Four Questions for Governor Corbett

Four questions I would like answers from Governor Corbett:

 

Question 1:

 Why, according to Rep Turzai and Rep Godshall, have you threatened to Veto any legislation that addresses the current holes in the PAAEPS legislation which allows 13 other states in PJM to dump their solar renewable energy credits into PA while simultaneously forbidding PA from doing the same, essentially crushing the market, crippling solar growth in PA, destroying 2000 PA solar jobs so far with more to follow and going against over half of the House and Senate who support this change to the legislation? 

 

Rep Turzai and Godshall have stated that they will not bring this to a vote even though it has overwhelming support because you have threatened to veto this legislation on the grounds that it violates the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution, however by this definition every other state in PJM is currently violating the rights of your PA constituents and you do nothing to remedy this, rather you hinder the efforts at balancing the playing field for PA costing PA thousands of jobs. 

 

Question 2: 

How is $1.65 Billion dollars in subsidy to Shell Oil to build a cracker plant that will eventually employ 500 people not picking winners?  How is ending the PA Sunshine program ahead of time with or without exhausting its funding pool not picking winners?  How is redirecting the final $3,000,000 in the Solar Energy Program, SEP, to natural gas related projects not picking winners?  How is crippling the DEP’s ability to hold gas drilling accountable by cutting funding, reorganizing many departments by spreading them throughout different state agencies and installing a witless puppet, Krancer, as secretary not picking winners?  $1.65 Billion is 16.5 times the investment in PA subsidy for Solar that created 6000 jobs in the solar industry in PA and there is still $3,000,000 unspent. 

I have to assume by your actions that ‘picking winners’ only counts when we discuss non Gas, Coal and Oil investments?  I was under the impression you were the governor of the entire state of PA, not just the fossil fuel companies?

 

Question 3:

How can we call fracking ‘safe’ because we seal the well shaft down 1500 feet, 1300 feet below the typical water table, but then do not test the water spilling out of that hole running into streams?  The same water that is being held in 3 acre storage ponds for indefinite periods of time without oversight or sunset dates for its remediation, being trucked across the state, across state lines, and dumped god knows where?  This same water that has been deemed to ‘radioactive’ to be accepted by landfills?  All the while we are cutting the DEP budget and crippling it logistically so it cannot hold the drillers accountable. 

 

Question 4:

How can you call yourself a Conservative when you have attempted to wrench municipal governance rights from our municipalities when they have been forced to take their safety and well-being into their own hands because the PA State Government has abandoned them, rather ‘traded them’ for campaign contributions from Gas and Oil?  This is the biggest ‘Big Government’ power grab I can remember in my 18 years in the State of PA.   You should be ashamed of yourself.  See HB 1950.

Governor Corbett, here in Western PA, us small, common folk who actually live here on top of the shale, drink the water, watch our kids play in our green spaces, are deeply concerned by your methods of governance.  When we had the oil boom 100 years ago, they took the oil and left the rigs and waste, I drive past three of these unsafe rusting derelicts on my way of my kids school.  When we had the coal boom where they came, mined and stripped the land and left 50 years ago, it wasn’t the mines that were the problems, it is the subsidence 50 years later, the runoff that still poisons our streams today, the thousands of acres of land still laid to waste like some post-apocalyptic warzone by the mining.  Now we enter round three of rape and pillage Western PA natural resources but this time it is the Frackers.  In 100 years we have learned nothing!  We allow them to come with promises of cheap fuel and great jobs so we open the doors to them and loosen regulations to facilitate their growth in the short term hoping for a boom.  The boom comes…then it goes a few decades later.  Unfortunately, when it goes the waste and pollutions remain forever.  They remain because we did not start with an end in mind.  You make every effort to cater to drillers at the expense of your constituents.

Are we so naïve that we feel the drillers will not drill if we don’t give them an open door with no regulation or accountability?  Do we stop drilling in Saudi Arabia when it is infinitely more dangerous and hostile for us to operate?  Then why would they not drill in PA?  This is a farce, they will drill in PA because that is where the gas is.  You cannot move the gas so they must come here to get it.  One way or another the gas will be drilled and consumed so hold them accountable and do it right this time around. 

