Drive Smart Wisconsin teaches fuel-efficient practices

From an article by Tom Content in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Rising gasoline prices will pack a punch to pocketbooks this year, leaving consumers less inclined to buy big-ticket items, economists say.

But a Milwaukee group wants to help consumers keep from overspending on fuel.

Consider:

• A report by the Energy Information Administration said that, on average, a typical American household driving about 20,000 miles a year will see gas prices surge about $825 this year, based on the recent run-up in fuel prices to near record levels.

• A similar consumer hit is forecast for Canadian consumers in a recent economic forecast from CIBC World Markets, which found that the run-up in prices means that a greater share of household income is being spent on filling gas tanks than at any time except 2008. That will have consequences for sales of everything from big-ticket items like cars to every day items such as groceries, CIBC economists say.

"The rise in food and gasoline prices since the start of the year has effectively offset most of the benefit to (U.S.) consumers from the recent tax stimulus," said CIBC economist Peter Buchanan in a recent report.

That's where Drive Smart America, a business with a passion for getting great gas mileage, comes in.

Drive Smart America has trained drivers at Veolia Water Services, the Milwaukee Department of Public Works and other local fleets on smart-driving techniques that result in less wasted fuel. The business is led by Bradlee Fons of Pewaukee but includes experienced hybrid drivers who have been able to top the gas mileage charts.

Fons routinely gets more than 80 mpg in his Honda Insight hybrid - and has hit 100 in summer driving. On a recent drive in a minivan to see his son in La Crosse, Fons managed 33 mpg in a vehicle rated to get 24 on the highway.

The initiative is part passion, part business. The 6-year old Milwaukee Hybrid Group is changing its name to Drive Smart Wisconsin and hopes to stage more events like a tire pressure checkup held last year in Waukesha County. Fully inflated tires can be an important factor in improved gas mileage.

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Rising Diesel Prices Fuel Higher Electric Rates

For immediate release
April 15, 2011

More information
RENEW Wisconsin
Michael Vickerman
608.255.4044
mvickerman@renewwisconsin.org

We Energies Customers Will Pay the Higher Cost of Hauling Coal

We Energies’ electricity customers can look forward to coughing up an additional $25 million in 2011 due to the Public Service Commission’s approval yesterday [April14] of a rate increase to cover the escalating cost of transporting coal to Wisconsin power plants.

Milwaukee-based We Energies, Wisconsin’s largest electric utility, imports coal from such distant locations as Wyoming and Pennsylvania to generate electricity. Transportation now accounts for two-thirds of the delivered cost of coal to Wisconsin.

Diesel fuel costs have jumped to approximately $4.00 a gallon this year, propelled by political unrest in the Middle East, declining petroleum output from Mexico, a weakening dollar, and other factors. We Energies’ request predated the ongoing civil war in Libya.

“While we cannot control any of those price drivers, we can more effectively cushion their effects by diversifying our energy generation mix with locally produced wind, solar, small hydro, and biogas electricity,” said Michael Vickerman, executive director of RENEW Wisconsin, a statewide organization advocating for public policies and private initiatives that advance renewable energy.

“The coal mines aren’t getting any closer to Wisconsin. Therefore we have to be serious about reducing our dependence on fossil fuels that are tied to the global oil supply picture. Now is not the time to skimp on investments in conservation and renewable energy that will help stabilize the utility bills of businesses and residents,” Vickerman said.

“Do we have the will to pursue energy policies that take us off of the fossil fuel price escalator? Doing nothing will bake these rate increases into our future without any corresponding boost to Wisconsin’s job market and sustainable energy economy.”

--END--

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Shortsighted energy plans just won't cut it; renewables needed

From an editorial in the Sheboygan Press:

President Barack Obama has twice in the last year called for the nation to reduce its dependence of foreign oil by embarking on a multi-faceted plan on energy.

Obama's first call for energy independence was followed less than a month later by the Deep Water Horizon oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

We hope that the president's latest energy initiative is followed not by a disaster, but by a commitment from Congress to develop a national energy policy. A commitment from the American people to be receptive of alternative energy sources would be nice, too. . . .

Until recently, we thought Wisconsin was poised to become a leader in helping the nation reach that goal.

Wind power was one area where Wisconsin was setting the pace.

The state had sensible rules on where wind turbines could be located in relation to residential properties and the state was on its way toward making progress on using this renewable energy resource. But those rules are on hold and are likely to be changed to the point where it will be impractical for companies interested in locating wind farms to do business in Wisconsin.

