"New Energy Bill will revolutionize geothermal energy use in U.S."

WASHINGTON, July 29 /U.S. Newswire/ -- "This new energy bill will revolutionize geothermal energy use in the U.S.," stated Karl Gawell, executive director of the Geothermal Energy Association. "It will encourage new geothermal power plants helping to ease the West's power crisis, and stimulate new geothermal direct use projects that will help communities and business grow while reducing dependence on imported fossil fuels."

Energy Bill Highlights

The Senate today passed the energy bill and it is expected to be signed into law by President Bush. For geothermal energy, the bill includes significant new tax incentives, improvements in federal leasing laws, and support for continued technology development.

Extension and modification of renewable electricity production credit (Section 45). This year, geothermal was awarded the full, 1.9 cents per kilowatt hour federal tax incentive that has helped spur wind energy projects across the nation. The production tax credit, or PTC, is awarded for ten years to new facilities placed in service by Dec. 31, 2007. Last year, Congress expanded the PTC to include geothermal and other renewables, but they would receive the credit for only half of the period, or five years. The decision to give geothermal the full ten year credit period, placing it on equal terms with wind, is a huge victory for the geothermal community, and will help spur new development across the West.

Clean renewable energy bonds. Congress has created a new Clean Renewable Energy Bond ("CREB") to provide cooperatives and other not-for-profit electric companies, as well as Indian Tribal governments, incentives for building new geothermal and other qualified energy projects....cont'd

http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=51112

It accounts for about 0.3% of our current energy portfolio. How much more can we actually tap into?

I know that industry has large power needs compared to homes, but even when the source is renewable, I'm starting to think large power plants may not be the way to go.

Think about this -- whenever you get a large power plant project, you have construction costs and subcontractors, and more likely than not some degree of corruption and bribery of local officials. The costs of these plants is millions, and each one is custom-engineered, has unique support needs, and additional costs in maintaining power distribution.

That applies to nuclear power with it's $3k to $4k/kw plant costs, and probably even applies to large wind farms with their over-engineered, huge windmills, though I don't have a cost for that.

And in the end these are owned not by people, but by corporations.

So, divide the cost of a facility by the number of homes served, and pad a bit to deal with distribution, and what kind of figure per homestead are we talking about here?

Wouldn't a well-engineered home improvement product suite that wasn't exhorbitantly overpriced due to tax credit gouging and poor economy of scale be a better approach? Non-centralized (no major points of failure), designed around the power needs of the individual home (e.g. solar power air conditioning during the summer would really cut grid use, and the power could be used straight from the supply when it is most needed, without the need for storage.) and most of all, owned by the people who use it?

Could it be possible that centralized, distributed electricity generation, even of the green variety, is just a scam to get taxpayers to foot the bill for capacity that only the corporate sector really needs?

www.jasonleopold.blogspot.com


Energy Adviser Who Solicited Enron to Help Write Nat’l Energy Policy to Be Named Chair of FERC


By Jason Leopold
© 2005 Jason Leopold

The audacity inside the Bush administration never ceases to amaze.

The latest example of chutzpah from Bush and co. is the announcement that Joseph Kelliher, a former policy adviser with the Department of Energy who currently serves as a commissioner on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the agency that controls the country's natural gas industry, hydroelectric projects, electric utilities, and oil pipelines and has played a critical role in the deregulation of those industries, will be named by the White House Thursday to chair FERC.

President Bush had previously picked Rebecca Klein, the former Republican head of the Texas Public Utilities Commission and a close friend of the president, to chair FERC but red flags were raised recently during a routine FBI background check on Klein which forced the president to choose a new chairman at the last minute. The White House would not comment on the FBI’s probe on Klein. Klein did not return numerous calls for comment.

Still, news of Kelliher’s appointment to chair FERC came late Wednesday as a welcome surprise to many industry lobbyists and energy executives who view him as a staunch supporter of the free-market principles of deregulation and an advocate for eliminating regulatory restrictions that interferes with the free-market, despite the fact those rules are in place to protect consumers from energy price gouging and market manipulation that took place prior to the Enron scandal four years ago and, to some extent, is still somewhat routine in various parts of the country.

However, what’s most troubling about Kelliher’s appointment to head FERC, a role in which his main priority will now be to protect consumers from the manipulative tactics of the very industry he enjoys a cozy relationship with, is the relentless lobbying of bigwigs in the energy industry in early 2001, as a member of Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force, to help write President Bush’s National Energy Policy in such a way that would be financially beneficial to energy corporations—at the expense of consumers.

The extent to which Kelliher’s went to solicit key players in the energy industry to help write the National Energy Policy became apparent in 2003 when Judicial Watch, a bipartisan watchdog group that sued Vice President Dick Cheney to gain access to Cheney’s list of industry insiders who participated in secret meetings with Cheney’s energy task force, won a legal battle that forced the White House to release several hundred pages of task force related documents.

One such document, a March 10, 2001 email to energy lobbyist Dana Contratto, was damning in that Kelliher asked Contratto if he was “King” or “Il Duce” “what would you include in a national energy policy, especially with respect to natural gas issues?"

MORE...www.jasonleopold.blogspot.com

by simply giving new water heaters away to replace those that are over 10 years old. Especially in hard water areas.

Conservation is always the cheapest, most dollar effective path. The BFEE is full of it once again.