Tappan Zee Bridge Replacement Gains Key Approval

Despite concerns that the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council was violating state law, or at least stretching the notice requirements so as to allow a vote on the Tappan Zee replacement project without giving proper notice, the Council did hold its emergency meeting today.

Backed by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, the Council unanimously approved the project, even though there's still no concrete design and the final costs are still not known.

The 9:30 meeting was streamed from the state Department of Transportation website, but had no audio during the 40-minute program, which included public comments from Riverkeeper and Tri-State Transportation Campaign and a presentation by the board.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a steadfast advocate of a new Tappan Zee, is expected to comment on the milestone vote at a news conference in Piermont at 1 p.m., his office said.

The unanimous vote in favor of the $5.2 billion project was expected, after the county executives from Westchester, Rockland, and Punam announced last week they supported the governor’s plan to replace the Tappan Zee. To ensure the state could compete for federal funds for the project, today’s meeting was quickly organized on Friday afternoon.

That drew sharp criticism from major interest groups which argued that a last-minute notice prevented the public from getting involved.

Veronica Vanterpool, executive director of Tri-State Transportation Campaign, attended Monday’s vote and questioned whether the project will be able to secure federal funds. Last week, a state comptroller report blasted the Thruway Authority for poorly managed finances. The Thruway Authority owns and operates the Tappan Zee.

“In order for this to be a competitive project, there are a lot of red flags raised, by the comptroller and by the credit agencies,” Vanterpool said. “That needs to be addressed. You want it to be the best project so it will receive federal funds. How can it be the best project if the finances are so shaky?”

Even the county officials in Rockland and Westchester are left with only assurances that mass transit (whether bus rapid transit or commuter rail) will eventually be included in an I-87/I-287 corridor project to come after the bridge is built with capacity to handle eventual construction.

We'll probably get our first crack at viewing the bridge designs once the winning bids are announced next month.

Still, the biggest question is how the bridge construction will be funded. Approximately $2 billion will be paid for via a federal loan. The remainder will be funded from user tolls. The last couple of weeks have seen the Governor's office release a toll structure that would nearly triple tolls, but then Governor Cuomo admitted that the tolls seem to be high.

He's trying to play the tolls both ways. On the one hand, his office put out those numbers knowing what it would take to cover the construction and debt costs. By their reckoning, those tolls are needed to fund the construction if the state is incapable or unwilling to pony up the money directly so as to cover the debt costs and construction costs directly. On the other hand, the Governor can claim that he's now concerned that the numbers would produce such high tolls and he'd look into it.

However, that could mean that the transit options get shelved indefinitely, even though they have the potential to take the largest number of vehicles off the road and reduce congestion throughout the I-87/I-287 corridor. That, however, is a direct competitor to the Thruway Authority's need to stimulate tolls that generate revenues for the Authority to fund both capital projects and operating expenses.

One of the rationales for hiking the tolls to their stratospheric levels is that it would match the George Washington Bridge's new tolling. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense since the Port Authority's come under fire itself for hiking tolls when the perception that the money isn't going to fund transportation infrastructure but rather World Trade Center work. Mind you that the gap in the Port Authority's budget is due almost entirely to the cost overruns associated with the PATH transit hub at the WTC - $1.2 billion in overruns nearly matches the money expected to be realized from the toll hikes.

What gets lost in all this is why infrastructure projects costs as much as they do when compared to European or Japanese projects of similar scope. There's no reason they should cost as much, and yet project after project has seen overruns and cost estimates that boggle the mind.

Cheaper Natural Gas Contributing To Lower Emissions

Carbon dioxide levels as measured by the EPA have reached a 20 year low across the United States. The decline is due in large part to the fact that utilities across the country have shifted away from coal to cheaper natural gas. Burning natural gas releases less carbon dioxide than coal does at the smokestack, so the fact that coal use has reached lows not seen since World War II is playing a major role in the decline.

While New Jersey has barred new coal-fired plants from being built, the state’s leading electric producer still operates two major coal plants in Jersey City and Mercer County, among the biggest emitters of carbon dioxide in the state.

Most air pollution from the two Public Service Enterprise Group coal plants has plummeted in recent years following almost $1 billion in technology upgrades. But the plants still produced 4.1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2010, according to a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency database. Still, it was PSEG’s natural gas plant in Ridgefield that emitted the most greenhouse gases into the air from New Jersey with 2.6 million metric tons.

Governor Christie’s Energy Master Plan, released last year, bars new coal-burning plants from being built while calling for the state’s natural gas infrastructure to be expanded. So far it has.

A Tennessee Gas pipeline through the Highlands that carries methane mined from Pennsylvania through the controversial technique called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, was expanded last year despite protests from residents and environmentalists. Construction on a second pipeline expansion project through West Milford, Ringwood and Mahwah is scheduled to begin soon and will quadruple capacity.

In a little-noticed technical report, the U.S. Energy Information Agency, a part of the Energy Department, said this month that total U.S. CO2 emissions for the first four months of this year fell to about 1992 levels. The Associated Press contacted environmental experts, scientists and utility companies and learned that virtually everyone believes the shift could have major long-term implications for U.S. energy policy.

While conservation efforts, the lagging economy and greater use of renewable energy are factors in the CO2 decline, the drop-off is due mainly to low-priced natural gas, the agency said.

A frenzy of shale gas drilling in the Northeast’s Marcellus Shale and in Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana has caused the wholesale price of natural gas to plummet from $7 or $8 per unit to about $3 over the past four years, making it cheaper to burn than coal for a given amount of energy produced. As a result, utilities are relying more than ever on gas-fired generating plants.

Both government and industry experts said the biggest surprise is how quickly the electric industry turned away from coal. In 2005, coal was used to produce about half of all the electricity generated in the U.S. The Energy Information Agency said that fell to 34 percent in March, the lowest level since it began keeping records nearly 40 years ago.

The question is whether the shift is just one bright spot in a big, gloomy picture, or a potentially larger trend.

Coal and energy use are still growing rapidly in other countries, particularly China, and CO2 levels globally are rising, not falling. Moreover, changes in the marketplace — a boom in the economy, a fall in coal prices, a rise in natural gas — could stall or even reverse the shift. For example, U.S. emissions fell in 2008 and 2009, then rose in 2010 before falling again last year.

Also, while natural gas burns cleaner than coal, it still emits some CO2. And drilling has its own environmental consequences, which are not yet fully understood.

“Natural gas is not a long-term solution to the CO2 problem,” Pielke warned.

