Denver gets solar shot in the arm
Feds to supply $200,000 to help push technology
By Joyzelle Davis, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Dennis Schroeder / The Rocky
Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, right, appears at a news conference Friday with Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo. Bodman was unveiling a solar energy grant.
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Denver will receive $200,000 from the federal government to accelerate the adoption of solar-energy technology in the region, Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman announced in Denver on Friday.
The money comes with the city's designation as one of this year's 12 Solar American Cities, a program started in 2007 by the department to recognize regions that are deploying solar technology. This year's cities, which include Seattle, Philadelphia and San Antonio, will receive a total of $2.4 million as well as technical assistance worth an estimated $3 million.
The Solar Cities program is part of the Bush administration's goal of making solar energy "cost-competitive" with other energy sources by 2015, Bodman said.
The financial and technical assistance is intended to "help establish solar energy as a mainstream energy resource option," said Bodman said at the New Frontiers Energy Summit, a gathering of some 500 energy industry members in Denver to discuss renewable energy.
The program focuses on the nuts and bolts of integrating the thermal technology into an urban setting, ranging from streamlining local regulations to devising tax incentives and making homeowners aware of the technology.
Denver has four major solar energy projects underway, Bodman noted, including a 71/2 acre project near Denver International Airport that should generate enough electricity to power some 1,000 homes.
Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., created the annual "energy summit" in Denver in 2006 to solicit ideas to make the state a leader in renewable energy.
"We're convinced we're at the frontier of some great new beginnings," Salazar told the audience. "We are building on a lot that has happened here in the past three years."
Ideas from the first event led to the inception of the Colorado Renewable Energy Collaboratory, a joint research effort involving the University of Colorado, Colorado State University, Colorado School of Mines and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Bodman's 30-minute speech also highlighted the state's progress in research and development into other renewable energy and clean energy sources, such as coal plants that capture carbon dioxide emissions and the production of ethanol fuel from plant sources.
"Our national focus must remain on increasing the energy options that are available to us," he said. "We simply must diversify."
davisj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2514
Comments
Posted by SheikYurBooty on March 29, 2008 at 9:18 a.m. (Suggest removal)
All this "renewable" crap is just a bunch of racist OPEC-haters on overdrive...
Posted by SASQUATCH on March 29, 2008 at 11:59 a.m. (Suggest removal)
More Ritter/Salazar green hoopla that will never amount to a hill of beans. This "feel-good" nonsense has been recycled over and over from the Jimmie Carter era. Solar is inefficient, unreliable, very expensive and requires massive taxpayer suport just to keep it afloat. If $100 crude, $4 at the pump, skyrocketing natural gas prices and 30 years couldn't do the trick; then it time to jetison the "feel good" in favor of the obvious, efficient and economically viable solutions.
Stop playing politics with America's national security and global economic competitiveness that creats jobs, income, wealth and prosperity. Wake up while you still can.
Posted by gr8fun4me on March 29, 2008 at 8:08 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Hey SASQUATCH your reasoning is totally illogical. You think sending $400 billion dollars a year over to the six middle east countries doesn't harm national security? The country should have invested in new technology long ago when we had the first Arab Oil Embargo. I remember pushing my car into the gas station because we could only gas up on certain days. You have no clue as to what you're talking about. Do you think the oil comes from within the US. This has been going on since the 70's and the government did nothing to stop the US from becoming dependent on foreign oil.
What our government should have done is give out a $1 billion dollar prize for the company or individual that comes up with a battery that can hold a charge for 1000 miles at 60mph, at 70 degrees fahrenheit. Another $1 billion prize for superconductivity in wires at 70 degrees fahrenheit and another $1 billion dollar prize for increasing solar cell efficiency to 85% conversion. All three of these things would help tremendously in saving energy. Our currency is being hammered overseas because we are sending so much of it over there to buy oil. I think it is great that spmeone finally has the foresight to see the position that we are in and trying to solve it instead of trying to keep going down the same route. You want to see a cool electric car go check out teslamotors.com and then look at the review by Jay Leno at http://www.jaylenosgarage.com/video/v...
Posted by justright on March 30, 2008 at 11:23 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Solar in Seattle????????
Did I miss something here? The Feds are giving more than a penny to some solar push in Seattle? Isn't there a person in DC who has actually been to Seattle or is this just another smoke screen money transfer?
Suddenly the whole article has no meaning about energy and stinks. A real investigative reporter would find what and where this money is going.
I am 99% sure it has nothing to do with the sun! Yes I have been to Seattle.
Posted by greenleaf on March 30, 2008 at 2:13 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Squatch, Rather than being one of the finest minds of the early 1900's why don't you join the rest of us and make a difference in this century!
