Stop the Sabal Trail Pipeline, says the billboard on Bemiss Road in Valdosta,
reports Michael G. Noll.
This billboard was organized by
WACE. Continue reading Stop the Sabal Trail Pipeline –Billboard in Valdosta
Tag Archives: Economy
FPL’s hometown newspaper about Sabal Trail pipeline opposition
The Palm Beach Post is located 15 miles from FPL’s headquarters in Juno Beach,
and right at the end of the extra pipeline FPL built from the end of the
Transco -> Sabal -> FSC pipeline the last few miles to the sea,
which would make LNG export even more convenient.
Susan Salisbury wrote yesterday for the Palm Beach Post, FPL’s proposed $3.5 billion natural gas pipeline faces opposition,
Beth Gordon, a former Wellington resident, moved to Williston in rural Levy County five years ago. She and her husband own a 32-acre horse farm there.
“It’s as close to perfect as it gets. Except now I’m being forced to accept an outrageous risk that I want no part of,” said Gordon, an attorney.
And why should Floridians or Georgians or Alabamans have to accept that risk for the profit of FPL or of Houston-based Spectra Energy?
-jsq
The Koch Attack on Solar Energy
Fossil fuel companies are already feeling the sting of the exponential growth of solar power, doubling every couple of years, up 400% since 2010. Some of them are counter-attacking by trying to impose a surtax on solar power.
The Editorial Board of the New York Times wrote 26 April 2014, The Koch Attack on Solar Energy,
At long last, the Koch brothers and their conservative allies in state government have found a new tax they can support. Naturally it’s a tax on something the country needs: solar energy panels.
David Horsey, Los Angeles Times, 23 April 2014For the last few months, the Kochs and other big polluters have been spending heavily to fight incentives for renewable energy, which have been adopted by most states. They particularly dislike state laws that allow homeowners with solar panels to sell power they don’t need back to electric utilities. So they’ve been pushing legislatures to impose a surtax on this increasingly popular practice, hoping to make installing solar panels on houses less attractive.
Oklahoma lawmakers recently Continue reading The Koch Attack on Solar Energy
Who funds FERC?
If you guessed the taxpayers, as I did, nope. On FERC’s own About FERC web page:
The Commission is funded through costs recovered by the fees and annual charges from the industries it regulates.
To make it even richer, the sentence before that reads:
There is no review of FERC decisions by the President or Congress, maintaining FERC’s independence as a regulatory agency, and providing for fair and unbiased decisions.
But FERC’s web page says nothing about FERC’s independence from
the industries it regulates.
Here’s Investopedia’s definition of regulatory capture:
Regulatory capture happens when a regulatory agency, formed to act in the public’s interest, eventually acts in ways that benefit the industry it is supposed to be regulating, rather than the public.
Maybe that’s why Continue reading Who funds FERC?
FERC and FE oversight committee approved LNG export legislation for non-FTA countries
Should we let Congress authorize blanket LNG export to 159 WTO member
countries, including China and Ukraine,
so fossil fuel companies can profit by taking our lands
to pipe fracked methane to Florida?
If not, it’s time to call your House member.
After approval by its Subcommittee on Energy and Power, which is the oversight committee for both FERC and the U.S. DoE’s Office of Fossil Fuels, both of which can authorize LNG export, the U.S. House Energy & Commerce Committee voted yesterday to send to the full House of Representatives H.R. 6, “A BILL To provide for expedited approval of exportation of natural gas to World Trade Organization countries, and for other purposes.” That bill would add to Section 3(c) of the Natural Gas Act ( 15 U.S.C. 717b(c) ), Continue reading FERC and FE oversight committee approved LNG export legislation for non-FTA countries
Bluegrass fracked methane pipeline cancelled
Williams Co.’s excuse: “an insufficient level of firm customer commitment”
for its Marcellus shale to Gulf of Mexico gas pipe.
That’s corporate-ese for it got to be too expensive; it’s the same thing
a company that wanted to put a biomass plant in Lowndes County said.
Couldn’t have had anything to do with massive public resistance, oh no.
This is the same Williams Co. that owns Transco, first in the chain
of the Transco -> Sabal Trail -> Florida Southeast Connection
pipeline through Alabama and Georgia to Florida’s Atlantic
and Gulf coasts, where there are already several companies
authorized for LNG export.
That one could get too expensive, too.