The International Energy Agency said the U.S. has cut carbon dioxide emissions more than any other country over the last six years. Total U.S. carbon emissions from energy consumption peaked at about 6 billion metric tons in 2007. Projections for this year are around 5.2 billion, and the 1990 figure was about 5 billion.

China’s emissions were estimated to be about 9 billion tons in 2011, accounting for about 29 percent of the global total. The U.S. accounted for approximately 16 percent. Mann called it “ironic” that the shift from coal to gas has helped bring the U.S. closer to meeting some of the greenhouse gas targets in the 1997 Kyoto treaty on global warming, which the United States never ratified. On the other hand, leaks of methane from natural gas wells could be pushing the U.S. over the Kyoto target for that gas.

Even with such questions, ­public health experts welcome |the shift, since it is reducing air pollution.

“The trend is good. We like it. We are pleased that we’re shifting away from one of the dirtiest sources to one that’s much cleaner,” said Janice Nolen, an American Lung Association spokeswoman. “It’s been a real surprise to see this kind of shift. We certainly didn’t predict it.”

Power plants that burn coal produce more than 90 times as much sulfur dioxide, five times as much nitrogen oxide and twice as much carbon dioxide as those that run on natural gas, according to the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress. Sulfur dioxide causes acid rain and nitrogen oxide leads to smog.

That decline is brought about by multi-year lows in the cost of natural gas as compared to coal production. It's far cheaper to burn natural gas than coal to produce the same amount of energy, which is why utilities are switching over to natural gas.

It's supply and demand - economics 101.

The coal industry is facing major problems as a result of the swift departure from coal use to natural gas. They're trying to figure out how to market and reposition coal productions so as to try and save coal industry jobs, but many of those jobs will not return unless costs for natural gas rise to the point that it becomes cost effective for coal to be mined/extracted.

Natural gas industry workers are benefiting from the coal industry woes - and regions that are rich in natural gas are seeing a renaissance. That includes locations along major oil shale deposits such as the Bakken and Marcellus fields. It's brought about windfalls to communities where natural gas is being exploited - the opposite of what is being experienced where coal mines are being closed because it isn't cost-effective to operate at current coal prices.

Environmental regulations are only tangentially affecting the job situation - it's the price of natural gas that is driving the swift turnover to natural gas for energy production.

Black Lung Makes a Reappearance In American Coal Mines

It wasn't supposed to be like this. Enactment of the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969 was supposed to sharply cut exposure to coal mine dust.

The act set a standard for coal dust exposure (2 milligrams per cubic meter of air), which was as little as 1/4 of the concentrations miners breathed at the time.

The act's passage followed a 23-day unauthorized and rowdy strike in which 40,000 West Virginia coal miners demanded government efforts to prevent the disease and to compensate victims.

By the end of the year, tough dust exposure limits were in place. Miners were offered free diagnostic chest X-rays every five years, and federal compensation became available.

The X-rays showed 4 in 10 miners tested had black lung. The disease killed 1,800 miners in a single year. But diagnoses soon plunged more than 90 percent, according to NIOSH data.

"They anticipated that no one would develop progressive massive fibrosis," says 84-year-old Donald Rasmussen, a pulmonologist in Beckley, W.Va., who says he's tested 40,000 coal miners in the last 50 years.

"In 1969, I publicly proclaimed that the disease would go away before we learned all about it," he adds. "And I was dead wrong."

The regulations did result in a major decrease in black lung deaths at the outset, but after a period of long decline, the numbers are on the rise. The numbers have been rising since the mid 1990s.

Thus, even though the federal regulations are being met on coal dust exposure, the miners are apparently being afflicted in greater numbers as a result of silica that is being thrown into the air by the very equipment that is supposed to make the miners' jobs easier. They're so effective and are being used to scrape away the rock to get at the coal seams that they are creating a toxic brew in the air.

This is the kind of situation that would seem to call for new protections, including requiring masks for certain mining operations near the face of the mines. Some mining companies will complain that their profits may be squeezed by the regulations, but they'd still come out ahead because they'd have a healthier workforce which is more effective and efficient.

EPA Finds Fracking Fluids In Tainted Water in Wyoming

Despite claims by drillers that the shallow depth of natural gas deposits in Wyoming could explain the presence of off-smelling and tasting water in parts of the Pavillion deposit field, the EPA found that natural processes alone could not explain why chemicals used in hydrofracking (fracking) showed up in test wells.

The draft report, after a three-year study by the Environmental Protection Agency, represents a new scientific and political skirmish line over whether fracking, as it is more commonly known, poses a threat in the dozens of places around the nation where it is now being used to extract previously unreachable energy resources locked within rock.

The study, which was prompted by complaints from local residents about the smell and taste of their water, stressed that local conditions were unusual at the site, called the Pavillion field, in that the gas wells were far shallower than in many other drilling areas around the country. The shallow depth means that natural gas itself can seep upward naturally through the rock, and perhaps into aquifers.

But the suite of chemicals found in two test wells drilled at the site, the report said, could not be explained entirely by natural processes. The agency’s analysis of samples taken from deep monitoring wells in the aquifer indicated the presence of synthetic chemicals, like glycols and alcohols consistent with gas production and hydraulic fracturing fluids, benzene concentrations well above standards in the Federal Safe Drinking Water Act standards, and high methane levels.

Also complicating the inquiry is the Pavillion field’s long history. The oldest wells there were drilled 40 years ago or more, and chemicals that might have been used were not required to be listed or reported to anyone.

This has repercussions for the fracking of the Marcellus field in New York, where the state DEP is examining proposed regulations on allowing fracking, and which could affect the New York City watershed. No one really knows what chemicals were used 40 years ago in the drilling processes, and while it is plausible that the chemicals found in the test wells could be the result of decades-old contaminations, it still shows that those chemicals can migrate into well water and aquifers in and around the natural gas formations.

It means that the energy companies have to do a whole lot more to protect the watershed than they are now doing, and that fracking has to be carefully so as to prevent contamination of the watershed and aquifers. So, while fracking might not leave much of a trace on the surface, the underground damage could be substantial and far more long-lasting than the energy companies are willing to admit.

It means that regulators, politicians, and local groups have to be a whole lot more careful about accepting fracking and the promises of a clean and environmentally responsible fracking process. It means that the energy companies have to be far more careful in their use of fracking fluids that can lead to irreparable harm to aquifers and the watersheds.

The Sweet Science of Bioremediation

Bioremediation of contaminated land is something of a holy grail for scientists and environmentalists since it utilizes natural processes to cleanse soils and groundwater of contamination. It can be done either in place, or with a mechanical removal of soil for treatment off-site.