Posted by SASQUATCH on March 30, 2008 at 4:34 p.m. (Suggest removal)
A SOLAR SHOT SURE BEATS A SHOT OF BIOFUELS:
Time Magazine now joins the Christian Science Monitor, NYTimes, WSJ, IBD, Reason, and Rollingstone Magazine, in coming out against ethanol and biofuels in its most recent issue:
Several new studies show the biofuel boom is doing exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended: it's dramatically accelerating global warming, imperiling the planet in the name of saving it. Corn ethanol, always environmentally suspect, turns out to be environmentally disastrous. Even cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass, which has been promoted by eco-activists and eco-investors as well as by President Bush as the fuel of the future, looks less green than oil-derived gasoline.
Meanwhile, by diverting grain and oilseed crops from dinner plates to fuel tanks, biofuels are jacking up world food prices and endangering the hungry. The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year. Harvests are being plucked to fuel our cars instead of ourselves. The U.N.'s World Food Program says it needs $500 million in additional funding and supplies, calling the rising costs for food nothing less than a global emergency. Soaring corn prices have sparked tortilla riots in Mexico City, and skyrocketing flour prices have destabilized Pakistan, which wasn't exactly tranquil when flour was affordable.
But the basic problem with most biofuels is amazingly simple, given that researchers have ignored it until now: using land to grow fuel leads to the destruction of forests, wetlands and grasslands that store enormous amounts of carbon.
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Myths die hard; especially when their foundation is based on pure B.S.
Posted by greenleaf on March 30, 2008 at 7:16 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Squatch,
Damn, Here we go again. This is the one issue where I at least partially agree with you and the article you cited. From what I have read recently, its far too early to throw cellulosic or algal ethanol and biodiesel into history's dumpster, that's where corn ethanol should have gone long before now! It's a totally bankrupt concept!
I have high hopes for cellulosic fuel since that could help considerably with solving another problem, the millions of standing dead trees in the forests of the west. It could go a long ways toward turning lemons to lemonade. Algal ethanol would be produced at brownfield sites, specifically Coal fired power plants where it would soak up vast quantities of CO2. This again would turn the "lemon" of global warming into the "lemonade" of a new fuel source.
In conclusion, I gave up on corn ethanol long ago. I still have optimism that other biofuels will work.
And SASQUATCH, we all need to listen when you talk about B.S. because no one on the planet has shovelled more than you have!
Posted by SASQUATCH on March 31, 2008 at 9:35 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Time to lose solar, windmills and biofuels that require massive taxpayer subsidies, are very inefficient and very expensive recycled from the Jimmie Carter era. If 30 years, billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies, $100 crude and $4 at the pump didn't do the trick by now, then these "feel goods" will never happen. Among the many proven, economic and reliable solutions, let's boost this one featured in today's IBD:
"At a time when saying anything good about fossil fuels is like declaring war on the environment, it may seem like wishful thinking to press for an expansion of U.S. oil refining capacity.
Yet it is precisely this sort of thinking that is necessary if we are to make use of a vast, secure and reliable supply of fuel from Canada's oil sands.
The tar sands hold an estimated 174 billion barrels of crude oil, making Canada's oil-sands deposits second only to Saudi Arabia in global reserves. The U.S. currently obtains 1 million barrels a day from Canada's tar sands, but with planned investments the daily supply could exceed 3 million barrels by 2015."
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Let's wake-up, America, and make this happen...along with the many other proven soluions at our fingertips.
Posted by justright on March 31, 2008 at 1:32 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Sasquatch & Greenleaf & anyone who watchs this energy battle,
The tar sands of Canada are 10 times SMALLER then the oil shale reserves right here in our own backyard. Of course being in our own backyard is what makes it hard to produce. In some ways it is to bad it is not across the border in Canada or Mexico. Chances are it would already be in production.
The chart below shows provene oil reserves. Tar sands were not even on this list 3 years ago.
1 World 1,025,000,000,000
2 Saudi Arabia 261,700,000,000
3 Canada 178,900,000,000
4 Iran 130,800,000,000
5 Iraq 112,500,000,000
6 United Arab Emirates 97,800,000,000
7 Kuwait 96,500,000,000
8 Venezuela 78,000,000,000
9 Russia 69,000,000,000
In fact the oil shale reserves are larger then Saudi, Iran, Iraq, UAE, Kuwait and Venezuela combined. The smallest estimate has the oil shale reserves at 2.2 times the combined reserves of those lovely countries.
1.7 Trillion barrels of black fuel are what is looming. If somehow we figure out a way to fly a 747 with the sun, great, but something tells me we will find a way to produce this 1.7 trillion barrels of fuel.
Posted by dabumster on April 1, 2008 at 11:26 a.m. (Suggest removal)
$123 billion in profits for the big oil company's this past year and you're dogging the biofuel industry, Sasquatch?
That tremendous profit is the reason for the upturn in food prices not ethanol. Studies show that the biofuel boom is indirectly responsible for only a 4% rise in the cost of your corn flakes in the morning.
Posted by justright on April 1, 2008 at 8:16 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Since when is a 10% profit excessive?
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