Obama to visit Tampa to tout smart grid?

Our colleagues at The Buzz are reporting that President Obama's upcoming visit to Tampa next Tuesday may be to highlight his vision for a revamped national energy network, the so-called smart grid.

Obama's stimulus package contains $4.5 billion in funding for a smart grids, which would tap into wind and solar and other green energy sources and transmit it to large urban areas, such as Tampa and Miami. The New York Times, in a story on Boulder, Colo., becoming the first big test area for the technology, calls smart grids "the most ambitious move the United States could make toward cutting its emissions from burning fossil fuels."

Big corporations are jumping on the bandwagon too. General Electric -- which recently started an experiment in Hawaii that saves energy by turning off household appliances when electricity is expensive and makes better use of wind and solar power -- is joining with Whirlpool and other companies to demonstrate the role of smart grid technologies in battling climate change.

--Craig Pittman

Mississippi Katrina victims get okay to sue polluters over rising sea level

A group of Mississippi landowners can pursue their lawsuit against more than 30 major oil, electric and coal companies they say have created global-warming pollutants that contributed to rising sea levels and increased Hurricane Katrina's destruction, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports.

The central question before the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals was whether the plaintiffs could demonstrate that their injuries were “fairly traceable” to the actions of the oil, electric and coal companies. A lower court had ruled they could not, but the Fifth Circuit disagreed.

In its ruling, the three-judge panel cited the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision that allows the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases, since that opinion “accepted as plausible the link between man-made greenhouse gas emissions and global warming” along with the fact that “rising ocean temperatures may contribute to the ferocity of hurricanes.”

Gerald Maples, lead attorney for the landowners in the class-action lawsuit, said he filed the suit 22 days after Katrina to get the attention of energy officials about greenhouse gas emissions. The case still has a long way to go, however. 

The Wall Street Journal talked to a legal expert who predicted that the ruling will invite more climate-change litigation in the future.“With this decision,” he says, “you are now pretty well assured of seeing others file these kinds of claims.”

The ruling is the second time in recent weeks an appeals court has allowed a similar lawsuit to move forward, notes the Times-Picayune. In September, the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals allowed Connecticut and other states to proceed with a suit aimed at forcing American Electric Power and other utilities to reduce greenhouse emissions.

Craig Pittman, Times Staff Writer

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Study: Hidden health costs from energy consumption top $120 billion

The National Research Council, an arm of the National Academies of Science, released a report today that attempts to estimate the hidden costs of energy production and the use of coal, oil and other sources, such as the impact of air pollution, on human health.

The estimate: $120 billion in 2005.

And that's just a partial estimate, the council notes. The number "reflects primarily health damages from air pollution associated with electricity generation and motor vehicle transportation," a news release on the study says. "The figure does not include damages from climate change, harm to ecosystems, effects of some air pollutants such as mercury, and risks to national security. ..."

Here's the breakdown:  

"Coal accounts for about half the electricity produced in the U.S.," the release notes. "In 2005 the total annual external damages from sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter created by burning coal at 406 coal-fired power plants, which produce 95 percent of the nation's coal-generated electricity, were about $62 billion."

And then there are all the cars and trucks on the highway spewing pollution from their tailpipes. In 2005, motor vehicles produced $56 billion in damage to human health, the study found.

The committee that wrote the report tried to figure out the hidden costs in terms of climate change impact too, but it ran into lots of problems quantifying an amount for those impacts. Nevertheless, it found that "coal-fired power plants are the single largest source of greenhouse gases in the U.S., emitting on average about a ton of CO2 per megawatt-hour of electricity produced. ...Climate-related monetary damages range from 0.1 cents to 10 cents per kilowatt-hour."

Craig Pittman, Times Staff Writer

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PSC says yes to charging in advance for nukes, staff says no to conservation

Our colleagues over at The Buzz are reporting that the Florida Public Service Commission rejected arguments from environmentalists and clean-energy advocates and voted 3-1 today to approve a request by Progress Energy, and Florida Power & Light to charge customers four new nuclear power plants that wouldn't generate any voltage until 2017.