Some cleanups in New Jersey are using molasses to enhance the bioremediation. That can speed up the cleanup and restore lands much more quickly than other cleanup methods.

In a relatively new process called enhanced anaerobic bioremediation, the diluted molasses provides a food source for microbes that occur naturally in the soil. The microbes multiply, then use the solvents the way humans use oxygen, breaking them down into non-toxic byproducts, such as carbon dioxide.

International Molasses now ships its syrup to cleanup sites in New Jersey and several other states.

"A few years ago we started seeing a lot of growth in this area," said Eric Lushing, vice president of Malt Products Corp. and its subsidiary, International Molasses Corp., which supplies molasses to the Kearfott site.

"The molasses we produce is food grade, which is not true of a lot of refineries, which make it below food grade," Lushing said. That makes their product more appealing to cleanup experts, since food grade molasses does not contain other chemicals that might exacerbate a contaminated site's issues, he said.

The companies' molasses and malt products are more typically sold to food manufacturers that make cookies, snack foods, breakfast cereals, candy and peanut butter.

International Molasses Corp. began in 1957 as a regional supplier of malts and has grown internationally. It has manufacturing plants in Maywood as well as in Canada, Great Britain and the Netherlands. The company also has a product called Eco-Molasses, a byproduct of sugar refining that is sold to golf courses and other facilities for lawn maintenance. Eco-Molasses is touted as a product that improves leaf color and plant health, decreases thatch, and increases microbial activity in the soil.

'99 percent' clean

"We're hoping that within two years this process will bring the contaminants down to an acceptable standard," said Mo Mohiuddin, project manager with Arcadis, the contractor hired to clean up the Kearfott site. "We won't get every molecule of contamination but we should be able to hit 99 percent of the mess."

Anaerobic bioremediation is a growing strategy for contamination cleanup experts. It has been used at hundreds of sites nationwide, including Air Force bases from Oklahoma to California.

If it can be made significantly cheaper, that would further spur cleanups.

Where Natural Gas Is Burned Off For No Profit Or Cost

The Bakken oil shale deposit spreads across parts of the Central United States and is seen as a huge reservoir for oil. Yet, it also produces prodigious amounts of natural gas and much of that gets wasted.

In fact, it gets burned off in such huge quantities that had it been collected, it would be sufficient to power half a million homes.

Every day, more than 100 million cubic feet of natural gas is flared this way — enough energy to heat half a million homes for a day.

The flared gas also spews at least two million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year, as much as 384,000 cars or a medium-size coal-fired power plant would emit, alarming some environmentalists.

All told, 30 percent of the natural gas produced in North Dakota is burned as waste. No other major domestic oil field currently flares close to that much, though the practice is still common in countries like Russia, Nigeria and Iran.

With few government regulations that limit the flaring, more burning is also taking place in the Eagle Ford shale field in Texas, and some environmentalists and industry executives say that it could happen in Oklahoma, Arkansas and Ohio, too, as drilling expands in new fields there unlocked by techniques like hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling.

“North Dakota is not as bad as Kazakhstan, but this is not what you would expect a civilized, efficient society to do: to flare off a perfectly good product just because it’s expensive to bring to market,” said Michael E. Webber, associate director of the Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy at the University of Texas at Austin.

The oil companies say economic reality is driving the flaring in the Bakken, the biggest oil field discovered in the United States in four decades. They argue that they cannot afford to pay for pipelines and processing plants to capture and sell the gas until they actually drill oil wells and calculate how much gas will bubble out of the oil. And reinjection of the carbon dioxide, commonly done in conventional oil fields, is more difficult and expensive in less permeable shale fields.

“This field covers 15,000 square miles, so it takes time to go and test what’s there and then build a gathering system and plant,” said Harold G. Hamm, chief executive of Continental Resources, one of the biggest oil producers in the Bakken.

The widespread flaring is a step backward for a domestic energy industry. Most oil and gas fields in the United States have well-developed facilities to gather and process gas.

The companies driving the oil-shale exploration and drilling claim that they can't effectively and cost-effectively deal with the collection and transmission of the gas to market because natural gas prices have dropped.

It would seem to me a tremendous waste of a limited natural resource to simply burn it off because it can't be collected and stored. Collection and storage seems to be more cost effective in the long run than burning it off and contributing to increased air pollution downwind.

Perhaps the federal government should impose more stringent fines for flare-offs to encourage other methods for storing what the energy companies consider to be a waste product at this point. The government should also encourage natural gas pipelines by reducing the costs for permitting and siting such facilities.

Driving down the cost of natural gas would be a boon to consumers who rely on natural gas for home heating during the winter, and it would also reduce power generating costs as coal powered plants are shuttered in favor of more efficient and less-polluting natural gas plants.

Lower natural gas prices could also feed interest in fuel cells and other technologies (CNG) that can be used in the auto industry.

A Novel Solution to Persistent Lead Pollution In Soils

The cost of carting away soils laced with lead is one that can no longer be borne by the EPA and state agencies trying to deal with decades of buildup. Lead, which can cause developmental and mental health issues, was in widespread use until the latter part of the 20th century, which means that communities throughout the country have lead issues, especially in urban areas.

That makes the novel use of fish bone meal all the more appealing. The waste product from processing fish for food can be tilled into top soil with high lead concentrations so as to bind with the lead particles and make them incapable of being absorbed by people.

Today, there is more lead contamination in America’s cities than any federal or state agency could ever afford to clean up and haul away. So scientists and regulators are trying a new strategy, transforming the dangerous metal into a form the human body cannot absorb, thus vastly reducing the risk of lead poisoning.

The principle is straightforward, said Victor R. Johnson, an engineer with Civil & Environmental Consultants Inc. “The fish bones are full of calcium phosphate,” he said. “As they degrade, the phosphates migrate into the soil.” The lead in the soil, deposited by car exhaust from the decades when gasoline contained lead or from lead-based paint residue, binds with the phosphate and transforms into pyromorphite, a crystalline mineral that will not harm anyone even if consumed.

This alchemy has been practiced in university and commercial laboratories for more than 15 years, and more recently has been employed at acid-mine sites and military bases.

But now it is also coming to residential neighborhoods like South Prescott in Oakland, which this month became the first in the country where fishbone meal is being mixed into the soil for lead control under a project organized by the Environmental Protection Agency.

“It’s fair to say, looking forward, that just about every urban residential area probably has a lead problem and we just can’t afford economically and socially to move that amount of dirt any more,” said Steve Calanog, the E.P.A. official in the San Francisco office that is overseeing the project. “Topsoil is a precious resource, and we don’t have enough topsoil to replace it.”