This is not only shortsighted in development of renewable energy sources, it is also a job-killer because the companies that now make wind turbines in Wisconsin are already talking about relocating to states where wind power is welcomed.

The easy thing to do is to keep relying on oil and coal to power our cars and heat our homes. The wise thing is to develop a long-range plan that relies on renewable energy.

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300 years of fossil fuel addiction explained in just FIVE MINUTES!

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The Oil Spill and You

From a commentary by Michael Vickerman:

Commentary
by Michael Vickerman, RENEW Wisconsin
July 12, 2010

About 100 people gathered in downtown Madison in early July to take part in “Hands Across the Sands,” an internationally organized protest against continued oil drilling in and along the world’s coastal waters. Against the backdrop of the weed-choked waters of Lake Monona, they joined hands for 15 minutes to express their fervent desire to see a cleaner, less destructive energy future emerge from the liquid melanoma spreading across the Gulf of Mexico.

No doubt the protestors would like to do more, much more, than simply engage in ritualized protest in front of a few camera crews. But we live in a society that is organized around the expectation of a limitless supply of nonrenewable hydrocarbons feeding concentrated energy into our economic bloodstream. Most of us have not bothered to comprehend the yawning gulf that lies between our best intentions and our abject dependence on the wealth-producing properties of petroleum. Nor how this addiction fills us with delusions of godlike mastery over our environment while blinding us to the reality that we humans have grossly overshot our planet’s carrying capacity.

For those who read and still remember the science fiction classic Dune, the “spice” on Arrakis remains the quintessential literary analogy to the reality of Earth’s oil. Like our oil, the spice held a special place in that world as the ultimate prize worth waging wars and plundering hostile environments for. . . .

Need I mention that once you begin to appreciate the finitude of the Earth’s endowment of petroleum, there’s nothing to stop you from taking immediate steps to curb your personal consumption of this irreplaceable fuel. Whatever you do to lessen your dependence on petroleum will turn out to be a much more satisfying and meaningful response to our energy predicament than any canned protest promoted through Facebook.

As for myself, I made two resolutions since the Macondo well erupted. The first is to go through this summer without activating the household air-conditioner. So far, so good, I can report. (Luckily, we were spared the triple-digit temperature swelterfest that gripped the East Coast last week). It wasn’t that long ago that life without air-conditioning was the norm rather than the exception. If we all resolved not to turn on air-conditioners, we could force the retirement of two to three coal-fired plants in this state.

The other change was to ratchet up my reliance on my bicycle and make it the default vehicle for all my local travels, irrespective of weather conditions. I have been a fair-weather bicycle commuter for many years, but after watching everyone on TV blame someone else for the catastrophe, I felt the need to push myself a little harder. My objective here is to regard my car as a luxury that one day I might do without.

Though the extra perspiration and the occasional dodging of raindrops may take some getting used to, you are going to sleep better at night. Trust me on this.

If the oil spill has prompted a similar response from you, feel free to describe them and send them to the moderator of our Peak Oil blog or post them in a response.

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Revitalizing Ourselves Through Renewable Energy

From a presentation by RENEW's Michael Vickerman at the Energy Fair of the Midwest Renewable Energy Association:

Energy Policy Must Recognize Energy Realities
+ Supplies of liquid fuels peaked in 2008
+ Capital is disappearing before our very eyes
+ Energy and food are the original currencies
+ The shift from stores to flows is inevitable
+ Current economy is highly energy-intensive
+ Energy return on energy invested (EROEI) must inform decision-making
+ We can’t afford to prop up existing energy sinks or engage in wealth-draining military adventures

Three paths to choose
+ Business as usual
+ Clean green technology
+ Curtailment and community

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Milwaukee urban farmer recogized for vision of food future

From an article by Karen Herzog and Lee Berquist in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Will Allen was cutting heads of lettuce in a farm field when his cell phone rang.

The caller told him to put down his knife. He had good news:

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, known for its annual award of “genius” grants, was giving Allen $500,000 — no strings attached.

Allen is not your typical farmer. He is the founder of Growing Power, a nonprofit farm in the middle of Milwaukee that raises fresh produce for underserved populations with high rates of obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

The son of an illiterate laborer, Allen has been a leading figure in urban agriculture for a decade. Thanks to the growth of the local foods movement, and now the MacArthur fellowship, his approach of melding sustainable farming and mentoring kids is gaining broader attention.

At 6 feet 7 inches tall and 280 pounds, Allen is a former professional basketball player with the biceps of an NFL lineman.

He is not a table-pounder, but he is passionate about his long-held beliefs: Good food helps build healthy communities, and the costs of relying on food that travels long distances have become too great.