This is not about being anti-fracking, or radical environmentalism, this is about where my kids play, the safety of the water they drink, the risks of my wife getting cancer and leaving me all too soon.  This is about our lives Governor not your donors.  Do your job and protect my family.  All I have is my vote, and right now my vote goes to whoever will protect the safety of my family and at this point Governor this is anyone but you.

 

Thanks,

 

Joe Morinville

Energy Independent Solutions

www.eissolar.com

Hold Shale Accountable

http://fb.me/GRRAmTae

Read this article about Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protections willful manipulation of water test results from shale related well testing.  Is the water safe?  If so then why are the tests consistently, willfully, institutionally manipulated?

If Shale has no danger to my kids, who live in PA in the heart of the shale, why does the government need to manipulate water testing to make me 'feel' safe?

I find it curious that we reach so far to protect drilling but slam on any of us 'crazy' people who are concerned for the safety of their water supply.  My kids drink this water, nobody kids in DC drink this water.

In western PA where I live, I pass three abandoned derelict oil wells and two coal strip mines on my way to work a few miles away.  My tax money has paid for attempted cleanup of one of these strip mines three times with limited success.  Where is the Coal company now that the site is an environmental nightmare?  They closed down over 50 years ago.  PA taxpayers now pay for this mess with their tax money and their inability to fish in streams in Western PA due to high toxin levels in fish that are directly attributed to mine runoff.

There is a mad rush in Western PA to get gas wells pumping and pipelines in, and the jobs and money pouring into western PA is awesome.  I am very optimistic about the economic impact of shale...however it does come with a price, an environmental price.

This environmental price is fully OPTIONAL.  We can avoid all of the mistakes we made with Oil and Coal if we do this 'right' this time.  If we put oversight in to ensure they are not dumping the waste water in our streams which happens in PA nearly every day, if we have a real DEP that will actually test the water to ensure the frack water doesn't leak from the thousands of exposed staging ponds or spill over into streams or pastures as it spews out from the well, or infects my well that my kids drink from, if we ensure the fracking companies put money aside for environmental cleanup when things go awry then we can rest easy and enjoy the jobs and the low cost energy coming from the wells.

Before you read propaganda and watch documentaries from the left and right attempting to convince you of one side of the argument or the other, do some research.  Us little insignificant people who own the land that shale is being fracked under and drink the affected water are deeply concerned about our children's health and safety.  What do we do if we no longer have safe water?  Why would our government risk our losing this life sustaining resource when it preservation is 100% attainable if we just holding the fracking companies accountable.

In Western PA, money from these companies has purchased our politicians and the fracking companies have free reign to do what they please.  Governor Corbett is aiding and abetting this activity by placing incompetent people in charge of key oversight areas like Krancer in the DEP. 

I don't have the $Billions that Chesapeake Energy does to manipulate public opinion, I am just a dad.  But I implore you to look deeper than the surface at what is going on under the surface in PA before you make blanket assumptions that the anti-fracking movement is some environmental wacko fringe effort.  We are just a whole bunch of dads and moms that are worried about what long term cost we will have for this short term gain.

Response to http://upperstclair.patch.com/articles/public-hearing-set-for-new-solar-panel-ordinance

This post is a response to an article about new solar ordinances affecting Western PA which can be found here http://upperstclair.patch.com/articles/public-hearing-set-for-new-solar-panel-ordinance

Roger,  Act 13 was the states attempt to overstep Municipal Rights by forcing the states will on the people.  It is your township and should be your townships residents decision how drilling is handled.  Not the state.  The state does not have to weigh the risks of poisoned water, directly deal with the impact of dramatic increases in truck traffic clogging thoroughfares and damaging township maintained roads, the state does not have to look upon the wells dotting the landscape, it doesn't have to wonder if the 3 acre waste water storage ponds that will sit beside the well heads for the next 50+ years are leaking into their local streams and contaminating the water their kids play in and drink, the state doesn’t have to wonder if they will ever cleanup and remediate the ground next to their homes when they abandon the wells 50 years from now like the abandoned strip mines and oil rigs that dot our landscape today.  I know I have three derelict oil wells between my house and my kid’s school 1 mile away, rusting abandoned eyesores that are a dangerous for my kids to be anywhere near.