EPA Promulgates New Smokestack Emission Rules

The EPA has promulgated new rules that should improve air quality for 240 million people, which will take effect beginning in 2012. It is a rewrite of a rule that the EPA passed during the Bush Administration but was invalidated by a federal judge in 2008.

The new regulation, known as the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, is essentially a rewrite of a rule issued by the administration of President George W. Bush that was invalidated by a federal judge in 2008. The regulation, known popularly as the transport rule because it involves emissions that are carried eastward by prevailing winds, is a significant toughening of an acid rain program that was part of the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act.

The agency said that utilities could meet the new standards at a modest cost using commonly available technology like smokestack scrubbers. Under some E.P.A. projections, the new rule would create jobs in pollution-control business and significantly improve labor productivity by reducing the number of workdays lost to respiratory and other illnesses.

The utility industry and many Republicans in Congress, however, contend that the new rule, along with other pending E.P.A. air quality regulations, will require the closing of dozens of aging coal plants and impose heavy financial burdens on power companies and their customers.

“The E.P.A. is ignoring the cumulative economic damage new regulations will cause,” said Steve Miller, president of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, a group of coal-burning utilities. “America’s coal-fueled electric industry has been doing its part for the environment and the economy, but our industry needs adequate time to install clean coal technologies to comply with new regulations. Unfortunately, E.P.A. doesn’t seem to care.”

An industry-financed study found that new air pollution rules would cost tens of thousands of jobs and raise electricity rates by more than 20 percent in some parts of the country.

Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, called the new rule an impediment to economic growth and job creation.

“True environmental progress will not come from these costly, heavy-handed regulations that harm the very people E.P.A. claims to protect,” Mr. Inhofe said in a statement. “Real progress on clean air is best achieved through common-sense multipollutant legislation that streamlines the Clean Air Act’s many redundant and overlapping mandates.”

“The bottom line,” he added, “is that reducing emissions does not have to be this expensive — the Obama E.P.A. just wants it to be.”

Supporters of the new rule said that any costs would be more than offset by health and other benefits. The E.P.A. estimates the annual benefits of the cross-state pollution rule at between $120 billion and $280 billion a year by 2014.

The Obama Administration and the EPA believe that the costs for improving the emissions to be less than $1 billion, and that it would save $120 to $280 billion a year based on fewer health-related issues downwind of the emitters (estimated at 34,000 premature deaths, 15,000 nonfatal heart attacks, hundreds of thousands of cases of asthma and other respiratory ailments every year.)

That's a 120-1 benefit to cost ratio using the most conservative savings figure. Even if the Administration overstated the savings by a factor of 10, and the savings would be $10 billion a year, it would be considerable for a limited expenditure of $1 billion. Heck, even if the costs were underestimated by a similar margin, we'd still see benefits outweighing the costs.

The main reason the opponents consider that power costs would rise is that the energy generated by coal-plants is typically cheaper than other sources. Those regions most heavily reliant on coal power would see those energy costs rise while those relying on alt-energy, hydropower, or nuclear power would see far less costs.

It would also affect the economy of states like West Virginia, which are home to significant coal industries. Needless to say, those states are likely to fight back against the rules and seek to have them watered down.

Instead of fighting to water down the rules, the states that rely on coal power should be using this as an opportunity to push alt-energy opportunities and to pitch their states as havens for manufacturing solar or wind power generators and their technologies. What we are seeing is these states are trying to hang on while jobs continue to hemorrhage from those industries.

Cuomo Administration Seeks To Close Indian Point, But Lacks Suitable Energy Generating Alternatives

Governor Andrew Cuomo, fresh off his major win on the Marriage Equality Act, is setting his sights on closing the Indian Point nuclear power plant 35 miles north of New York City. The state recently adopted a new power plant siting law, which conceivably would make constructing new power generating facilities easier in the state, but the problem is multifold.

Mr. Cuomo is not the first politician or the first governor to take that position, but newly passed state legislation will make it easier for him to do so.

The meeting was the first high-level meeting between Entergy, the company that runs Indian Point, and the Cuomo administration, and it was convened at Entergy’s request.

Mr. Cuomo has repeatedly taken the position in speeches that he wants to close the plant. But his administration had not delivered the message so directly to the company, or in such strong words, and company officials left the meeting alarmed.

The encounter seemed to mark a heightened determination to close the plant, and recent events put considerable leverage in the governor’s hands to make his wish a reality.

On the day of the meeting, lawmakers were in the process of approving legislation to streamline the siting of new power plants in New York, a step that, for the first time in nearly a decade, makes replacing Indian Point and the huge amount of power it generates more feasible. The last siting law expired at the beginning of 2003.

At the same time, the licenses for Indian Point’s two reactors expire in 2013 and 2015. The state can derail the process by refusing to provide permits related to the plants’ use of water from the Hudson River as a coolant. Last year, the State Department of Environmental Conservation rejected a crucial permit application from Entergy; the company is challenging the move.

For the Cuomo administration, closing Indian Point would be a major step toward reshaping the state’s energy policy. Replacing the plant would take years and require a long-term energy strategy. The plant produces 2,000 megawatts and provides 25 percent of the power in New York City and Westchester.

Public worries about the plant, in Buchanan, about 35 miles north of Midtown, flared after the recent catastrophe at the Japanese nuclear plant in Fukushima, and after a report highlighting the Indian Point plant’s proximity to a fault line. But replacing it with natural gas plants or other more conventional options could bring its own environmental and emissions concerns.

It would take years before power plants are built that can replace the 2,000 megawatts produced by Indian Point. The plant produces 25% of New York City and Westchester's power needs. That can't be easily replaced and the alternatives are likely to worsen air quality in the region or cause other environmental issues.

Then, there's the issue of constructing new transmission lines that would bring power down from Canada and upstate New York. Those power lines are consistently opposed by NIMBY-types and further limit power producers and users from getting power - even if it's from hydropower or green-power sources like wind or solar.

UPS Looking To Wring More Efficiency Out of Ubiquitous Brown Trucks

UPS is one of the world's largest delivery companies in the world and its transportation costs are significant. So, any move it can make to lower its energy costs is going to reap significant benefits for its bottom line. The company has recently called for it to use less energy and increase the efficiency of its delivery fleet.

To do so, it's going plastic.

Last year, UPS announced an ambitious goal: The company planned on increasing its package-delivery fleet fuel efficiency by 20% between a 2000 baseline and 2020. The obvious path to those goals is combination of hybrid electric vehicles and natural gas-powered trucks (both are technologies that the company is exploring). But UPS is also going for a more revolutionary solution: The shipping giant is testing plastic trucks that are supposedly both lighter and more fuel efficient than their sheet-aluminum counterparts.