The lone no vote came from Commissioner Nancy Argenziano, whom FPL on Thursday accused of being biased and unethical.

The decision allows Progress Energy to charge customers customers $213 million, or $5.86 a month per 1,000 kilowatt hour, to upgrate its Crystal River nuclear power plant and build two new nuclear units in Levy County.And FPL gets to raise $63 million and add 67 cents per 1,000 kilowatt hours to customer monthly bills to pay for the pre-construction costs of two nuclear units at its Turkey Point Plant in Miami-Dade County and to add two new units to its St. Lucie County plant

Meanwhile though, the PSC's staff has recommended against adopting strict energy conservation goals for the utilities. The reason, according to the Sun-Sentinel: they think that conserving too much energy would cost customers more.

Last year, at the behest of Gov. Charlie Crist, the Legislature passed a law requiring the commission to adopt efficiency goals that encourage lowering energy use.

However, as the paper notes, "Utilities often oppose lowering energy use because that means less in electricity sales and profit. FPL officials project a rate increase of about $4 billion over the next 10 years if they used aggressive goals recommended by environmentalists."

Environmental activists contend that if the PSC adopts tougher conservation goals, the Sun-Sentinel reports, "customers' bills would decrease over the long-term both because they'd use less electricity and it would eliminate the need for new FPL power plants, which customers pay for through rates."

--Craig Pittman

Arctic to be largely ice-free in summer months within a decade, says new study

A new analysis by Cambridge University predicts that within the next decade, the Arctic will be largely ice-free during the summer months.

During a 73-day trek across the icy expanse, team leader Pen Hadow -- the first man to walk to the North Pole solo -- "took 1,500 readings, often during pitch blackness and with windchill factors down to -70 degree C," the UK Telegraph is reporting. "The team also took thousands of visual observations to give an impression of how the shape of the ice sheet is changing."

Their samples showed that, thanks to the changing climate, the area surveyed was comprised almost exclusively of first year ice, and not the thick, multi-year ice that has covered that area in the past.

"Discovering this area of younger ice provides another body of information that supports the rapidly emerging scientific consensus that it's going to be nearer 10 years from now that we will see roughly 80-85 percent free waters in the Arctic Ocean," Hadow told CNN.

Here's the UK's Independent Television Network story on it:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says Arctic sea ice covered an average 2.1 million square miles in September - the third lowest for any September since records began in 1979. The coverage was 23.8 percent below the 1979-2000 average, and the 13th consecutive September with below-average Arctic sea ice extent.

What does this all mean? “You're essentially, for the first time, creating an ocean. Which is not something you want to do as a global experiment, because you cannot take the ocean away,” Cambridge Professor Peter Wadhams told the Toronto Globe & Mail. “If it's a disaster you cannot put the lid back on again and say, ‘Oh, that didn't work out, let's try that again.' You're stuck with what you've done.”

--Craig Pittman

Showdown at the PSC over Progress Energy, FPL nuke plant charges

As our colleague Robert Trigaux notes in his Venture blog, Friday will bring what promises to be the final showdown at the state Public Service Commission over whether Progress Energy and Florida Power & Light can charge customers years in advance for building new nuclear plants.

Estimated cost for the two plants: $35 billion. The one Progress Energy hopes to build in Levy County accounts for half of that -- $17 billion.

Once viewed as a slam-dunk for the utilities, Trigaux points out, now the question of what the PSC will do is definitely up in the air.

"Critics say investors, not consumers, should bear more of the risk of nuclear power plants," he writes. "And economic circumstances have stalled some of the initial momentum for new nuclear power. Enough so to ask: will Progress Energy itself ultimately decide the nuke plants are no longer worth the growing controversy in the state?"

Further complicating the PSC's decision is Gov. Charlie Crist's selection of two new members in the wake of an ongoing scandal that has led to suggestions that it's time to change how the state regulates its utilities.

--Craig Pittman

Rising sea temperatures spread slimy mucus-like blobs in world's oceans

As sea temperatures rise, a new study has found, "enormous sheets of a mucus-like material have begun forming more often, oozing into new regions, and lasting longer," according to National Geographic.