The big difference is that beyond aesthetics, solar affects no one other than the immediate property owner.  Drilling affects the entire community.  Whether you believe the hype from the environmentalists or the propaganda from the drilling company this fact remains the same.  It affects us all as a community and therefore its regulations should be determined by those in the community and not some guy in Harrisburg or Washington.  

Groundwater affects my kids.  Leaking abandoned oil wells causes ground water poisoning, leaking abandoned coalmines cause ground water poisoning, leaking fracking operations cause ground water poisoning…

…leaking solar arrays cause suntans.  I will take the suntan any day.

The solar ordinance is in no way perfect and as a solar installer I am not happy with some of the things in it but without it we have no certainty whether we can build on someone’s home, whether the permit fee will be $50 or $1500 until we apply for it and currently have to sort through different interpretations to a myriad of different codes intended for other types of property improvements to see what will or will not be enforced in each solar job.  It is kind of like Russian Roulette when we sign a contract, we may have a $65 municipal cost and a 2 day job or we may have a $1500 municipal cost and an 8 month ordeal with hundreds of hours wasted at zoning hearings for installing something that should be looked at like an HVAC compressor or a swingset.  

We have built over 100 local solar arrays and we never know what to expect until we go to pull the permit.  This is what the ordinance is attempting to ‘improve.’  However, an easier way would be to simply look at solar as what it is, an accessory use item and just blanket allow it like any other accessory use structure you want to put on your property.  Every municipality already has accessory use ordinances on their books.  I see no reason why a solar array should be treated any differently than a swingset or an HVAC compressor.

Joe Morinville

Energy Independent Solutions

www.eissolar.com

Response to Sec Walker DCED comments on energy

Anya,

I recently read your article titled ‘DCED's Alan Walker on why coal's not dead, solar's not hot, and all that gas’.  Frankly I am baffled by Secretary Walker’s comments they contradict themselves within the same article and are woefully uninformed.  

He mentions Coal can be burned as cleanly as gas using new technologies which is completely false.  There is no more than theory in clean coal technologies and it is largely based on carbon capture and sequestering which is technology that could be used in gas or any combustion to make its burning even ‘cleaner’. Coal can never burn as clean as gas and if by some off chance you found a way to do it, you could never extract coal from the earth cleanly or more cheaply than gas.  I heard lots of adds this election cycle condemning the EPA for having a ‘War on Coal’ but it is Gas that is waging a war on coal just like the automobile waged war on the horse and buggy…outdated technology dies and is replaced by better faster cheaper every day.  Coal had a good run but its time has come.

He contradicts himself saying we cannot invest in alternative energies but then talks about the Cracker plant which is going to receive $1.4 BILLION in tax incentives from PA taxpayers to create roughly 500 full time jobs.    I am pretty sure Shell and gas are being ‘picked’ here.  

I think the Secretary and our Governor need to review just where state and Federal incentives go.  Over 10X more incentives or taxpayer redistributed funds, go to Fossil Fuels like Gas, Oil, and Coal than all alternative energies combined.  I find if amusing how politicians condemn investments in alternative energies while they pass on land grants, tax credits, grants, subsidized loans etc on to oil, gas and coal while they report billions in profit each year.  Why exactly do they need any incentive or any of my tax money if they already have billions in profits?

Don’t get me wrong, I am all for shale done responsibly and the cracker plant.  I just want the hypocrisy of the state government to stop.  The state throws money at oil, coal and gas and these companies throw money at the politicians for reelection campaigns and all the while they point at alternative energies and say they are not willing to support the government picking winners…

So let’s even the playing field then.  Either the state should stop all incentives to all energies or it should increase alternative energy investments 10X and then it can tell us with a straight face that it is no longer picking winners.

