By Celsias
Posted on Jan. 2, 2012. Listed in:
Here's a strange story . It's about cities in the US making serious undertakings to either purchase renewable energy or taking proactive steps to offset emissions from non renewable energy .
We were trying to find the city in New Zealand that had rivalled the committed of Austin in Texas to power all their facilities with renewable energy ....and the sad thing is that we couldn't find one. Even when they get a head start of over 70% national supply of renewable from the grid we still couldn't find the NZ local authority that had created a branding and environmental awareness around such a decision.
Good to know the US is out there, but where are the 100% Pure local authorities in New Zealand ?
The City of Ithaca , N.Y., will be purchasing Green-e Energy-certified renewable energy certificates for all its electricity. These RECs will offset about 4,896 metric tons of CO2 emissions annually from conventional electricity production.
The environmental benefit can be compared to not driving 12,000,000 miles in a car, or planting 1,460 acres of trees, according to the municipality.to buy all its electricity from renewable energy sources through Integrys Energy Services of New York. It will start this month.
Ithaca has sourced 5 percent of its energy from wind farms since 2006 and is targeting a carbon footprint 20 percent smaller than 2001 levels by 2016.The REC purchase was conducted through Municipal Electric and Gas Alliance Inc., a non-profit aggregation of power users .
In October,the City of Austin, Texas, became the largest municipality in the U.S. to power all of its facilities using only renewable energy. The move placed the Texan capital into theTop 10 for renewable energy buyers in the US .As of Oct. 1 all of the city’s municipal facilities subscribe to Austin Energy’s GreenChoice renewable energy.
The only local government to purchase more green power that Austin is the City of Houston. Houston buys 438 million kwh of renewable power a year, powering 34 percent of the city’s activities and placing it fourth on the list. The City of Austin has bought about 400 million kilowatt-hours of renewable energy.The energy will come from a wind farm in West Texas.
IT giant Intel Corporation is currently the largest consumer of renewable energy in the United States. It currently consumes 2.5 billion kwh per year and has topped the list since January 2008.
What a FARCE. Austin is in Texas, the land of free or so some would say. If you have dollars in Texas you can buy the land and right to build a wind farm, if you have dollars in Texas, you can buy the technology and manufactured engineering required and if you have dollars in Texas you can buy a connection to the local power grid, even sell your fiat carbon certificates to gullible greenies in New York.
In New Zealand the Grid is in essence nationwide so you cannot get a connection for just dollars, you need grid management company approvals, Central Government approval, Resource Mangement Act approval and Maori approvals, and planning approval just for for starters.
You may even need local public approval, not only for your renewable energy generation, but for the miles of connecting pylon supply line, and these local approvals are by no means assured, even when that self same public is a direct beneficiary.
These uncoordinated, factious, technically ignorant, self serving groups, are the very antithesis of efficiency, designed at their core to be in the forefront of local red tape systems the equal of any chinese puzzle, they are selectively and punitively expensive, obstructive, delaying and denying, as their very record of service confirms.
Is it any wonder that the very pinnacle of intelligent local wind generator design is in a few days striking distance of stepping off into the abyss of bankruptcy after two exhaustive recapitalisation rounds.
This iconic New Zealand Company which has arguably conquered endeavours the very equal of any Hillary or Blake, which has delivered a 100 excellent wind generators which are daily churning out clean renewable power for us all, is faltering from a decided lack of foreign dominated market support. Its death knell undoubtedly an ignorant governmental failure of recognition and support. Whilst the Government pays out unquestioningly for the third or fourth time in 2000 millenium dollars for that which was overpriced and paid in blankets and muskets, and is again over priced in taxpayers dollars, for which the ever suffering taxpayer receives no ongoing or real benefit, that same government has failed to fund even the worthiest of renewable energy realisation for the benefit of its taxpayer public citizenry, moreover without additional funding obligation it has failed to ensure that wind sites are available (released from the abject foolishness of RMA constraints) and failed to ensure adequate financial resources available by regulating that the financial institutions including banks, insurance funds, mutual funds and super funds, foreign investment funds, invest internally 5% minimum capital directly into renewable wind and water based energy systems.
Instead we have the dubious system of foreign influenced and foreign funded agencies deploying foreign manufactures, obligating foreign interest payouts and paying out foreign dividends.
The only difference between the colony of 1840 and the colony of today, is that arguably the wind systems of 1840 were more numerable and reliable, significantly the colonising masters had a different foreign flag, but you wouldnt know, Today those new colonising Masters fly the flag of convenience, which bares a horrible resemblance to the almighty dollar. This is the land of the FARCE, collectively we are, the citizens and free people of FARCE.
Now if only they would wrap all the trees in cotton wool,
give free fast food lunches to school children whose DPB parents cannot afford real food and see Northland Hone as the new President of the Republic, we might all have a complete picture of the Land of FARCE.
Written in January