You're invited to The Big Green!

The Sustainable Fox Valley proudly presents The Big Green Sustainable Music Festival.

Excitement is brewing in anticipation of the Fox Valley's first annual Sustainable Music Festival - The Big Green™ - premiering Saturday, August 18 from 12:00 p.m. - 9:30 p.m. at The Kimberly Amphitheater, Sunset Park in Kimberly, WI.

The festival features live music, local food and marketplace, handcrafted beer, and exhibits. We even have crafts and activities for children at "The Kids' Green"!

www.TheBigGreenFest.com

Tickets are $10.00 and include entertainment, The Kids' Green, local marketplace and exhibits. Children under age 13 are free.

Proceeds benefit Sustainable Fox Valley™, a non-profit organization, to further its goals for the Fox Valley Region of Wisconsin.

www.sustainfv.org

With music by:

Ifdakar
Greg Waters and the Broad Street Boogie
Recalcitrant
Josh Harty
Justin Bricco of the Blueheels
Galynne Goodwill

Buy tickets now

Natural Gas: Wrestling With Reality

August 10, 2012
A commentary by Michael Vickerman, RENEW Wisconsin, Director, Policy and Programs:

After skidding below $2.00/MMBtu this winter, wholesale natural gas prices are now creeping toward the $3.00 mark. This upward movement is the result of below-normal volumes of natural gas going into storage for the winter heating season. The latest report, released August 16th, marks the 16th straight week where injection volumes lagged significantly behind the five-year average.

Notwithstanding this mild rebound, everyone in the energy industry, including the traders themselves, knows that $3.00/MMBtu is well below the cost of producing natural gas, and cannot deliver a return that can support future drilling efforts. This is particularly true with shale gas, the so-called “game-changer” that industry flacks contended would topple King Coal’s reign over the electricity sector.

High-profile shale gas producers like Chesapeake Energy are now running out of ways of concealing their financial distress. Consider the following developments that occurred over the last fortnight.

• Chesapeake Energy announced plans to reduce domestic gas production in 2013 by 8%; 
• BHP Billiton wrote down $2.84 billion on the value of Fayetteville shale gas assets it had acquired in 2011; and 
• The most recent count of rigs drilling for natural gas in the United States is 495, down 70% from the record-setting levels seen in September 2008.

“Write down” is a fairly bloodless way to describe the loss of $3 billion; “carnage” is better at conveying the pain that now grips the natural gas sector. This begs the question: why are wholesale natural gas prices still under the $3.00/MMBtu level?

I believe that there are two reasons for this phenomenon. The first is that energy traders, like virtually everyone else in this country, are truly convinced that the United States is awash in shale gas, thanks to a brilliant industry-led public relations campaign. Lower prices help reinforce the popular belief that cheap gas will be with us for another century. Unfortunately, federal energy agencies and universities have also bought into this view of the supply picture big-time, leaving little room for skeptics and agnostics to influence public perceptions.

This overarching belief has been unintentionally reinforced by local and regional controversies over the practice of hydraulic fracturing solid rock to obtain the shale gas trapped inside. Virtually unheard of four years ago, “fracking” has vaulted into the public consciousness, and in doing so, sustains the society-wide belief that natural gas can be accessed almost anywhere in the United States.

Ironically, the myth of abundance that E&P companies so carefully cultivated--and bankrolled--is now clearly working against their short-term interests.

The other factor that keeps prices so low is the traders’ fear of large demand swings. For example, the phantom winter of 2011-2012, which cut demand for heating fuel by more than 25%, creating a colossal oversupply that sent wholesale prices crashing. The supply pendulum is now swinging the other way, and more than half of the bulge has melted away. Assuming a continuation of smaller-than normal injections, natural gas inventories should be in line with the five-year average by mid-December.

Traders attribute the ongoing reduction in inventories to a hotter than normal summer, prompting utilities to switch on more gas generators to meet system peaks. But weather isn’t the only thing that influences the storage picture; output does as well. But as long as traders and speculators subscribe to the myth of nearly limitless supply, they will discount the possibility that declining output is also responsible for lagging storage volumes.

The paradigm shift ushered in by the fracking phenomenon won’t go away easily. But in the not-very-distant future, the reality of reduced drilling activity and capital spending, along with rapid decline rates in shale gas plays, will bite deeply into natural gas supplies and cause yet another overturning of expectations in this sector. For electric utilities as well as end-users, the results will not be pretty.