His comments on Solar are particularly irritating to me since this is my business.  His comments on the state SREC’s are infuriating.  He responds by saying we don’t have enough sun?  AEPS is the core legislation in all alternative energies and is designed to replace all incentives with a market driven supply demand model but it has nothing to do with how much sun we have.  PA’s worst sun is better than Germany’s best sun and Germany produces far more solar than anywhere in the world.  PA has plenty of sun what it needs is some education for its leadership.

AEPS which SRECs fall under is truly an inspired set of legislation which has been adopted by roughly 1/3 of the US states since our adoption and has been considered for nationwide adoption as a common sense market driven alternative to a carbon tax.  However, it has a couple small holes in our PA version, one of which allows other states to ‘dump’ their SREC’s into PA from as far away as Illinois.  In other words PA rate payers are paying for solar investment in at least 13 other states instead of PA.  

In short, PA adopted the legislation first and allowed all states that followed to sell their SREC’s to PA and PA can sell SREC’s to all states.  Then all states who have followed have allowed their states to continue to sell to PA but have excluded PA from being able to sell SREC’s to their state.  So they wrote their legislation with a ‘closed border’ policy but still allow their state to take advantage of our ‘open border’ policy.  We have asked for the legislature to alter this legislation to close the state border so our policy matches our neighbors and protects PA ratepayer and PA jobs but Gov. Corbett has threatened to veto the legislation because he states it will violate the commerce clause of the constitution.  This is laughable because the only states that would be affected are already ‘violating’ this clause by his own definition and disenfranchising his own constituents.  

Secretary Walker says the state should ‘facilitate’ job growth rather than invest in the energy sector.  I would like to remind him that PA had 6000 solar jobs prior to the crash of the SREC market due to dumping.  It now has about half that number and will soon have less as companies move out of state.  The state could easily remedy this by simply closing the border to out of state dumping, protecting PA rate payers from out of state exploitation and allowing the PA Solar industry to recover  in a market driven way.  It would not be a boon to us but it would at least stop the hemorrhaging and allow us to compete on equal playing field to our surrounding states.

If the Secretary is serious about creating jobs in PA, he can feel free to contact me and I will lay out a path for him showing how the right solar policy can create as many jobs as the gas industry.

Sincerely,

Joe Morinville

President

Energy Independent Solutions

535 Clever Road

McKee’s Rocks, PA 15136

Joe@EISsolar.com

(888) OFF OIL1

Geothermal Verses Solar

July 23, 2012

Geothermal Verses Solar:

I have been mulling over data and trying to determine if geothermal is actually a good idea or not.  I have been doing this not because I want to discredit geothermal and promote solar but because I am building a Zero Energy home and want to make the best decisions for my project.  Solar is a given for the project regardless of the outcome, the question is whether geothermal should be the heating source or not.

Initially, my gut says no because I don’t like something that I can’t touch and fix and half of the invested capital in geothermal ends up under ground and out of reach.  If it fails, I have to reinvest in new wells to replace them as they cannot be fixed.  But I can’t just go with my gut so I have decided to let the numbers tell the story.

I began by looking at energy price trends and trying to determine if investing in a pure electric system, even as efficient as geothermal is, is a good idea.  Electricity prices in PA have been rising at an average 7.5% YoY for the past five years and began accelerating over the past two years surpassing 10% averaged between West Penn Power and Duquesne Light.  Gas on the other hand has stayed virtually flat or decreased in price over the same term.  Domestic gas reserves are massive with shale and the market is predicting stable low costs for years to come, while electric rates will have to bear the brunt of the cost of new power plants to turn this cheap gas into electricity and the cleaning up of old power plants to meet tough new pollution guidelines.  Trends and projections both look good for gas but very bad for electricity.

