be built, even with the largest cost over-runs in reactor construction history.

You can contact Don Atchison here to congratulate him on his impeccable oversight of Saskatoon taxpayer dollars.