Wouldn’t it be better if we stopped listening to the loud whiners?  Shut them off, change the station;  too busy admiring people who are discovering and inventing stuff.

The desire to classify ourselves is human nature.  Humans are influenced by each other to impose group boundaries.  For instance the 1% versus the 99%.  The 99% is vast,  not cozy;  whereas the 1% are in bed together cuddling and clinging.  Here are some pretty interesting things being done by members of both groups .

http://www.humdingerwind.com/#/wi_large/

Inventor Shawn Frayne has come up with a device that harnesses the power of wind without any rotating parts. Instead, his company’s Windbelts capture energy using fluttering fabric. Air passes over a taut membrane, it induces a vibration, somewhat akin to a violin bow.   Magnets mounted on the membrane bounce back and forth between metal coils, inducing an electric current.

What makes this so way cool is that it can be put on fences in urban areas and it can be palm sized or room sized and the materials it is made from are all available right here in the good ole USA.

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Richard Branson has started a “Carbon War Room”.  Does he qualifiy as part of the 1%?    He has an influence on them.  He concerns himself with the future of the planet and makes money doing it.  His latest venture is opening a shop  near the White House for Venture Capitalists to hang out and find investment solutions.  International corporations like Maersk, the global tanker operator, 3M,   and General Electric Co., the major U.S. maker of gas turbines, windmills and appliances;  find there is money to be made and profits enhanced by cutting noxious pollutants and carbon dioxide emissions.

http://www.ecosystemmarketplace.com/pages/dynamic/article.page.php?page_id=7874&section=home

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Pegasus Global Holdings Announces Plans to Develop World’s Largest Tech Testing and Evaluation Center

Pegasus Global Holdings bought a town in New Mexico.   They needed a place to create and test green technology innovations.  How cool is that?  Is this the enemy doing cool things with their money?   Pegasus Global Holdings is actually one of those big scary conglomerates making billions from war tools and satellites; which qualifies them as a member of the 1%.  Perhaps refocusing their moneymaking prowess on technologies that have an end result of a healthier, cleaner, and subsequently happier planet is a good thing  –  even if their motivation isn’t benevolent grace.

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and another thing…

What is with some politicians and their big oil and coal bedmates?  I met a very nice young man.  He plans to take his brand new engineering degree to Mexico and work for an oil company.  My heart sank.

If he’s excited about living in the tropics why doesn’t he take that brand new degree to Costa Rica and work for a geothermal company?  Geothermal, solar, wind, biodiesel, and other renewable sources of energy aren’t at the Universities recruiting these brilliant young minds.  They don’t have the federal funding for that.  Oil and coal receive federal funding and they use much of it for recruiting.

Meantime, we’re building tired old SUV’s in our auto plants and wonder why the rest of the world doesn’t want them.  Because the rest of the world has young brilliant minds too.  They are being recruited into the renewable energy industry and making fast and powerful cars that run on batteries and biodiesel.

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one more thing…

Why are we giving up our waterways and aquifers to industry and agriculture and the bottled water industry?  If we didn’t use tax payer money to clean up their messes, we wouldn’t have the beautiful country we have.  We’d have birdless skys and choked waterways and putrid lakes without the EPA and environmental groups bringing tragedies to their attention.   Taxpayers carry the brunt of expense to clean up after them.  We fine them, but, they don’t pay.  Instead they pay for politicians who cover for them or razzle dazzle the public with birthers to take attention away from the real issues.

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A feed-in tariff, offers small-scale producers of solar energy long-term contracts (usually at above-market rates) for the electricity they sell.  Net-metering allows anyone, whose solar or wind system is producing more electricity than they need, to sell the excess back to the utility in turn reducing or eliminating their electric bill.  But once their bill falls to zero, the homeowner gets no more money from the system, although some grids will give credit.

Using Florida as an example:  The Governor of Florida and Florida Power and Light (FPL) are trying to pass legislation that is being marketed to the voters of Florida as forward thinking and green.  Large utility companies would control the renewable energy industry in Florida.  Smaller businesses would still have to pay exorbitant utility rates.  This would cause them to bring their business to feed-in tariff (FTI)  states where they can have their own solar, wind and/or biofuels for their business.

