Here are the 6 cities in the U.S. running on 100 percent renewable electricity

[KelleyKramer]

Here are the 6 cities in the U.S. running on 100 percent renewable electricity

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/10/26/1710037/-Here-are-the-5-cities-and-towns-in-the-U-S-running-on-100-percent-renewable-energy

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According to the Sierra Club there are 46 cities, four counties, and one state that have committed to evolving their energy generation into 100 percent renewable forms. This is a part of the Sierra Club’s “Ready for 100 Campaign.” And this is good news, even though we would all feel a lot better if there were 50 states committed. However, there are five places in the United States that have already met the 100 percent goal:

Rock Port, Missouri: Became the first town in the US to reach 100 percent renewable energy goals in 2008.

Rock Port’s 100% wind power status is due to four wind turbines located on agricultural lands within the city limits of Rock Port (Atchison County). The city of Rock Port uses approximately 13 million kilowatt hours of electricity each year. It is predicted that these four turbines will produce 16 million kilowatt hours each year.

Excess wind generated electricity not used by Rock Port homes and businesses is expected to be move onto the transmission lines to be purchased by the Missouri Joint Municipal Utilities for use in other areas.

Greensburg, Kansas: After the town of Greensburg was hit by a catastrophic tornado event in May of 2007, the denizens of Greensburg rallied to rebuild their small farming community, as a community of the future. And by 2009 they had succeeded.

When the initial shock subsided and the time to rebuild arrived, the residents realized that they had an opportunity to turn a tragedy into a triumph—an opportunity to make Greensburg something even better than it had been before. Living close to the land, they knew the value of solar and wind power and of using water efficiently. Conversations began about translating these concepts to rebuilding as a model “green” community, and the idea quickly picked up steam. Soon after the tornado, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) dispatched a team, including its own energy experts and some from its National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), to Greensburg to assist the residents with the technical aspects of rebuilding. DOE’s ultimate goal was to demonstrate energy efficiency and renewable energy solutions that would help Greensburg and could be replicated in other disaster recovery and general rebuilding efforts across the country. Researchers on the DOE/NREL team were interested in understanding how far a city, with the opportunity to completely rebuild, could go toward becoming a net-zero energy community. Project goals included helping rebuild the city as a model community of clean, affordable, and energy-efficient technologies and buildings; facilitating renewable electricity generation for long-term, clean, and economical power; and supporting the reconstruction of Greensburg with access to information and materials to achieve national goals related to energy diversity and reliability.

MUCH more on the link

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/10/26/1710037/-Here-are-the-5-cities-and-towns-in-the-U-S-running-on-100-percent-renewable-energy

And if you're interested, there are many more links there to the source stories


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[Cosmocat]

1. Sigh

What could be ...

[Achilleaze]

2. KGOP will make these American cities pay for their intelligence & initiative

[NNadir]

3. It's 2017. The concentration of carbon dioxide is now...

...[link:https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/weekly.html|404 ppm. (Accessed 10/30/17) Ten years ago it was 381 ppm.

Ten years ago we started an "investment" on a planetary scale of over two trillion dollars in so called "renewable energy." The result of this 'investment" is that the rate of increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the highest ever observed.

It would have been absolutely astounding to have had two time points over a ten year period come in at more than 3.00 ppm/year average.

Since 2015 this is the "new normal."

So called "renewable energy" is a tremendous failure. It didn't work; it's not working; and it won't work.

The belief in so called "renewable energy" as a solution to climate change is our creationism on the left.

Over at Daily Kos, they hate the world's last best hope to address climate change. They think that Fukushima is the worst energy disaster of all time; this while 7 million people die each year from air pollution, and the earth's atmosphere's destruction accelerates.

A comparative risk assessment of burden of disease and injury attributable to 67 risk factors and risk factor clusters in 21 regions, 1990–2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 (Lancet 2012, 380, 2224–60: For air pollution mortality figures see Table 3, page 2238 and the text on page 2240.)

I called them out on this, little Timmy Lange; and Markos, both of whom, being journalists, lack a shred of scientific knowledge, and predictably, they banned me, for telling the truth, that nuclear energy saves lives.

Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)

Over at Daily Kos, they're in a delusional state that six cities running on so called "renewable energy" is some kind of victory. After two trillion dollars in ten years?

They're out of their minds. If there is no larger representation of the failure of so called renewable energy, this statement, "In 2017, six cities were running on 100% renewable energy" would be it.

Have a nice workweek.

[KelleyKramer]

4. Wow, interesting

I'm curious, where did you get the number that we invested 2 trillion in the last 10 years?

And who exactly is 'we'?

That is a 200 billion a year investment, how many megawatts of solar panels per year is that?

[NNadir]

6. The figures come from the annual UNEP/Frankfurt School Bloomberg report. Here is...

...the link for the 2017 report: Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2017

The report is issued annually; I've been following it with growing disgust at the stupidity of it all since 2014.

The totals can be found from the graphic (bar graph) on page 12, and from the table on page 14, which breaks down so called "renewable energy" by type.

The sum from 2006 to 2016 is $2,365,700,000 dollars, (2.3657 trillion dollars) a sum greater than the annual gross domestic product of India, a nation with in excess of one billion human beings, many of whom lack even the most primitive sanitary systems.