According to UPS, the diesel trucks come with body panels made out of ABS plastic, which makes them 1,000 pounds lighter than standard trucks. This lightness--and the smaller engine it allows--makes the trucks 40% more fuel efficient, a feature that could save the company 84 million gallons of fuel each year if the technology becomes widespread.

Why isn't UPS ditching diesel altogether for more efficient alternatives? UPS does actually operate 1,900 alternative-fuel vehicles, but the company claims that their fuel systems aren't efficient enough for high-mileage routes. 

The cost savings will help deal with higher energy costs and improve the bottom line. Those kinds of moves are likely to be copied by other delivery companies, and that should help lead to a revolution in how energy costs are reduced. It may not lead to lower shipping costs, but it may prevent spikes in prices due to rising energy costs.

Some folks might wonder why we should make a big deal about a jump in mpg from 11 to 15 mpg (that's 40%). We get a much greater improvement when upgrading the worst performing vehicles and these vehicles put serious miles on annually. Every little bit helps - and in UPS's case, it's a whole lot of help.

Now, if long-haul shippers would only get on the bandwagon and implement more efficient designs for trucks and trailer rigs ahead of the EPA regs that are going into effect.

The savings adds up.

Going White

If you've ever looked at the rooftops of buildings or residential homes, more often than not you're going to find dark roofing materials, whether it is tar flat roofs or dark asphalt shingles. The dark colors retain heat, making cooling costs higher than they would otherwise be in the summertime.

New York City is urging building owners to go ahead and paint their rooftops white, which should bring down cooling costs considerably.

Buildings Commissioner Robert LiMandri set out to change that Wednesday morning, as he and his staff coated the roof of the seven-story building in a reflective white sealant. The special paint is designed to bounce the sun’s rays and reduce energy costs.

“If enough people do it, we’ll actually make a big difference,” LiMandri said when he took a break from painting the 22,500-square-foot roof.
Buildings Commissioner Paints Rooftop White to Cut AC CostsA painted section of the roof dried in the sun Wednesday morning, overlooking the Frank Gehry-designed Beekman Tower. (DNAinfo/Julie Shapiro)

In neighborhoods with lots of tar roofs, such as lower Manhattan, Long Island City and Greenpoint, the reflective paint could even reduce the temperature down on the street, LiMandri said.

The sealant costs 30 to 40 cents per square foot, and it could cut air-conditioning costs in half for single-story houses with flat roofs. Two-story houses could see a 25 percent reduction in cooling costs. The sealant also protects roofs and helps them last longer.

One downside of the reflective paint is that it slightly increases a building's heating cost in the winter, compared to a standard black tar roof. But that increase in cost is easily offset by the savings on air conditioning in the summer, a DOB spokeswoman said.

The city hopes to have 1 million square feet of rooftops coated by this fall.

While the heating costs may rise, the cooling cost savings should more than offset the higher winter costs (and as is often the case, the rooftops are covered in snow for portions of the winter in any event. This is hardly the first time that this has been proposed, President Obama's Energy Secretary has backed the idea, and I made sure that when we replaced our own roof, we opted for the lightest color available to take advantage of lower energy costs during the summer.

It's a relatively low cost change if you have an existing roof, but doesn't add to the costs if you're putting on a new roof. Yet, the cost savings could be considerable over the life of the roof, and it is likely to make for a more comfortable building and local environment.

Missing the Real Story About the Port Authority Easter Traffic Jam Response

Much is being made in the Star Ledger and the Staten Island Advance about the Port Authority's failure to provide sufficient cash lanes for traffic entering Staten Island during the Easter weekend. The traffic jams meant some people waited hours to go over the Outerbridge Crossing or the Goethals Bridge and the Port Authority held public hearings for people to vent their complaints about the problem.

Port Authority Chairman Christopher Ward was contrite in how the Port Authority will handle the situation going forward, and while commuters were calling for his head and the firing of those responsible for not having sufficient toll collectors on hand, Ward's response is instructive:

"Without a doubt, it was a management failure and I take full responsibility for it," Ward told angry commissioners during a morning meeting of the Port Authority’s operations committee.

Later in the day, addressing reporters after the full board’s regular monthly meeting, Ward apologized to the public, acknowledging Sunday’s traffic nightmare was not up to the Port Authority’s usual performance standards.

Ward said the agency plans to fill eight vacant toll collector positions. In addition, he said, agency managers will be given the authority to open E-ZPass lanes to all traffic. To minimize revenue losses, the agency would use cameras already in place to photograph license plates of non-E-ZPass users and then mail them a bill for the toll, Ward said.

"We consider this unacceptable," Port Authority Chairman David Samson said of Sunday’s problem. "We’ve got Mother’s Day coming up. We’ve got Memorial Day coming up. We’ve got the 4th of July. It’s unthinkable that we would have these problems."

Cedric Fulton, the agency’s director of bridges, tunnels and terminals, said the normal contingent of toll collectors for the three Staten Island crossings — the Outerbridge Crossing and Bayonne and Goethals bridges, is 39. But because of the vacancies, there are now 31 collectors, just four above the normal weekend staffing level of 27, Fulton said.

Read that part in bold again.

That's a program that would eliminate the need for toll collectors altogether, not just during peak time periods. If that program were instituted, it could eliminate the need for the toll barriers at those Port Authority bridges and tunnels - and eliminate the traffic jams created when commuters cross the bridges. Eliminating the toll barriers completely would smooth traffic flow and reduce congestion, emissions from idling vehicles, and improve air quality.

The switchover to the system that Ward proposes cannot come soon enough, and should be vastly expanded to include all the Port Authority bridges and tunnels - precisely because it eliminates the need for toll barriers that are a regular source of congestion and air pollution.

EZ Pass violators are already ticketed and fined with a camera system (that works to some extent). Ward's proposal expands on this system, but doesn't go nearly far enough. The Port Authority needs to move in the direction of the MTA, which is converting to a cashless toll collection system on the Henry Hudson Bridge linking Manhattan with the Bronx.