There exists a trend in which consumers are looking for USA made products that are made in a low carbon impact way.  Florida and it’s constant sunshine should be the forerunner of this trend.  Instead Florida’s Governor and Florida’s privately run FPL are interested in increasing the surcharge on their customers’ bills. Who benefits from this?  Compared with neighboring states, Florida’s industrial utility rates already are 52 percent higher and residential rates are 20 percent higher.

Florida could do both utility owned and privately owned alternative energies.  FPL can put algae ponds around its current Coal fired power plants.  The algae is used to make biofuel.  Algae needs massive amounts of CO2 to grow, coal fired power plants are thought to be evil in part because of their massive amount of CO2 emissions.  Talk about a win win!!

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/print/article/2009/06/blooming-biofuel-how-algae-could-provide-the-solution

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Meantime, manufacturing and big box stores and private homes and associations of homes can have their own solar panels (if they so choose).  Small solar wind and biofuel companies will flock to Florida for the substantial need and abundance of resource.

PS: “Conservation: addition by subtraction
Even though this doesn’t technically generate electricity or transfer energy, we have to mention this;  one dollar worth of energy conservation can save three to five dollars in energy generation equipment costs; if you can use what you have more efficiently, there’s no reason to spend more to make more. While designing for efficiency is the best way to achieve high levels of energy conservation, there are lots of retrofits in insulation and efficiency upgrades that can help cut back on demand.”  Colin Dunn

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/04/generating-off-grid-power-3-ways.php

see also http://www.jabmyeyes.com/2009/12/17/net-metering/

Back in the days of the Renaissance the lords of the land (the folks in the castles) owned the land and the mill.  Serfs (the folks in the huts) paid the Lords for leasing the land to grow grain, they then took the grain to the mill and paid the Lords to have their grains milled.  This same concept is all I can think of that keeps states from allowing homeowners to provide their own energy and get credit for excess energy.  The governor of Florida Rick Scott seems to want to be Lord and we  the beholden serfs.

Manufacturers may actually come back to the USA if it is more cost effective through net metering.  Jobs will be created through installation of these systems, and hopefully job opportunities returning to the USA.  Manufacturers love saving money, their profits improve so then their stock holders are happy too.  Making money is the central purpose to life on this planet.  With net metering we can save the planet and make money.  Everybody is happy.

Here is the easiest explanation I could find regarding Net Metering.

Imagine the simplest possible metering arrangement: a single, 1960s-standard electromechanical meter. Now imagine that a residential customer, Ray McSolar, added a rooftop photovoltaic (PV) system (also known as a solar-electric system) to his home, on his side of this meter. Ray wakes up early for his job; on most days, he is out of the house before sunrise. In these dark morning hours, Ray makes his coffee and breakfast while watching the morning news on TV. The electric meter spins forward as Ray is consuming electricity from the grid.

Determined not to waste a bit of electricity, Ray shuts off all of his appliances as he heads off to work. Ray’s solar panels now start churning out electricity as the sun rises—electricity Ray sends back to the overstressed grid. His meter now spins in reverse.

When Ray returns at night to cook dinner and relax in front of the TV, the meter spins forward again as he consumes more electricity than his system generates. The result? Ray’s bill will show only his net consumption of electricity from the grid. Should it be a hot sunny month (when the grid needs the most help), or a month in which Ray’s electricity use is low, any excess electricity his system generates is rolled over to his next bill, just as he might rollover excess cell phone minutes.

Utilities should not have a divine right to charge for electricity that customers can otherwise generate more efficiently and more cleanly on their own.

Congress realized the vast potential of net metering when it mandated in the 2005 Energy Bill that every state consider adopting or expanding net metering programs by the end of 2007.

Participation in New Jersey has skyrocketed by over 30,000 percent since 2002. It’s amazing. The state utility commission is literally drowning in new applications. Because they embraced the net-metering concept and new business applications soared because of the savings on their bottom line from providing their own energy. What New Jersey and other states (like Montana, and Oregon) prove is that Americans are willing to invest in their own energy independence if state regulations would only let them.

Why don’t legislators like it?