Given the political climate and the recent Supreme Court decisions regarding the EPA, electric utility companies like AEP are forecasting additional increases of up to 30% over the next five years just to compensate for currently enforceable EPA regulations let alone the plethora of proposed new regulations.  This is compounded by the need to build new power plants that burn the regional shale gas reserves.  They will need to invest a ton of capital over a relatively short period of time and it will all be recovered via higher rates.

If we look at the cost of a Btu of electricity verses the cost of a Btu of gas in today’s dollars, electricity is 3.5 times the cost of gas for heating your home if both are the same efficiency.  Of course geothermal is far more efficient than gas because it only needs to move energy from the earth to your home instead of altering its state via combustion to release the energy into heat.  

How much more efficient is geothermal than Gas?  Well the efficiency of gas is easy to determine.  Every gas furnace has an efficiency rating called Annual Fuel Utilization Efficiency or AFUE.  Most are now over 90%, and 95% is not very expensive in comparison to lower efficiency systems.  This means for each unit of energy we put in, we get something less than one unit out because some is wasted in the combustion and exhaust.  Geothermal on the other hand uses some sort of jargon to tell how efficient it is.  Each unit has a Coefficient of Performance or COP.  For example, a COP of 4.6 would return 4.6 units of energy for each unit of energy inputted into the system.  Simple math makes this look like it is 460% efficient, however, we need to account for the unit of energy entered so it is more like 360% efficient.  

Shooting from the hip here, if electricity is 350% more expensive than gas and geothermal is only 360-380% more efficient than gas and it costs twice as much to build a geothermal system than a traditional gas/AC system, then it is not looking good for geothermal.

So again my question is can the increased efficiency of geothermal compensate for the increased installation cost and the increased fuel cost projections to justify the investment?

What I did to attempt to answer this question is to create a spreadsheet that compares the real cost of heating a typical new home with geothermal verses Gas/AC.  This model should scale for commercial applications as well.  

I made some assumptions but most variables can be changed on the spreadsheet.  Change Green cells freely, be careful changing Red cells as they are typically formulas.

Assumptions:

• Geothermal installation would cost 2X the price of a similar sized gas furnace with AC but would also qualify for a 30% tax credit to help offset this cost.

•  Cooling load of home is 1/3 of heating load

•  Gas rates remain stable for the next few years, and then gradually increase until they match the forecasted increases in electricity rates.

•  Electric rates in PA are artificially low in comparison to other states on PJM due to many years of rate regulation.  PA was recently deregulated and will now balance rates with the rest of the PUC.  NJ, which has a much higher average rate than PA, is used as the target rate.  The model moves the rates at historical increases until they reach parity with NJ, then they move at 3% YoY which matches NJ current rate curve.

I took these numbers and crunched them a dozen different ways, changing COP, Gas efficiency, SEER etc. and cannot find a way to make an argument for geothermal.  If you can prove me wrong, please do.  I have had many engineers and energy professionals look at it but I haven’t gotten a counterargument from anyone yet.

Beyond the numbers, let’s look at how ‘green’ geothermal is.  Most of the power consumed in PA is from Coal.  I hear talk all the time about ‘clean coal’ but this is an oxymoron.  There is no active clean coal plant; it is all research at this point.  Some plants are cleaner than others but, from an environmental standpoint, all plants are dirtier than burning natural gas.  Even if a coal plant was to achieve this delusional ‘clean’ status, there would still be no way to extract it from the earth cleanly.  One need only look at the DEP studies of PA streams to see the lasting devastation PA is living with due to coal mine runoff.  Every time a geothermal compressor kicks on it is using coal fired energy unless of course, it is powered by distributed solar.

If you are interested, please look over the spreadsheet and rip it apart and help me to find out whether geothermal is a waste of money or I am missing something.  

It is my opinion that any building that is considering geothermal should instead use traditional heating/cooling and invest the difference in cost of installation into Solar.

Feel free to contact me directly to discuss.

Joe Morinville

Energy Independent Solutions

535 Clever Road

McKee's Rocks, PA 15136

www.EISSolar.com

Joe@EISSolar.com

Stop the Spin and Report the Facts.

Stop the Spin and Report the Facts.

