Rising prices for everything from copper and platinum to flour, gas and cooking oil are creating new markets for trend-minded thieves across the U.S.
With gasoline prices in the U.S. breaking new records weekly, for example, law enforcement officials are seeing more cases of cooking grease thefts from fast-food establishments and other restaurants. Why used grease? Because cooking oil can be converted into biodiesel fuel that can be sold at a cool profit.
Denmark-based Vestas Wind Systems (VWS:DC) had a big week. First, the world’s largest wind turbine manufacturer announced that they would be building a tower manufacturing plant in Colorado. Second, Vestas reported a 94 percent jump in earnings in the first quarter of 2008, as compared to the same period last year.
Although they have yet to disclose the location of the new tower manufacturing facility, it would be situated to complement the company’s fist North American blade manufacturing plant, which recently opened its doors in Windsor, Colorado.
For the tower plant, the company will need a large parcel of land served by freight rail, a combination that Northern Colorado can provide at several locations, including the Windsor location, where construction proceeds on phase two of the blade plant. According to the Northern Colorado Business Review, more than 1,000 new jobs could result from further expansion of Vestas’ manufacturing presence.
Every now and again, something really cool crosses my desk, and I think, “Wow, that’s really cool!” Just such an occasion happened this week, when a friend who works in PR sent over some information from The Reuse People of America, or TRP.
Based in Oakland, TRP is a nonprofit organization that works to reduce the amount of useable construction materials that go into landfills. Since its founding in 1993, TRP has salvaged over 200,000 tons of reusable building materials. The resulting resources are sold to the public, or are donated to a variety of worthy causes, including Habitat for Humanity and Goodwill Industries.
Though the materials can come from a variety of sources, over 90% come from TRP’s own demolition services. In demolition projects, TRP acts like any other contractor, except that they sell or donate the resulting “waste”. Homowners who use TRP for demolition get a bonus - tax deductions, based on the value of the materials salvaged. These deductions can be large, in some cases covering the cost of the demolition itself.
Texas comes out on top in the American Wind Energy Association’s (AWEA) 2007 rankings of wind energy leaders, not only in its overall total number of wind turbines but in the amount of new capacity added last year.
Texas wind turbines generated 4,446 megawatts of energy in 2007 — enough to power nearly 1.2 million homes. The state added 1,618 megawatts of new wind power capacity last year, more than double the amount of second-place Colorado.
Can you have state envy? I do. Colorado is one of those states really forging ahead with smart clean energy policies that will not only cut global warming pollution and promote local energy sources, but help build a cleantech business sector as well. In fact, it’s already begun.
Denmark-based Vestas Wind Systems, one of the largest wind turbine manufacturers in the world, recently opened a turbine-blade manufacturing plant there. Renewable Energy Systems America, a wind farm developer, just moved its headquarters from Austin, Texas to Broomfield, Colorado. It plans to expand and double the number of employees at HQ in the next year. ConocoPhillips will open a renewable energy research hub and corporate learning center in the state too.
Since the energy crisis of the late 1970s, the federal government has employed various policy mechanisms to support renewable energy development. Driving through the neighborhoods that were developed in the late 70s and early 80s, it’s not hard to notice all of the old rooftop solar water heating arrays that were installed because people were taking advantage of a tax credit made available by the Carter administration. But the tax credit expired after Reagan took office, which is why I don’t see rooftop solar hot water nearly as much anymore (at least not recently installed).
The same thing will happen if the renewable energy tax credits expire
Editor’s note: Welcome to “Tangled Up in Green,” Red, Green and Blue’s weekly debate over the hot issues in environmental politics. Each week, writers Ranjit Arab and Adam Bowman will “throw down the glove” on current events involving environmental policy, legislation and citizen action. Adam and Ranjit are both graduate students in journalism at the University of Kansas, and currently enrolled in Professor Simran Sethi’s “Media and the Environment” course.
Does the town of Holcomb, Kansas sound familiar?
I’m sure it does if you’ve read “In Cold Blood,” or seen the movies based on the book and its author Truman Capote.
In a perverted way that negative association has been somewhat of a godsend. People remember Holcomb; they immediately recall it as the place where a senseless and unspeakable crime was committed.
Unfortunately, it looks like Holcomb may be preparing for a sequel, featuring yet another heinous act. This time it involves the attempts of Sunflower Electric Corp.—along with several lawmakers—to force an expansion of the power company’s Holcomb facilities, which would include two hazardous coal-burning electric plants.
Residents of Colorado are witnessing a rapid destabilization of the forest around them, and they can do very little to stop it. The spread of the mountain pine beetle epidemic is now considered of ‘catastrophic’ proportion. Most foresters agree that the beetle will essentially run its course by eliminating its favorite food - the lodgepole pine. The most one can hope for is to mitigate fire risk by pursuing aggressive thinning programs. However, thinning forests does not come cheap: it is labor intensive, resource intensive, geo-politically awkward, and the end product is not held in very high regard by the market. But the economic viability of large-scale thinning projects is changing, and it is doing so almost as quickly as the trees themselves are changing from green to red.
This week, several stories hit the newswire that, taken collectively, hint at the growing conditions for a perfect storm for cellulosic ethanol. The ‘virgin’ biofuel industry got a kick in the seat yesterday when a study published in Science confirmed many environmentalists belief that ethanol from corn and switchgrass could actually worsen
Enjoy this very short video of Presidential hopeful, John Edwards stumping about two weeks ago. In my view, John Edwards has the strongest ecopolitical platform of any of the candidates. He is the only one gutsy enough to call for a moratorium on any new coal-fired power plants. The question that raises, however, is will that matter in the end? And if so, how? I am considering caucusing for Edwards in Colorado […]
[This piece is the first of two parts addressing the pine beetle epidemic in Colorado and what the mountain communities are doing about it. While the situation may seem bleak at the outset of this story, I promise some good news before all is said and done.]
Colorado has 1.7 million acres of lodgepole pine forests. Though, if you have any desire to see any of those trees alive, I’d suggest you move rather quickly. State and federal officials recently announced that the mountain pine beetle epidemic grew by a half a million acres in 2007, bringing the total infestation in the state to about 1.5 million acres. Foresters indicated that the epidemic would virtually eliminate every acre of lodgepole pines in the next three to five years.
Up until quite recently, the pine beetle epidemic in Colorado was limited to a five county area along the Continental Divide. However, recent forest surveys indicate that the beetle has crossed the Divide and is moving eastward. The Forest Service’s annual surveys that are produced by ’stitching’ together aerial photographs have enabled the forest service to illuminate the rapid acceleration of the beetles’ northeasterly march. Once restricted to high country hamlets like Breckenridge, Fraser and Steamboat Springs, the hungry beetles are quickly moving into the foothills and front range near Denver, Boulder and Fort Collins. According to Kyle Patterson at Rocky Mountain National Park, the pine beetles have reached “epic proportions.”
Colorado Governor Bill Ritter signed two major bills supporting renewable energy this week, keeping with his theme of a “New Energy Economy” for the state.
The first was HB 1281, which expands the state’s renewable energy standard by doubling the goal to 20 percent of all resources by 2020 for big utilities. It also includes a goal of 10 percent renewables by 2020 for small utilities and caps the implementation cost for customers of
[…]
Subscribe to our RSS feed or newsletter