Federal Regulatory Agencies Acting When Congress Fails To Act

For the second time in a week, a federal regulatory agency is taking action when Congress has failed to act. First, the FCC promulgated regulations dealing with net neutrality. The net neutrality regulations are a mess, and it appears to be nothing more than a giveaway to wireless providers, because they are held to a different standard then landline providers. That was completely unnecessary and shows the way that lobbyists managed to water down the rules to their benefit. They know that the landline services are a dying breed as more people obtain only cellular services, and wireless providers will not be prevented from limiting services:

The companies have said the rules would provide some regulatory certainty. In private, they have acknowledged the proposal could have been much worse. If approved, they “will give some assurances to the companies that are building Web applications — companies like Netflix, Skype and Google — that they will get even treatment on broadband networks,” Ms. Arbogast said. But a wide swath of public interest groups have lambasted the proposal as “fake net neutrality” and said it was rife with loopholes. One group, Public Knowledge, said that instead of providing clear protections, the F.C.C. “created a vague and shifting landscape open to interpretation. Consumers deserved better.”

Notably, the rules are watered down for wireless Net providers like AT&T and Verizon, which would be prohibited from blocking Web sites, but not from blocking applications or services unless those applications directly compete with providers’ voice and video products, like Skype.

F.C.C. officials said there were technological reasons for the wireless distinctions, and that they would continue to closely monitor the medium.
Citing the wireless proposal, Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, said over the weekend that the F.C.C. was effectively allowing discrimination on the mobile Net, a fast-growing sector.

“Maybe you like Google Maps. Well, tough,” Mr. Franken said on Saturday on the Senate floor. “If the F.C.C. passes this weak rule, Verizon will be able to cut off access to the Google Maps app on your phone and force you to use their own mapping program, Verizon Navigator, even if it is not as good. And even if they charge money, when Google Maps is free.”

I've got to agree with Sen. Franken (I know!). Having just ponied up for a new smart phone and apps, I know that Verizon Wireless has the Navigator, which charges for the GPS service, whereas Google maps (or Mapquest) have similar free functions. If Verizon Wireless decides that the competition is too much (such as claiming that too much bandwith is going to those apps), they'll insist on users sticking to Verizon Wireless applications and services.

The rules should have been consistent across the board - for wireless and standard telecommunications services. Offering up different rules means that a further distortion of the marketplace will occur and not in a good way for consumers or innovators.

Now, the EPA is looking to curb greenhouse gasses in proposing regulations.

In an announcement posted late Thursday on EPA's website, administrator Lisa Jackson said officials "are following through on our commitment to proceed in a measured and careful way" to reduce pollution that contributes to climate change.

The new regulations will focus specifically on coal plants and oil refineries, two of the largest sources of greenhouse gases. It will propose standards for power plants by next July and for refineries a year from now.

The increased regulations are likely to increase energy costs, which have already risen significantly since the middle of 2010 to the highest levels in nearly two years.

The real issue is that Congress has been incapable of dealing with these kinds of issues in any measurable way. Republicans are warning the Administration that they are going to attempt to block even these regulations, noting that they should not enact the EPA regulations when Congress refuses to take such actions.

The E.P.A.’s announcement drew swift criticism from Representative Fred Upton, the Michigan Republican who will become chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee next month. “We should be working to bring more power online, not shutting plants down,” he said in a statement.

“We will not allow the administration to regulate what they have been unable to legislate,” he said. “This Christmas surprise is nothing short of a backdoor attempt to implement their failed job-killing cap-and-trade scheme,” he said.

In the conference call, Ms. McCarthy emphasized that the E.P.A. was not imposing a “cap-and-trade” system, a system that sets a ceiling on greenhouse gas pollution while allowing companies to trade permits, at a price that the market determines.

Approved last year in a House bill, cap-and-trade legislation died in the Senate this year. Later, opponents called it “cap and tax,” and it became a rallying cry for some midterm election candidates who were opposed to the expansion of government authority over industry and the economy.

Four Brooklyn Businesses Hit With Felony Charges For Dumping Raw Sewage

Manager/owners of four Sheepshead Bay Brooklyn businesses were arrested and face up to four years in prison and fines of $75,000 per day for dumping raw sewage into Shell Creek, which runs into Jamaica Bay. They had been warned since 2003 to repair sewer lines but had resisted such efforts for years despite their private sewer system regularly breaking down and leaking into neighboring streets.

Investigators used a green dye to trace the dumping of raw sewage, including toilet waste, into the creek:

Craig Novoa, manager of the United Artists Sheepshead Bay Stadium 14 movie theater; Simon Shin, manager of Knapp Street Bagel; Alex Spivak, landlord for the TGI Friday's, and David Matalon, manager of Deuville Marina, were arrested.

The criminal complaint accuses the shops - all in or near the same strip mall - of dumping human waste, restaurant grease and other refuse into the creek.

Neighbors of the shops had complained for years about noxious odors coming from the creek, which is home to bluefish, crab and striped bass.

"I've been living here for 12 years. That creek stinks," said Minnie Colon, 36, who had just bought a ticket to see "Burlesque" at the theater.

"It smells like a backed-up toilet. On a rainy day, forget about it. You have to carry Febreze," said Colin, who added that she was shocked to hear about the allegations.

Jamaica Bay is home to a segment of the Gateway National Recreation Area, and is home to one of the East Coast's most important migratory birding habitats. It is habitat that has been under tremendous strain and pressure - with researchers trying to figure out why marshland was disappearing at a frightening pace over the past decade.


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What makes this dumping all the more odious is that these businesses are located just blocks from the Coney Island Wastewater Treatment Plant and that it took so long to trace the source of the problem. The movie theater denies the charges, and points to the fact that it repaired a section of the sewer line in 2009.

Al Gore Admits Politics Behind Push For Ethanol

It wasn't about actually producing alternative energy fuels that actually delivered more energy than was required to produce it and which delivered less energy to vehicles that could use the fuel.

Al Gore admits that his support of ethanol was all about politics. It was about his desire to win over voters in Iowa and the farm states.

Former U.S. vice-president Al Gore said support for corn-based ethanol in the United States was "not a good policy", weeks before tax credits are up for renewal.

U.S. blending tax breaks for ethanol make it profitable for refiners to use the fuel even when it is more expensive than gasoline. The credits are up for renewal on Dec. 31.

Total U.S. ethanol subsidies reached $7.7 billion last year according to the International Energy Industry, which said biofuels worldwide received more subsidies than any other form of renewable energy.

"It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for (U.S.) first generation ethanol," said Gore, speaking at a green energy business conference in Athens sponsored by Marfin Popular Bank.

"First generation ethanol I think was a mistake. The energy conversion ratios are at best very small.

"It's hard once such a programme is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going."

He explained his own support for the original programme on his presidential ambitions.

"One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president."

More to the point, ethanol is still not a good alternative since it shifts production of corn and corn products from food to fuel. That increases the costs and benefits no one but the large agriprocessors who produce the corn and then turn it into ethanol.