“You have to figure out how to grow food closer to where people live,” Allen, 59, said in an interview in his office crammed with boxes of yellow tomatoes and bags of greens.

“We are in a worldwide food crisis and worldwide energy crisis.”

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Palin's Folly

by Michael Vickerman, RENEW Wisconsin
October 7, 2008
What three things do Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria and Venezuela have in common? The first commonality is that they are among the top 10 leading exporters of petroleum worldwide, which is another way of saying that they are the biggest accumulators of foreign cash on the planet.

Commonality No. 2: Gasoline prices in those nations are lower than they are in the United States. The swollen river of revenues that flows into their national treasuries enables these governments to subsidize the price of motor fuel sold to their citizens. In Iran, the portion of federal revenues spent on maintaining price caps on gasoline approaches an astonishing 40%. . . .

Considering the finite nature of their chief exports, these nations would do well to reinvest their windfalls into domestically developable sources of wind and solar energy, to name two energy sources that do not have decline curves associated with them. However, that brings up Commonality No. 3, which is their shared aversion to all energy sources that have the capacity to displace oil and natural gas in some capacity. Renewable energy sources like wind and solar certainly figure prominently in that category.

It is nothing short of amazing to watch these nations squander their colossal fortunes on ephemeral social control measures that only hasten the drawdown of their most economically valuable resource. Subsidizing gasoline is simply a wealth distribution scheme that discounts the future for the present. Its legacy will be to leave billions of people without the capital to invest in building up a sustainable energy future.

Under more enlightened regimes, these nations would be plowing their retained earnings into technologies that harvest locally available self-replenishing energy sources to serve future citizens. They would make it a point of emulating Germany, a nation bereft of native oil and gas reserves but certainly not lacking in foresight and political will. Cloudy skies and weak winds notwithstanding, Germany is deploying considerable amounts of social and financial capital to retool its energy infrastructure so that it can take full advantage of its modest solar ration.

In contrast to Germany, there is not a single commercial wind turbine operating in Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Venezuela and Russia. While Mexico and Iran look like go-getters by comparison, their efforts to date amount to less than one-half of Wisconsin’s current wind generating capacity. Moreover, even at this late date, oil-exporting nations have invested only a piddling amount of their capital investments in solar energy.

To demonstrate the aversion that oil-exporting jurisdictions have towards renewable energy, consider the example of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. According to Michael T. Klare, who covers defense and foreign policy for The Nation, Alaska is a “classic petrostate,” featuring a political system that is “geared toward the maximization of oil ‘rents’--royalties and other income derived from energy firms--to the neglect of other economic activities.”

Among the economic activities neglected is renewable energy development. Like Russia, with which Alaska shares a “narrow maritime border,” Alaska does not have a single utility-scale wind turbine in operation, a rather remarkable statistic given its sprawling size and a wind resource that in certain locations can be accurately described as “screaming.” But as long oil revenues are sufficient to allow Alaska to dispense with a state income tax, renewable energy development will remain in a deep freeze.

In a recent article, Klare recounts a talk Palin gave at a February 2008 meeting of the National Governors Association, where she said that “the conventional resources we have can fill the gap between now and when new technologies become economically competitive and don’t require subsidies.”

When asked to elaborate on that point, Palin’s antipathy towards renewable energy was revealed. “I just don’t want things to get out of hand with incentives for renewables, particularly since they imply subsidies, while ignoring the fuels we already have on hand,” Palin said.

Had those words been uttered by the Secretary General of OPEC, they would have been forgotten in a matter of seconds. Coming from someone who could become the next vice president, however, is cause for consternation, in that she is clearly recommending a course of action that would invariably lead to greater dependency on oil.

Certainly, the Palin prescription would reverse the decline in oil revenues propping up Alaska’s state government. But the amount of petroleum that could be extracted in 2020 from Alaska and the Outer Continental Shelf is trifling compared with current U.S. imports of Mexican crude. Even if a mini-surge of petroleum materialized as a result of a McCain-Palin energy policy that put Alaska’s wishes above the best interests of the other 49 states, it wouldn’t even compensate for the declining yields from such aging oilfields as Cantarell or Prudhoe Bay, let alone achieve the chimerical goal of energy independence.

Like the other petrostates of the world, Alaska has no Plan B to fall back on when its endowment of fossil fuels is no longer sufficient to support a state government in the style to which it is accustomed. Let us hope and pray that the voters of the other 49 states see the “drill, baby, drill” mantra for the folly it is, and reject it out of hand in favor of an energy policy that stresses energy security through conservation and renewable energy development.