Since the people who actually buy into this "solar is great" horse manure are almost all first world bourgeois types who are completely disinterested in human suffering and poverty in the third world, this is a vast moral disgrace.

The table on page 14 shows that while the vast amount of money wasted has been wasted on solar energy, the slightly less useless - but useless all the same - wind industry has also squandered trillion dollar sums of money. Solar and wind dominate this tom foolery, but there's also other forms of so called "renewable energy" listed in the table, including biofuels.

Biofuels are responsible for about half of the seven million people who die each year from air pollution. The majority of these deaths are in Asia, although significant numbers of people in the Western world are killed by wood burning stoves and fireplaces.

I refuse to engage in the grotesque marketing Trumpian scale lie that confuses peak power (measured in Watts) with energy,, which is measured in Joules. The operative amount of total energy on the planet is actually measured in exajoules, "exa" referring to 10 to the 18th power. After 50 years of wild cheering the entire solar industry does not produce 2 of the more than 570 exajoules generated and consumed by humanity each year.

This fraudulent and scientifically illiterate technique, deliberately confusing power units with energy units is used to pretend that a solar plant rated at 1000 MW that operates (if it's lucky) at 10% capacity utilization is the same as a 1000 MW nuclear plant that operates at 100% capacity. It's not. A 1000 MW solar plant operating at 10% capacity utilization is the equivalent of a 100 MW gas plant, but a solar plant, unlike a nuclear plant, cannot replace the gas plant, a necessary redundancy, because, um, it's widely reported that the sun goes down.

That we embrace this lie on the left shows that we can be every bit as much willing to lie to ourselves as Republicans of the idiot MAGA set can be.

The solar industry is a huge toxic disaster that after 50 years of wild cheering has not been able to produce as much energy in total as is represented by the annual increases in dangerous natural gas use.

It has done nothing at all to address the use of dangerous fossil fuels and the resultant climate change, is doing nothing at all to address the use of dangerous fossil fuels and the resultant climate change and will do nothing at all address the use of dangerous fossil fuels and the resultant climate change.

The reason is physics, specifically the low energy to mass ratio of so called "renewable energy."

The worst thing that we are doing by squandering money on so called "renewable energy" is wasting not just valuable and irreplaceable resources, but is wasting time.

We have robbed all future generations by putting our heads in the sand, by hating science and scientists, and letting our most important decisions be determined by sham marketing. And that's what the so called "renewable energy" industry is, a big marketing ploy largely supported - despite rhetoric often advanced by those who wish to make excuses for their embrace of a very, very, very bad idea - by the fossil fuel industry.

[TexasBushwhacker]

7. So what do you suggest we do?

Unless we have a war or a plague that wipes out half the worlds population, energy use will continue to grow.

[NNadir]

9. I am an unabashed supporter of the nuclear industry. It is cleaner, safer and more sustainable...

...than all other options.

It is, of course, not perfect and not without its own risks, but it need not be perfect and without risk to be vastly superior to all other options, and that's exactly what it is, vastly superior to all other options.

[gtar100]

5. The failure is in lack of trying, not the technology.

Big oil has done everything in its power to stop any alternative. I'm a proponent of nuclear energy as well but don't feel a need to knock solar, wind and other alternatives. Nature uses diversity as a primary survival mechanism, we would be wise to do the same when it comes to something so fundamental to our own survival as energy production. Seems you're striking out in the wrong direction if you ask me. The problem isn't the technology - these "alternative" energy technologies you decry actually work, just like nuclear power does. The problem is an entrenched, world wide market for oil that has millions of investors who refuse to give up their gravy train. That's your real uphill battle, along with the huge PR issue nuclear energy has if you want to be considered as an alternative to the horror show that is our fossil fuel economy.

[NNadir]

8. Really? An investment of trillions of dollars isn't trying?

The other excuse for the physically absurd so called "renewable energy" - that oil industry opposes the so called "renewable energy" industry is just absurd.

The wind and solar industry are very much supported by the dangerous fossil fuel industry, since it functions as a useful smokescreen for its activities and, in fact, entrenches them.

My favorite example of this scam is the Government of the Nation of Denmark, which is one of Europe's largest exporters (after Norway) of oil and gas, drilled in a disgusting fashion in the North Sea.

Here is the webpage that the Danish Energy Agency devotes to issuing oil and gas leases: The Danish State grants licences for the exploration and production of oil and gas in Denmark.

Stadtoil, Norway, also promotes "wind to hydrogen" nonsense. Stadtoil wind energy

I note, with due contempt for the oil/gas/wind/solar scam that before completely and irreversibly damaging the entire Gulf of Mexico in the Deepwater Horizon blowout that unlike Fukushima has gone down the memory hole, BP used to advertises itself as "Beyond Petroleum" claiming, in a huge marketing lie, that it was going "renewable."

The renewable energy industry isn't even renewable. It is dependent entirely on extensive mining of increasing rare and environmentally suspect resources. There is no difference between a limited supply of oil and/or gas and a limited supply of say, cadmium, indium, or for that matter copper, concrete and steel.

As for the PR issue for nuclear energy, I do what I can to address this horrible crime against the future, the demonization of the last best hope of the human race, but only a fool would underestimate the power of fear and ignorance. I agree that nuclear energy, the form of energy invented by some of the finest minds of the 20th century does have a public relations issue, but this is only a function of intractable stupidity for which future generations will be well within their rights to never forgive this generation of fools.