Fox News ran a lead story this morning saying how a utility scale concentrated solar thermal array could “flip airplanes, blind drivers and kill birds”.  I say with all the sarcasm I can muster in print, this is a great bit of reporting that I am certain they derived all the supporting data that could be contained the text of a single Tweet.  The sad thing is, this blip of a story with no supporting facts is just the sort of thing that will resonate in barber shops and beauty parlors across the country because it is graphic, close to home and very visual, albeit completely false.  Nonetheless the damage is already done by this ‘right wing’ faction of the drive by media.

Concentrated solar uses an array of coordinated mirrors to focus sunlight on a small area which creates very high temps.  Typically salt is liquefied at this point, pulled underground into thermal storage areas which allows the mid day sun’s heat to be utilized all night long to power steam generators.  Yes, this means you have solar power at night.

The only danger posed by this type of energy generation is if you stand in the direct beam at a point at or very near the final concentration of light which is a hundred feet off the ground.  Standing in the light even 30 feet from concentration would be standing in really bright sunlight because the strength of the system is in the coordinated concentration beams of many mirrors.  One beam is just sun in a mirror. 

If a plane were to fly into the light stream, it would hit the building and crash because it would have to be so close.

If a driver would drive into the light stream they would have to be flying a plane and they would be burnt beyond recognition, not just blinded.

If a bird flies into the concentrated stream, it will likely die.  Since the heat at the concentration point is in the 1000’s of degrees, it is unlikely a bird will fly there…but possible.  However, I would call this natural selection.

Let’s suppose the control system for the mirrors goes haywire…all the mirrors start spinning and spreading their light at in different directions.  You will see mirrors reflecting sunlight.  They will be bright but no brighter than sunlight bouncing off any other reflective surface.

Now let’s see how planes, drivers and birds would be affected by coal, nuclear, gas and hydroelectric power plants.

A plane flying within 30 feet of any of these plants will likely also crash into the buildings.

A driver will not be blinded by the light from any of these power plants but at the same distance, they would be exposed to high levels of radiation 30 ft from the core, they would drown 30 ft from the turbine, or they would be exposed to dangerous levels of mercury, NoX and countless other harmful pollutants 30 ft from the stack.  This may not kill them today but rest assured, a slow agonizing death from cancer eating away their once healthy bodies awaits.

I am pretty sure the bird will suffer the same fate.

Here is where the real hypocrisy lies.  At the same time they ran this misinformed story void of any logic or fact, they failed to report a story about Chesapeake Energy colluding with competitors to cheat land owners out of their gas rights.  This was a clear case of collusion and market manipulation that affects us little insignificant folks out here call the US Citizen.  This devious action was taken by gas companies who receive 6 times the tax subsidies as all alternative energy combined.  Somehow this is not worth reporting and is trumped instead by a misleading story void of all fact?

I cannot understand why the right and left are so dead set on misrepresenting fact and constantly leaning their arguments one way or another to support their agendas.  Perhaps if media, and with tongue in cheek I will call them ‘news organizations’, would report facts and let all of us out in the real world, us…the unwashed masses who actually live and work in this world, make our own decisions, we could steer the world in the right direction.  But these talking heads and their masters on the right and the left feel they must divide us with half-truths and partial stories to enrage and manipulate us for their purposes.  Meanwhile they let the extremes of both sides take advantage of us for their own personal gains, i.e. Chesapeake Energy and Solyndra.

I for one am tired of being manipulated and will be no one’s pawn. 

They want us to believe that we are either a Left Winger or a Right Winger, a Republican or a Democrat, a Conservative or a Liberal, a Red State or Blue State voter…but I am not Red and I am not Blue…I am some shade of Purple and I would appreciate it if they would stop trying to force me into a box that does not fit me.

Next time Fox says ‘we report, you decide’, I hope they actually begin with the reporting part so I can decide.

Joe Morinville

Energy Independent Solutions

535 Clever Road

McKee's Rocks, PA 15136

www.EISSolar.com

Joe@EISSolar.com