Tag Archives: solar

No eminent domain for water-threatening unnecessary Sabal Trail pipeline –GA Rep. Dexter Sharper District 177

The state representative for Valdosta and parts of Lowndes County cited their two resolutions and enumerated lack of need for a pipeline, threatening letters from Sabal Trail, alternative routes next to a school, ill effects on business including on forestry and agriculture and private property valuations, potential sinkholes due to drilling under the Withlacoochee River, including on the preferred route, or anywhere in the fragile karst limestone containing the Floridan Aquifer, plus Spectra Energy’s own SEC filings say it doesn’t have insurance to cover the kinds of safety problems in Spectra’s own history nor those pointed out by Southern Natural Gas Company. Dexter Sharper noted local evidence that solar power is cheaper and safer, and echoed the Lowndes County Democratic Party in writing:

“…we have a moral obligation to leave our children and grandchildren with an earth as safe, beautiful, and majestic as the one bequeathed to us by our parents and grandparents.”

For all these reasons, on behalf of my constituents and the citizens of Lowndes County and the state of Georgia, I oppose the Sabal Trail pipeline anywhere in the County of Lowndes or the State of Georgia.

I urge that FERC reject any permit for the Sabal Trail pipeline, or at the very least move it entirely out of the State of Georgia.

Filed 7 January 2015 with FERC as Accession Number: 20150107-5100, “Comment of Dexter Sharper, Georgia State Representative, District 177, under CP15-17.” Continue reading No eminent domain for water-threatening unnecessary Sabal Trail pipeline –GA Rep. Dexter Sharper District 177

FPL’s parent NextEra buys Hawaii’s biggest utility for green energy transition

While FPL wants to frack Oklahoma, its parent corp. wants to green Hawaii. Do they even talk?

Mark Chediak and Ehren Goossens, Bloomberg, 4 December 2014, NextEra Buys Hawaii’s Biggest Utility in Green Energy Test,

“You can think about Hawaii as a postcard from the future of what’s going to happen in the electric industry in the United States,” James Robo, chairman and chief executive officer of Juno Beach, Florida-based NextEra, said by phone interview yesterday. “As renewable generation gets cheaper, as electric storage becomes more efficient and possible, all electric utilities are going to have to face this.”

What’s FPL making Florida, then? A test case for the failed past?

Bloomberg says about NextEra’s Hawaii Electric purchase:

Including debt, the total value of the transaction is about $4.3 billion.

That’s not much more than FPL’s Sabal Trail pipeline boondoggle. How about cancel that pipeline and the fracking and green Florida into… the Sunshine State!

-jsq

Happy Thanksgiving!

Dear SpectraBusters and Allies,

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanks to all who get out on the street, into the halls of government, or on the media: public awareness is the key to winning this fight.

Thanks to all who quietly and often anonymously help Continue reading Happy Thanksgiving!

Sabal Trail formal FERC filing CP15-17

300x388 Cover, in Sabal Trail CP15-17 20141121-5032, by John S. Quarterman, for SpectraBusters.org, 21 November 2014 Have Dougherty and Colquitt County sold us out to Sabal Trail? Sabal Trail’s FERC filing seems to say so.

One day after Transco’s Hillabee, Sabal Trail filed CP15-17 21 November 2014 in ten submissions with dozens of PDF files. So Andrea Grover’s “sometime later this year” turns out to be today.

The first submission alone is 581 pages, none of which mention any of the words solar or photovoltaic, nor LNG or export, according to a PDF search. A search for privileged finds that, though. Continue reading Sabal Trail formal FERC filing CP15-17

Listen to the people you are supposed to protect –Laura Dailey to FERC

“We have the opportunity to be world leaders in the renewable energy revolution! Shall we let that opportunity go to Germany or China, by default?”

Filed with FERC 15 November 2014:

Laura Dailey, fort white, FL.

On this final day to plead my/our case, it is time for the FERC to look at the bigger picture and stop caving to the short term fixes. We are in trouble, and you can help by voting to DENY THE SABAL TRAIL METHANE PIPELINE! Leave the gas in the ground…..where it’s already conveniently stored!

EVERY DAY we wake to an invitation from the sun! In fact, the planet itself runs on solar, and most European countries already understand this. Even China just made a huge commitment to solar. Contrary to what the lobbyists are telling you, FLORIDA DOES NOT NEED THIS GAS!!

