The Green Miles Hosts Rhode Island Wind Energy Panel

I recently hosted a panel on wind energy for RenewableNow.Biz featuring Jeff Grybowski of Deepwater Wind, Hannah Morini of Wind Energy Development, West Warwick Town Manager Fred Presley, and Providence Journal columnist Robert Whitcomb, who's the co-author of Cape Wind: Money, Celebrity, Class, Politics, and the Battle for Our Energy Future on Nantucket Sound. Watch it here:

Block Island Wind Would Cut Climate Pollution and Power Bills

I have an op-ed in this month's issue of WindCheck Magazine on a proposed wind farm off Rhode Island's Block Island:

Block Island has some of America’s best breezes, a natural resource that's lured sailors for generations. Now the community is on the verge of harnessing that resource in a new way with offshore wind energy.

One of those unique New England treasures, Block Island hits a perfect balance – close enough to the mainland to warrant a daysail, while its pace and landscape assure you that you’re on vacation. Yet somewhere along those 13 miles the price of your Mudslide, and everything else, managed to skyrocket. No one would expect bargain basement prices in a vacation paradise adjacent to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, but then you get to your hotel room and realize there’s no air conditioner. “If we put an air conditioner in your room, we’d have to double your rate,” the desk clerk tells me. “We pay some of the highest electricity prices anywhere in the country.”

While offshore wind energy is usually talked about as a higher-priced electricity source, on Block Island the five-turbine, 30 megawatt project proposed by Providence, RI-based Deepwater Wind will be a huge money saver. Americans pay an average of 12 cents per kilowatt hour for their electricity and 15 cents per kilowatt hour in Rhode Island, but out on Block Island, thanks to the community’s antiquated and highly polluting diesel electricity generator, electricity averages an incredible 47 cents per kilowatt hour. Some hotels pay as much as $50,000 per month in electricity bills. Offshore wind is projected to save Block Island residents and businesses 42 percent on their electricity bills – even more when demand is high.

Read the whole thing at WindCheck Magazine.

Drought, Gas-Fired Power Plant Nearly Snuff Out Providence Waterfire

With southern New England in a mild drought and Providence River water needed to cool Dominion's natural gas-fired Manchester Street Power Station, last week Providence's famed WaterFire had to ditch the gondolas:

Organizers of the popular public art display, featuring small bonfires on rivers in downtown Providence, say Friday night's partial WaterFire lighting in the Waterplace Park Basin will be done by volunteers in waders. Typically, boaters keep the flames lit, and Friday's plans called for the city's hurricane barrier to be closed to ensure sufficiently high water levels.

But with high temperatures forecast this weekend, a power plant on the river bank may need to run at full capacity. So the hurricane barrier must be opened to ensure a constant flow of coolant water.

New England remains overly dependent on nuclear and natural gas-fired power, with a lingering but shrinking slice of coal-fired power, all of which are extremely water-intensive. As global warming continues fueling more droughts, water-intensive energy sources are at risk of becoming increasingly unreliable.

Which makes some other news this week especially important: New Interior Secretary Sally Jewell is moving forward with offshore wind leases off Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Offshore wind and solar power will not only strengthen our energy security - hopefully they mean we won't have to get used to the hip waders at WaterFire.

Sen. Whitehouse Slams GOP's Generational Fraud on Climate Change

Climate-fueled superstorm Sandy caused $14 million in damage to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse's home state of Rhode Island, and apparently it's left him fed up with Congressional deniers of scientific reality.

"Our nation’s best and brightest minds accept the evidence of climate change, and are urging us to act," Whitehouse fumed on the Senate floor today. "Yet still for some in this body, the deniers carry the day."

Then Whitehouse lit into Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY):

When it’s the deficit, he's urged us “to make sure that we have the same kind of country for our children and our grandchildren that our parents left for us.” He’s even talked about, and I quote, “the Europeanization of America,” and as a result of that Europeanization of America “our children and grandchildren could no longer expect to have the same opportunities that we’ve had.”

On virtually every traditional anti-Obama Republican Tea Party bugbear – Medicare, Obamacare, the stimulus, the deficit – even this Europeanization of America – out come the children and grandchildren. Let’s assume they are sincere; let’s assume they have a sincere concern for what is left for our children and grandchildren.

So, when it comes to big corporate polluters of today leaving our children and grandchildren a damaged and more dangerous world, where then is the concern for those children and grandchildren? To have children and grandchildren pay for the care of their grandparents through Medicare and Social Security is a sin and an outrage. To force on them the untold costs and consequences of the harms done by today’s corporate polluters? For that, the future generations’ interests receive nothing from the Republicans but stony silence, or phony and calculated denial.

But the cost will be on them; and the shame will be on us.

McConnell's concern for our children's bottom line stops at his own - both the polluting oil & gas and coal mining industries give 90% of their political contributions to Republicans, both at all-time highs back to the start of OpenSecrets.org records in 1990. Overall, the energy and natural resource drilling/mining industry gives 80% of contributions to Republicans, also an all-time high.

Wondering how to rebut common climate denier talking points? Check out this great guide from ClimateProgress.org.