Tim Rudell wrote for WKSU 29 April 2014, Bluegrass pipeline project through Ohio and beyond is cancelled, Continue reading Bluegrass fracked methane pipeline cancelled
Sierra Club petition against TPP
Sierra Club has
a petition to stop Congressional fast-track for the
Trans-Pacific Parternership (TPP),
and that will probably stop the TPP, because in regular Congressional
hearings the parts that have been kept secret would get exposed,
which would make TPP very hard to approve.
Look at what Wikileaks found in
the TPP environment chapter,
and in
the intellectual property chapter.
The U.S. is apparently lobbying for criminal offenses for even unintentional
infringements of “copyright, related rights and trademarks”
Yet there are no criminal sanctions for destroying our environment,
and the draft TPP text even points out:
On the other hand, WTO rules do allow members to derogate from their obligations in some cases, for instance where a measure is aimed at the conservation of natural resources, provided certain conditions are met.
Do we want corporate profit to override our clean water and air and native plants and animals, not to mention our property rights?
Here’s the Sierra Club petition: The Trans-Pacific Partnership could leave a big fracking mess!
The TPP is being pushed by Continue reading Sierra Club petition against TPP
Proposed Sabal Trail Pipeline Threatens Southwest Georgia Communities –in Georgia Sierran
In
the April-May-June 2004 2014 issue
of
Georgia Sierran
Georgia Sierra Club‘s
Chapter newsletter.
The same issue has an excellent article on Georgia’s aquifers,
including the Floridan Aquifer that is a drinking water source
for all of Florida, through which the Sabal Trail pipeline proposes to bulldoze.
Proposed Sabal Trail Pipeline Threatens
Southwest Georgia CommunitiesBy John Quarterman
Why should a shell corporation owned by two companies in Houston, Texas and Juno Beach, Florida get to take Georgians’ property to pipe fracked methane to Florida through our fragile karst limestone drinking water aquifer?
Yet that’s what Sabal Trail Transmission, LLC, proposes to do, Continue reading Proposed Sabal Trail Pipeline Threatens Southwest Georgia Communities –in Georgia Sierran
The EPA’s questions must be given serious thought by FERC –Beth Gordon
Published with permission of the author, who stressed she sent this email “Not as a member of Spectrabusters. Just me.” I added a few links. -jsq
From: Beth Gordon
Date: April 24, 2014, 8:15:30 AM EDT
To: John Peconom of FERC
Subject: EPA commentsDear Mr. Peconum,
Does FERC, or Spectra, intend answer the questions posed by the EPA? I read their posted comments yesterday. They obviously share many people’s feeling that Sabal Trail’s claims don’t add up. Florida doesn’t need this gas. In fact right now, Florida has so much that we store it. Spectra and FPL need this amount of gas for LNG plants for export, obviously. And for the Riviera beach connection to a 46 inch pipeline to run to the Bahamas undersea. Switching over one coal plant doesn’t justify a 3 billion dollar pipeline. Especially where FPL has raised, rather than lowered, electric bills on account of this endeavor.
The EPA’s questions must be given serious thought by FERC before it awards this project, and the eminent domain rights attendant to it. Floridians will see no Continue reading The EPA’s questions must be given serious thought by FERC –Beth Gordon
FPL’s own projections don’t support need for a new pipeline
How does a 13% projected power increase justify a 33% 50% increase
in fracked methane delivered by a third new pipeline?
And why isn’t FPL doing more with solar power in the Sunshine State?
Updated 12 August 2014: Fixed 50% increase, which was so absurdly high that I didn’t believe it when I first wrote this. Yet 3/2 is a 50% increase.
FPL’s 10-Year Site Plan web page says:
FPL submitted its 10-Year Power Plant Site Plan 2014-2023 to the Florida Public Service Commission in April 2014.
The document includes on page 37
FPL’s own Schedule 2.1 History and Forecast of Energy Consumption
And Number of Customers by Customer Class (Projected),
which shows 55,739 GWh for 2014 and 62,870 GWh projected for 2023.
That’s an increase of 13% over a decade.
How does that (very aggressive) forecasted increase
justify a natural gas increase of 33% 50% by adding a third pipeline?
(And by the way, those numbers are significantly less than
the numbers in FPL’s 2011 plan of Continue reading FPL’s own projections don’t support need for a new pipeline