From the standpoint of transparency, there is none! I have asked Continue reading Listen to the people you are supposed to protect –Laura Dailey to FERC

Why accepting a natural gas easement is a bad deal

Here are a few things you get with a pipeline easement: no right to grow trees on it, limited right to put up fences, and if you do, you have to have gates in them that the pipeline company can put their own lock on. 300x162 Right-of-Way diagram, in Kinder Morgan Right-of-, by Kinder Morgan, 2 June 2008 But you do get to continue to pay taxes on land you can no longer fully use; land that now contains a potentially corrosive, leaky, explosive hazard that you can’t tap for your own use. And you do get pipeline company contractors coming through at their convenience to mow or otherwise clear the right of way. Contractors who may be somewhat unclear on where the right of way ends and your trees, for example, start. Without ever having to notify you then or tell you later what happened. And it’s even worse than that: you may get another pipeline, and meanwhile the pipeline company will claim rights over local governments and developments. All while the world has changed and the sun has risen on a better way.

All bets are off if there’s a pipeline break

Continue reading Why accepting a natural gas easement is a bad deal

Spectra buys into PennEast Pipeline for Marcellus Shale fracked gas to Transco

Apparently Williams Company’s Atlantic Sunrise pipeline wasn’t enough to push Marcellus Shale fracked methane through Transco to Sabal Trail: Spectra Energy has bought directly into that action through yet another Pennsylvania pipeline.

PennEast also announced 17 October 2014 it prefiled as FERC docket PF15-1-000. And PennEast listed some Open Houses 10,12,13, and 18 November 2014 in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, so friends and colleagues may want to go there and object, like many did at the Atlantic Sunrise PF14-8 Scoping Meetings. FERC’s ecomment system has been flooded with objections ever since the pre-filing of 7 October 2014, such as this one of 9 October 2014: Continue reading Spectra buys into PennEast Pipeline for Marcellus Shale fracked gas to Transco

Rockefeller Brothers Fund divesting from coal and tar sands, but not from natural gas

It’s indeed historic when heirs of John D. Rockefeller, the man whose Standard Oil more than any other company put the world on its current fossil-fuel-burning climate-changing path decide to divest from coal and tar sands. But read their actual statement: they’re not divesting from natural gas, or fracking, or even from oil. Yet.

Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) PR 22 September 2014 Fund Announces Plans to Divest from Fossil Fuels,

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund has been working to better align its endowed assets with its mission since 2010, when the board of trustees approved a commitment of up to 10 percent of the endowment to investments consistent with the foundation’s Sustainable Development program goals. Stephen Heintz, president of the Fund, announced its decision to divest from fossil fuels at a press conference in New York City on September 22, 2014, one day before world leaders convene at the UN Climate Summit. The Fund has begun a two-step process to divest from investments in fossil fuels, first focusing on limiting its exposure to coal and tar sands, with a goal to reduce these investments to less than one percent of the total portfolio by the end of 2014. The Fund is also analyzing in detail its remaining fossil fuel exposure and will develop a plan for further divestment as quickly as is prudent over the next few years.

There’s nothing about this continued investment in fracked methane in the New York Times story or in any of the others I’ve found. But RBF’s own PR is pretty clear.

That PR and a longer statement refer us to Continue reading Rockefeller Brothers Fund divesting from coal and tar sands, but not from natural gas

Duke withdraws Suwannee and Polk plant plans

Opposition to the Sabal Trail pipeline may be having more widespread effects. The same day FERC told Sabal Trail to pay attention to karst limestone sinkhole opposition, Duke announced it wasn’t going to “modernize” that plant. Two days later, Sabal Trail told one of that opposition that it was considering moving its Suwannee River crossing upstream, that is, away from Duke’s Suwannee Plant, Coincidence?

Ivan Penn wrote for Tampa Bay Times 26 August 2014, In flip-flop, Duke Energy will buy existing power plant, not build one, Continue reading Duke withdraws Suwannee and Polk plant plans

FPL to purchase NextEra gas fracking subsidiary in Oklahoma

FPL integrated ownership of fracking and pipelines to LNG export for its profit, at the expense of Alabama, Georgia, and Florida landowners, U.S. natural gas customers, and of course FPL ratepayers: that’s what FPL is hoping to wrap up at the Florida PSC.

FPL wants to buy the 50% its parent NextEra Energy bought of “independent” PetroQuest’s Oklahoma fracking operation back in 2010 before FPL put out its December 2012 RFP for what ended up being the Transco -> Sabal Trail -> FSC methane pipeline to Martin County, Florida, plus an FPL pipeline from there to the sea at Riviera Beach. where meanwhile three LNG export operations have been authorized and a fourth LNG export operation has reqeusted a permit from FERC.

FPL’s PR of 25 June 2014 doesn’t mention most of the above, not even that NextEra already owns half of PetroQuest’s Oklahoma fracking operation. FPL proposes innovative plan to invest in natural gas to save customers millions of dollars and lower long-term fuel costs, Continue reading FPL to purchase NextEra gas fracking subsidiary in Oklahoma