Sheets of such "mucus" occur naturally throughout the Mediterranean, especially in the Adriatic Sea. They were first identified in 1729. Warm summer months help keep seawater more stable, allowing microscopic organic materials to bond together and form slimy mucilage blobs that can stretch for miles, clogging fishing nets and covering swimmers with a sticky gel.

But climate change is heating up the world's oceans, and now the blobs are forming in the winter too and lasting for months, the study found. Worse, it turns out that the Mediterranean mucilages harbor bacteria and viruses, including potentially deadly E. coli. And the blobs are now turning up in other oceans, from the North Sea to Australia, the study found.

"Now we see that … the release of pathogens from the mucilage can be potentially problematic" for human health," said the study's leader, Roberto Donovaro, director of the marine science department at the Polytechnic University of Marche in Italy. "It's a good example [of what will happen if] we don't do something to stop climate warming. There are consequences [if] we continue to deny the scientific evidence." 

[Photo of diver with Adriatic Sea slime from Scripps Institute of Oceanography]

--Craig Pittman

Bacteria breakthrough: Team honored for turning dirt into a battery

Popular Mechanics has just named a start-up called Lebone the winner of one of its Breakthrough Awards for finding a way to get electricity out of something as common as dirt -- namely, dirt.

What makes it work is that the dirt is full of bacteria. Scientists have long known that bacteria's metabolic reactions produce a steady trickle of electricity. The key is how to harness it.

Lebone (pronounced La-bo-nay) gets its name from the Northern Sotho word for light, lamp, or candle, and its focus is on "finding ways of passively harvesting energy to power lights and cell phones" for the poor in Africa. Right now, notes a story in the Irish Times, "African students often walk miles to reach on-grid lighting for night-time study." Cell phones function as light sources for some Africans.

Last year the Lebone team went to Tanzania to test a "microbial fuel cell" or MFC, described by Popular Mechanics this way: "Simple and cheap, the MFC came in a 5-gallon bucket. It consisted of a graphite-cloth anode, a chicken-wire cathode, manure-rich mud for fuel, a layer of sand to act as an ion barrier and salt water as an electrolyte — all attached to an electronic power-management board."

To boost power, the team found a way to link the batteries, putting them in canvas bags that are buried in the dirt. "When watered to keep the microbes munching, the buried cells can produce power for months," the magazine says.

“You can just literally make energy from dirt,” Aviva Presser, a Lebone team member, told the New York Times a year ago when the group was first starting out. “And there’s a lot of dirt in Africa.”

Craig Pittman, Times Staff Writer

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Crack found in Crystal River nuke plant containment wall

Workers at Progress Energy's nuclear power plant in Crystal River found "a separation in the concrete...near the periphery of the containment," according to a report from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The plant had already been shut down for nearly two weeks for refueling and a modification that requires cutting a large hole through the steel-reinforced building, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

"The NRC is sending additional inspectors to determine the extent, cause and safety risks of the void," the paper reported.

Progress Energy wants to build a second nuclear plant just north of the one in Crystal River, up in Levy County, but permitting issues with the NRC have forced it to delay construction.

--Craig Pittman

Island nation leader copes with rising sea level by holding cabinet meeting underwater

The tourist-friendly nation of the Republic of Maldives -- which at 7 feet above sea level is the lowest-lying nation in the world -- is expecting to have a rough time coping with rising sea levels.

President Mohamed Nasheed thas already started collecting money to buy a new homeland for his population of 350,000 people if the country's 1,192 low-lying coral islands are eventually submerged by the Indian Ocean.

Now the president has proposed holding a Cabinet meeting this month...underwater.

So now his 14 government ministers are taking scuba lessons and learning how to use sign language in preparation for the meeting Oct. 17, says the Associated Press.

At the meeting they "will ratify a pledge calling on other countries to slash greenhouse emissions ahead of a U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December," CNN reports.

"The document will be in a water-proof plate pinned on to the table," a government spokesman said. No word on what kind of pen they will use.

[Photo from Maldives via AP: Government ministers take scuba training]

--Craig Pittman