This is a farm subsidy that deserves to be killed, and one that would save taxpayers nearly $8 billion directly, and even more indirectly as food costs are likely to drop as production pressures decline.

New York City Announces Finalists In Taxi Design Competition

New York City has announced three finalists in the design competition to replace existing taxi models with purpose-built taxis. They include designs by Ford, Nissan, and Karsan USA (which is a Turkish company's US operation).

The three finalists to be the Taxi of Tomorrow were selected from a larger group of submissions, and concepts were evaluated by the Taxi and Limousine Commission, in cooperation with the Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities and Ricardo, Inc., an international automotive engineering consulting firm. The winning proposal will be announced in early 2011 and the new vehicle will be on the road no later than the fall of 2014. Total fleet turnover will be gradual over several years as older vehicles retire - New York City taxicabs are typically retired after three to five years of service.

The Taxi of Tomorrow project began in 2007 with the formation of a Taxi of Tomorrow Stakeholder Committee, and a Request for Proposals was issued to automotive manufacturers in December 2009. The project seeks to build a taxicab that is safe, fuel-efficient, accessible, durable, and comfortable.

New York City has 13,237 licensed taxicabs, including the world's largest fleet of fuel efficient taxicabs, with 3,983 hybrid, 5 Compressed Natural Gas (CNG), and 17 clean diesel taxi cabs. Today's taxi fleet is comprised of 16 different vehicles, supported by nine manufacturers.

From the exterior the three models are roughly similar in appearance - they're all minivan styled with side door access. Karsan's interior diverges from the standard designs with three forward facing passenger seats and a fourth seat facing the passengers with a driver cockpit. The other two designs are conventional in appearance.

Without knowing the technical details about mileage and performance, it's tough to pick a winner from the bunch. The city had issued a request for proposal, but it didn't get into specifics about performance and mileage requirements.

At a meeting last week, cabbies worried about requiring fleet purchases of the cabs, which means that a recall or factory problem could shut down the entire fleet. It might make more sense to allow cabbies and fleet purchasers to buy one of the three finalists, rather than mandate purchase of the preferred model.

This is a major issue because the Crown Victoria is being discontinued after August 2011, and the Crown Vic has been the backbone of the New York taxi fleet for a generation. Crain's notes that the Ford proposal would get 22 mpg, which is nearly double the Crown Vic's mileage.

The Law of Unintended Consquences Strikes Again: Reusable Bags Test Positive for Lead

Investigations have found that the now ubiquitous reusable bags aren't nearly as good for the public as their champions had envisioned. Bags proffered by Publix and Winn-Dixie have tested positive for lead.

The Tampa Tribune tested more than a dozen bags from major grocers and found that certain bags sold in Winn-Dixie and Publix stores had lead levels that concerned health officials.

In a preview of a Sunday article, the newspaper's website reported some bags had enough lead that they could be considered hazardous waste if residents disposed of them in household trash.

The lead appears to be in a form that's not easily extracted or "leached" out, so there is less concern the lead would easily rub off on food when the bags are new, the paper found. But over time, lab experts note, the bags wear down and paint can flake off, and eventually reusable bags could accumulate in landfills, presenting another ecological issue.

Publix officials stress their bags comply with current federal laws regarding lead content. The newspaper reported Thursday that Publix is asking suppliers to find ways to make bags with less lead.

In an e-mail to The Associated Press on Thursday, Winn-Dixie said it is confident the reusable bags are safe to use and reuse as intended.

"Recent information suggests there is an opportunity to improve this solution as it pertains to the disposal of these bags," wrote Winn-Dixie spokeswoman Robin Miller. "We will continue to work closely with our suppliers to make certain that we are in compliance with industry standards."

Miller added that any Winn-Dixie customer who has a concern about a bag is welcome to bring it back to the store for a full refund.

Bags tested by independent firms found levels ranging from 87 parts per million to nearly 200 parts per million depending on the bag tested.

Both companies will be coming out with new bags.

Wegmans bags had a similar concern. Wegmans offered up trade-ins on hundreds of thousands of reusable bags because of lead concerns.

The bag at issue is decorated with an image of green peas. Wegmans pulled that bag, as well as a "2009 Holiday" bag, from shelves Sept. 3 after internal tests confirmed high lead levels. Both bags are green and were made in China. Signs went up in stores Friday to alert customers to the replacement policy.

"We decided to discontinue these two designs out of an abundance of caution and because of our commitment to sustainability and the environment," said Jo Natale, Wegmans spokeswoman.

RAMP applauded Wegmans taking voluntary action and acting quickly on the issue.

"We are not saying that Wegmans is selling a product that is going to poison anyone, but we don't need additional lead coming into our country from China," said Judy Braiman, president of RAMP.

The group urges all retailers to demand a certificate of compliance from their suppliers and to do their own testing for harmful chemicals before putting products out for sale.

"Our position on lead, or for that matter on other [toxins], is it could be a health issue if it gets into the waste stream," said Braiman. "If any of these reusable bags with lead or other toxic chemicals becomes abraded it could pose a risk of exposure."

Wegmans disagreed. Consumer lead concerns are usually associated with toys young children might put in their mouths.

"Since this is not a product for children, and in fact, the tag on our bag warns that it should not be given to children or babies, we do not see this as a risk," said Ann McCarthy, a Wegmans spokeswoman.

Meanwhile, those reusable bags turn out to be quite filthy once you think about it because most people don't think to wash them out.

UPDATE:
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) wants a probe into the lead content of these reusable bags.

New Jersey's Weatherization Program Squandering Millions

The 2009 stimulus package included a section for weatherization programs around the country. New Jersey was entitled to $119 million under the ARRA of 2009, but has spent only 5% of the amount thus far, and much of that has been squandered.

This program is desperately in need of reform or elimination. The intentions of the program -to improve weatherization and improve efficiencies of homes owned by low-income households - may be worthy, but this program isn't the way to get it done. The State Auditor's audit bears this out:

According to a report released this week by State Auditor Stephen Eells, the program’s cost controls weren’t being effectively implemented.

The audit determined that $2.7 of the $8.7 million in expenditures reported so far were considered fraudulent and the payments were stopped. Weatherization agencies are provided advance funds but must submit reports on the expenditures.

Of the $119 million, New Jersey was awarded half, or $64 million, upfront. The state was promised the other half once the it could demonstrate progress, or that 30 percent of the units the state promised to weatherize are completed.

The report noted that the lack of oversight resulted in varying construction costs, underpaid workers, and “unreasonable spending.”

Eells said that the spending problems were the result of “inadequate review of financial reports and a lack of guidance from the state and federal agencies.”