Sources and complete article here.

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Summer/fall newsletter now online

RENEW Wisconsin's summer/fall edition of Wisconsin Renewable Quarterly is now online, including the following articles:

Peak Oil Spices Meeting with Cong. Baldwin
Countdown to Solar Tour
Solar H2O on Madison Fire Stations
Global Warming Task Force Report
Wisconsin’s Newest Wind Projects
PHEV+Wind=Clean Air
Small Wind Conference Wrap-up

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Energy: A challenge to us all

An editorial from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Former Vice President Al Gore’s recent call for the nation to produce all electricity from wind, solar and other renewable sources within 10 years appears unattainable, energy wonks have been quick to note.

And we appear to be part of that naysaying pack.

In the editorial above, we commend Gov. Jim Doyle’s Task Force on Global Warming for setting goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 22% by 2022 and a 75% reduction by 2050. That’s not zero in 10 years.

We commend those Wisconsin goals because they are “realistic,” as in doable, but that doesn’t mean that we oppose speeding things up.

We put those quotation marks around the word because we also realize that citing “realism” often has been just another way of slowing progress.

So, here’s the real utility in Gore’s call for speedier progress: It recognizes that deeper commitment can produce speedier results.

Too costly to move quicker? Those costs have to be weighed against those already levied by our reliance on fossil fuels. And the time allowed to break this addiction to oil has to be weighed against how every minute, every hour, every day of carbon emissions brings the world closer to that tipping point that spells global catastrophe.

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Expect higher heating bills

From an article by Tom Content in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Consumers should expect energy price sticker shock to continue well past the summer driving season, as pain at the pump is poised to give way to furnace frustration next winter.

The price of gasoline, above $4 for the past month, is on people’s minds — and it’s visible at nearly every major intersection. But another energy jolt may be coming as the price of natural gas, the primary fuel used to heat Wisconsin homes, is at historic highs for this time of year.

Natural gas futures have jumped 82% since the start of the year. Heating oil and propane prices are also soaring.

The increased natural gas prices already have resulted in electricity bills jumping twice since March for customers of Milwaukee-based We Energies and Green Bay-based Wisconsin Public Service Corp. Including increases authorized for three other state utilities, customers of the state’s five investor-owned utilities have seen rates rise by $210 million since the start of the year.

Spokesmen for the state’s large natural gas utilities said it’s too early to predict what customers may pay this winter. The futures price of natural gas, which finished last week at its highest point in more than 2 1/2 years, could still fall below its current, abnormal high, they said.

“Prices right now are in the scary range,” said Kerry Spees, spokesman for Wisconsin Public Service, an electric and natural gas utility. “It makes you look toward the winter with a little trepidation.”

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Movie: Escape from Suburbia, June 17, Urban Ecology Center

The interest group Paths to a Sustainable Future will show Escape from Suburbia, the sequel to the award-winning film, The End of Suburbia, about the future of the American dream after the oil age. This film focuses on viable alternatives for communities working at the local level.

The movie will be shown at the interest group's meeting which begins at 6:00 p.m. at the Urban Ecology Center, 1859 North 40th Street, (414) 344-5460.

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Gas Tax Pain

From a new Fossil Fuel Watch by Michael Vickerman:

Could there be more convincing proof of America’s debilitating addiction to oil than the recent calls to institute a gasoline tax holiday issued by two of the three presidential aspirants still in the race?

Imagine what would happen if a candidate for public office endorsed a repeal of cigarette taxes. Articulating such a position would instantly disqualify that candidate from serious consideration by rank and file voters. Indeed, it would stop a candidacy faster than you can say “macaca.”

Yet, while Sens. John McCain or Hillary Clinton, both advocates of suspending the 18.4 cents/gallon gasoline tax, have been excoriated in editorials for espousing such patent flim-flam, they don’t seem to have lost any ground with the voting public.

While the McCain-Clinton gas tax suspension proposal may have a set a new low in the public discussion of energy, it can’t be dismissed as mere election-year pandering. Instead, this proposal reveals a dark truth about ourselves: we Amnericans are psychologically unprepared to accept the energy reality we now inhabit, which is that oil is neither cheap nor plentiful (relative to demand). The same holds true for natural gas.

The factors converging to create global energy insecurity—diminishing output from supergiant fields, rapid demand growth in the world’s most populous nations, civil unrest in oil-exporting nations, etc.—cannot be held at bay with political stunts.

Whether its citizens like it or not, the United States will, going forward, consume a smaller portion of the Earth’s remaining petroleum than at any time before during the Automobile Age.

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