Michael Vickerman is program and policy director of RENEW Wisconsin, a sustainable energy advocacy organization. For more information on the global and national petroleum and natural gas supply picture, visit "The End of Cheap Oil" section in RENEW Wisconsin's web site: www.renewwisconsin.org. These commentaries also posted on RENEW’s blog: http://renewwisconsinblog.org and Madison Peak Oil Group’s blog: http://www.madisonpeakoil-blog.blogspot.com

India's Blackout Lesson: Coal Failed, Small Solar = Big Results

From a story by Justin Guay, Sierra Club International Program:

Of course they still have to face the problems they have inherited from trying to copy/paste a centralized grid from the West. So what can they do to solve peak problems with the grid they already have in place? Deploy lots and lots of distributed solar and efficiency.

That's because, unlike coal, solar for the most part is available when you need it - during peak hours. Which is why it's great to see States like Gujarat taking the lead in roof top solar programs with the support of the IFC. And efficiency makes the peaks smaller so you need less power in the first place.

The irony here of course is that distributed generation has always been ignored as trivial compared to the real need for a large scale 'modern grid.' That’s because policymakers and commentators lack the imagination to understand the fact that when aggregated, small can be very, very big.

Take the hidden truth behind India's modern grid (as my colleague Jigar Shah points out): it is actually already a distributed system that is largely powered by filthy, costly diesel gen sets. That’s because power outages are so frequent that businesses and wealthy individuals have been forced to pay for this backup generation to ensure power. This is a tremendous opportunity for companies seeking targeted diesel replacement strategies to save people and companies tremendous amounts of money, while providing reliable power.

Town of Sherman wind farm good for community

A letter to the editor of the Sheboygan Press written by Maureen Faller, a member of the board of directors of RENEW and co-owner of Kettle View Renewable Energy:

It is not surprising that the proposed Windy Acres Wind Farm project in the Town of Sherman has become a highly emotional debate. However, as a citizen, tax payer and small business owner in the Town of Sherman, I am concerned about the vast amount of misleading information that is being circulated throughout our community.

We’ve been barraged with flyers of burning wind turbines, yet the likelihood of this occurring is less than .001% based on 165,000 wind turbines installed worldwide. By comparison, our local fire department was dispatched to two car fires this month alone.

We’ve heard about the wind turbines affecting our property values, however an independent study conducted by the firm Poletti and Associates recently concluded otherwise. In Kewaunee County, which hosts two of the oldest commercial wind projects in the United States, their report suggests no statistically significant effect on the sale of homes or construction of new homes. Furthermore, there is no credible evidence that existing wind development in Wisconsin has depressed property values statewide. In fact, according to data compiled by the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance on property values and levies, in Fond du Lac County, equalized valuation actually increased by 1.2% during that time, while Dodge and Kewaunee counties managed smaller declines than the statewide average during that period.

We’ve been told of the ensuing health effects that will plague our families and animals. However, thorough studies by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and Massachusetts Department of Public Health, the Australian Government National Health & Medical Research Council, the Chief Medical Officer of Health of Ontario, Canada and the United Kingdom have each concluded that wind turbines do not pose a health threat. More recently, Kitty Rhoades, the Deputy Secretary of the State of Wisconsin Department of Health Services and Governor Walker appointee, could not have been more clear when she affirmed Wisconsin’s stance that the “levels of noise, flicker and infrasound measured from wind turbines at current setback distances do not reach those that have been associated with objective physical health effects.”

No significant impact from proposed Emerging Energy wind farm in St. Croix County

From a story by Jeff Holmquist in the Pierce County Herald:

Developers of the proposed Highland Wind Farm in the Town of Forest, Wis. will not be required to complete an environmental impact statement.

The Public Service Commission of Wisconsin issued a decision on the possible EIS requirement on July 25.

While the five-page document outlines several potential impacts that the wind farm project could have on landowners and the surrounding landscape, its conclusion is that there is “no significant impact” expected from the proposal.

Forcing an EIS typically slows down the approval process for such projects. With last week’s decision, final approval of the 41-turbine wind farm might come in the next few months.

Jay Mundinger, founding principal of the Highland Wind Farm project, said he was very pleased with the news.

Highland developers have worked with expert consultants to design and install the project in such a way that it would have little or no impact on the community, Mundinger said. He said the PSC apparently recognized that is the case as well.

“We’ve worked hard to protect the environment,” he said.

The PSC’s preliminary environmental assessment acknowledged that the large turbines would “affect the visual character” of the township. There may also be some increase in “ambient noise” near the turbines and “shadow flicker” (the blinking created on homes as the sun is blocked by the twirling blades) when the project is installed, the report concedes. There would also likely be some bird and bat losses as a result of the turning turbines, the report states.

But taking everything into consideration, the report’s author, Environmental Planning Analyst Kathy Zuelsdorff, concluded that the impacts are “typical of modern wind projects” and “would not result in significant environmental effects on the human environment.”