Auditors visited four weatherization agencies and found that of the reported $614,000 in expenditures, $54,000 were “unreasonable.”

For example, one weatherization agency spent $1,499 for in-dash GPS systems when a cheaper a $200 portable model would have worked. Another agency was reimbursed more than $17,000 for vehicles it purchased prior to the grant funding.

Construction costs fluctuated dramatically. One weatherization agency charged the program $1.50 for light bulbs, while another charged $27; the audit did not specify how many bulbs were purchased in each instance. Another weatherization agency charged $10 for a dryer vent, while a similar installation cost $126, according to the report.

The problems are a combination of businesses taking advantage of what they perceive to be free money and government programming that doesn't establish benchmarks, reasonable costs, or effectively target waste in the program.

This program could have been more successful if the state funneled the money to upgrading state office or schools (or both) with more efficient boilers and HVAC systems. This would have reduced costs to taxpayers over the long term and improved long neglected infrastructure. Homeowners can do many of the same projects for a fraction of the money spent on the stimulus weatherization program on their own or via their own contractors.

In fact, it might have made more sense for the state to arrange a weatherization rebate program allowing low income homeowners to apply for rebates for the work done rather that the system that was put into place. While this might not have eliminated the bogus requests and outlandish costs, it would have accelerated the spending within the state on weatherization programs and gotten people working on these projects.

A rebate system would have made more sense in that the state could have set up an application form putting together the contract/proposal form that homeowners could use to apply for the funds and contained the necessary protections to the homeowner and contractors. Work on each project would have been contingent on approval by the state - protecting homeowners from being hit with unexpected costs (or a provision to allow for a maximum unexepcted costs) and giving all parties a measure of certainty in upgrading homes around the state.

EPA Issues First-Ever Emissions/Efficiency Rules For Heavy Vehicles

For the first time, the EPA has issued emissions/efficiency rules for heavy vehicles that fall into one of three classes:

Each of the three categories has different targets.

* Combination tractors (commonly known as semi trucks) would get new engine and vehicle standards and, according to the EPA, "achieve up to a 20 percent reduction in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and fuel consumption by 2018 model year," compared to a 2010 baseline.
* Heavy-duty pickup trucks and vans would fall under emissions rules that are similar to the rules that govern light-duty trucks and passenger cars. There would be separate gasoline and diesel standards that would, "achieve up to a 10 percent reduction for gasoline vehicles and 15 percent reduction for diesel vehicles by 2018 model year (12 and 17 percent respectively if accounting for air conditioning leakage)."
* For vocational vehicles, the proposed standards would reduce fuel consumption and CO2 emissions up to 10 percent by 2018 model year.

These new guidelines would require major purchases and/or retrofits to meet the requirements.

I find it curious that the vocational vehicles, which include garbage trucks and school buses are subject to only a 10% cut and not a greater percentage. This is an area where even greater energy savings could be realized through incorporating hybrid vehicles. I suspect this omission might be due to the fact that this would essentially turn into an unfunded mandate against states and localities to purchase new equipment whereas the other vehicle types would require purchases by independent haulers and owners/businesses.

In any event, the reduction in emissions and greater efficiency will improve air quality in many parts of the country and may reduce long term costs. What is particularly striking is that even a 10% increase in efficiency could have a tremendous effect on energy costs. For truck operators, getting these sort of efficiency increases could, "and save as much as $74,000 over the truck's useful life. Moreover, these vehicle classifications account for 4% of the vehicles on the road, but 20% of the energy consumed. There's a tremendous potential to reduce reliance on foreign energy sources.

Expect to hear from businesses that will complain about having to absorb the costs of purchasing the new trucks and equipment, but the long term savings may more than make up for it.

UPDATE:
There are some pretty easy methods to improve aerodynamics on trucks that could improve fuel efficiency without resorting to new technologies. These include aerodynamic mirrors, air dams, mud guards, and fairings/guards. Add in a boat-wing fairing for the rear of a trailer, and you could get a 20%+ increased efficiency and that's before any engine modifications.

Major Wind Power Projects Move Ahead At Last

The widely touted Cape Wind project has finally been awarded the federal leases that are necessary before construction on the project can begin. The project, located off Cape Cod, was long opposed by none other than former US Senator Ted Kennedy, but with his passing, the project has advanced to the point of construction.

The 28-year lease for 25 square miles in federal waters will cost Cape Wind an annual fee of $88,278 before construction and a 2 to 7 percent operating fee during production based on revenue from selling the energy.

“This is the beginning of a new era for our Nation in offshore energy production,” Salazar said in a speech to the American Wind Energy Association in Atlantic City where he was signing the lease this morning. “Responsibly developing this clean, renewable, domestic resource will stimulate investment in cutting-edge technology, create good, solid jobs for American workers, and promote our nation’s competitiveness, security, and prosperity.”

The expected announcement brings Cape Wind, which has undergone nine years of permitting, that much closer to construction. The state Department of Public Utilities is currently reviewing a deeply controversial contract between the utility and the developer to sell 50 percent of it energy at more than double the cost of current fossil fuel prices. They are expected to make a decision, widely expected to be an approval, by Nov. 15.

It was not immediately clear how the lease payment was arrived at – or how it compares to offshore oil and gas leases.

“We’re ready to roll up our sleeves and get to work building America’s first offshore wind farm that will create hundreds of jobs, increase our energy independence and promote a healthier and more hopeful energy future,” said Cape Wind President Jim Gordon.

Cape Wind, about five miles from the closest Cape Cod shore, is expected to produce the equivalent of up to 75 percent of the electricity demand for the Cape and Islands. Salazar gave the project final federal approval in April.

This may help spur the approval of similar projects off New Jersey's coast.

Meanwhile, major companies are looking to get into the wind power business including
Northrup Grumman. The major aerospace and naval shipbuilder is getting into the wind power game after signing a deal with a Spanish company to build an offshore wind turbine. They have the experience necessary to build major structures offshore that are capable of withstanding the forces of nature typically encountered offshore, so this is a good fit and will help create jobs.

Opponents to land-based wind power facilities have plenty of fodder in thwarting construction of projects. Besides the typical NIMBY mentality, some are pointing to studies claiming that wind power projects can affect local weather patterns. Much more frequently, the opposition is based on the noise made by the blades cutting through the air. Some projects have restrictions on when they can operate, reducing their efficiencies and output.

The net result of land-based opposition will be an increased cost associated with construction offshore, and increased costs for running transmission lines to the offshore projects, but once these sites are built, they will provide a renewable source of electricity.