New Progress for Atlantic Offshore Wind Energy

The Obama administration today announced plans to sell leases for preliminary offshore wind energy development activities in two areas of federal waters recently identified and reviewed off the coasts of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Virginia. The leases will be sold through a competitive auction in 2013:

“Wind energy along the Atlantic holds enormous potential, and today we are moving closer to tapping into this massive domestic energy resource to create jobs, increase our energy security and strengthen our nation’s competitiveness in this new energy frontier,” said [Interior Secretary Ken] Salazar. [...]

The lease sales, which will be held next year, will be the first-ever competitive sales on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) for wind energy, and are major milestones in the Administration’s “Smart from the Start” wind energy program to facilitate the siting, leasing and construction of new projects. These lease sales cover two WEAs along the Atlantic coast that have high wind resource potential.

"Properly-sited clean energy like offshore wind is critical for protecting wildlife from the dangers of climate change, and we applaud the Obama Administration for taking action to advance an important new clean energy source for America," said the National Wildlife Federation's Catherine Bowes.

But like anything that's good for America's air, climate & wildlife these days, wind energy faces a threat from Congressional Republican leadership. A key incentive for wind energy investment is set to expire unless Congress acts soon. Please take a moment to email your member of Congress to keep wind incentives alive.

You Can't Get There from Here

The Green Miles is on an Amtrak train on the way to Providence for this week's Netroots Nation. I'd been hoping to be able to visit my girlfriend in nearby New Bedford AND go without a car, but limited bus service makes that costly and inconvenient.

Downtown Providence, RI (population: 178,042) and New Bedford, MA (population: 95,072) are 33 miles apart, a 38 minute drive according to Google Maps. But if you don't have a car or want to drive, the only way to get between the two is a Peter Pan bus that only runs every two hours, takes 80 minutes, and costs $33 round-trip. (By comparison, a Megabus round-trip ticket from Providence to New York City costs $28.)

It's a combination of terrible planning, massive public under-investment in regional transportation, and inconvenient state borders. The main Providence bus station is located three miles north of downtown, so you have to take a bus from downtown to the main bus station, then on to New Bedford. SRTA, which serves New Bedford and Fall River, has an annual budget of only $14 million, barely enough to provide minimal intra-city service despite large rider protests. RIPTA only serves Rhode Island and even Massachusetts' next-generation commuter rail plan acts like Rhode Island doesn't exist.

But with a huge swath of Americans 16-34 driving much less and taking transit much more, you have to wonder how long the lonely driver transportation model can hold.

If you're wondering about the title, read this classic Saturday Night Live skit. (Yes, read it. SNL's video archiving sucks worse than NBC's ratings.)

This is How You Fight Back Against GOP Attacks on Clean Air

You don't need to have a Ph.D. to talk about why we need clean air and climate action. You don't need to have a mastery of facts & figures.

In fact, you're your own target audience. You need to be able to talk about it in a way that people who don't know facts & figures either can understand. Don't worry about framing the issue or dazzling with statistics - tell a story.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) had the quote of the year back in January, summing up the fight against polluter-funded GOP attacks on the Clean Air Act: "There is a case to be made that, in the contest between corporate profits and children's lungs, someone should be standing up for children's lungs."

Last week on the Senate floor, Sen. Whitehouse expanded on the case with a series of simple yet vivid examples:


If you don't have time to watch the clip, check out the full transcript at ClimateProgress.org.

What's Worse Than a Coal-Fired Power Plant?

How about a coal-fired power plant with two 497-foot cooling towers?

The Green Miles spent the weekend with family in southeast Massachusetts, and the new towers at the Dominion-owned Brayton Point plant in Somerset were never far from view. (Here's how they look from four miles away in neighboring Swansea.)

How out-of-character for the region are they? If they were office buildings, they'd be the tallest in New England outside of Boston & Hartford. But it's distant offshore windmills that would be eyesores?

I took this video after a swim off the public docks across Mount Hope Bay in Bristol, Rhode Island. Even five miles away through the Flipcam's tiny lens, the two towers loom. They're supposed to cool the power plant's water discharge, which is the preferred solution if your prerogative is to keep the coal-fired power plant burning. But for the region's residents, is this really how they want to get their energy?

Genuine or Greenwashing: Water-Saving Hotels

A quick post from Rhode Island's TF Green Airport ...

The Green Girlfriend and I stayed in the Providence Biltmore Hotel this weekend. Cards in the bathroom trumpet the hotel's "Green Program," detailing efforts to change sheets and wash towels only when necessary.

But like every hotel The Green Miles has ever stayed in, there was no recycling available in the hotel. Not in the room. Not anywhere else on the floor. Not even in the lobby.

And all over the room? Incandescent light bulbs. Considering hotels nickel and dime you for internet service, movies and room service, why is the Biltmore passing up the chance to save $3 per bulb per year on light bulbs?

I first saw the sheet/towel card nearly a decade ago. At this point, it's not eco-friendly, it's standard operating procedure. If a hotel can't bring anything more to the table than that by 2007 yet is still trying to get credit for being "green" ... sorry, Biltmore. The Green Miles' verdict? Greenwashing.

I wish I could link you to a site to help you find green hotels, but it doesn't look like there's a great one. Grist's Ask Umbra can give you a good rundown of what to look for in a truly eco-conscious hotel.