New Plant to Make 100% American Made Wind Turbines

by Muskegon Critic

Wanna see some American jobs? A wind turbine assembly plant is opening in Saginaw, Michigan. That's right where the Thumb of the Mitten meets the Hand. Saginaw. And it'll be the first plant the US to make 100% American Made wind turbines. That's wind turbines spelled: j-o-b-s.

Score one more for Governor Granholm's long time push to diversify Michigan's economy...not just into anything, but into green manufacturing. Screw this being tied to one industry crap: the auto industry. She's doing what should have been done 50 years ago.

Northern Power Systems of Barre, Vt., intends to use a facility in Saginaw to manufacture its next-generation large wind turbines, expected to be the first ones built in the U.S. using 100% American-made parts. Plans call for sourcing as many parts as possible from Michigan companies.

[snip]

Northern Power already has a deal to supply 13 of the turbines for a Heritage Sustainable Energy wind farm near Escanaba that will supply power to Consumers Energy, state officials said.

continued at Daily Kos....

US Green Energy Fail

by Steven D

Here's we in the United States should be doing now to keep up with the rest of the world's investment in research and development of green energy technologies:

The United States needs to more than triple its spending on energy research, development and demonstration projects, from about $5 billion now to $16 billion, and should review  national energy policy every four years, an advisory group of scientists and engineers said in a report to President Obama this week.

The US is falling behind almost every other major developed country in the world.  Look at this chart from 2007 that shows R & D spending as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product:

continued at Daily Kos....

Can Wind Power Save School Budgets?

by ManfromMiddletown

This past weekend, Laura Tyson made the case for a second stimulus in the New York Times. Things, you see, are looking down, particularly for the states. State budgets are being strained, and the prospect of teacher layoffs is a possibility without continued federal aid. Yet.....

The situation would be even worse without the $787 billion fiscal stimulus package passed in 2009. The conventional wisdom about the stimulus package is wrong: it has not failed. It is working as intended. Its spending increases and tax cuts have boosted demand and added about three million more jobs than the economy otherwise would have......

But by next year, the stimulus will end, and the flip from fiscal support to fiscal contraction could shave one to two percentage points off the growth rate at a time when the unemployment rate is still well above 9 percent. Under these circumstances, the economic case for additional government spending and tax relief is compelling....

Two forms of spending with the biggest and quickest bang for the buck are unemployment benefits and aid to state governments.

continued at Daily Kos....

UPDATE: We just have to take it for ourselves. Nobody's going to help us.

by Muskegon Critic

Well...we did it.

We did our first ever pro-wind power parade in Muskegon during Roosevelt Park Day. Incidentally, Roosevelt Park is a 1 square mile city in Muskegon built around a factory, CWC Textron, in the 1940's. If you got a job there, the company would finance a house for you and give you a set of plans to choose from. A lot of little Cape Cods were built there. Well laid out, 1200 square foot homes. The theory behind the planned city was, a worker with a stable life was a better worker.

Yep. Long time ago.

Anyway, back to the parade.

Planned and organized by three members of our group, the West Michigan Jobs Group, we got on the ground and kept up rallying support for wind power. I gotta confess, I basically just showed up to the parade and brought literature, it was the three others who planned the whole thing.

continued at Daily Kos....

An Energy Scientist, His Organization, and a Free Read About Renewable Energy

by SERMCAP

Almost by convention, an independent engineer is a maverick. A footloose nuclear engineer, even more so, is inevitably revolutionary. Thus, Dr. Arjun Makhijani cannot escape being both interesting and controversial This profile examines the man, his ideas, his organizational mission, and, in a preliminary way, his recent monograph, a publication that not only flies in the face of established U.S. energy policy. but also casts down such a gauntlet with both a richly detailed empiricism and a highly honed conceptual framework.

The upshot of this investigation is pretty easy to state.  Dr. Makhijani should be Secretary of Energy for those of us who care both about democratic forms and the Democratic Party.

continued at Daily Kos....

Lake Michigan Wind Farm Update

by Muskegon Critic

For those who have been following the ongoing West Michigan offshore wind farm saga, and for those who have given some generous donations in our fight, I'd like to provide a little update of what's going on.

I think the Big Lebowski said it best:

I often choose the Big Lebowski to express myself about the wind farm issue because I feel like some random slob drinking white russians who managed to haphazzardly stumble into an epic struggle with some of my pals.

The struggle for offshore wind power, and for a new industry in West Michigan continues.

continued at Daily Kos....

Wind Farms Gain Support in New Jersey

by SpamNunn

The 7.5-megawatt (MW) Jersey-Atlantic Wind Farm is the first wind farm to be built in New Jersey, and the first coastal wind farm in the United States. The wind farm is located in Atlantic County, NJ and is visible to more than 30 million Atlantic City visitors each year from downtown Atlantic City and the Atlantic City Expressway. The project produces approximately 19 million kilowatt-hours of emission-free electricity per year, which is enough emission-free energy to power over 2,000 homes

Favorable winds are advancing the cause of windpower in the State of New Jersey

[NOTE:  Gotta pick up dinner and drive home.  Will check back later.  Thanks for participating]

continued at Daily Kos....

The Fightback against Cutting Electric Prices with Wind Power

by BruceMcF

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

Recently, Jerome a Paris and afew from the European Tribune published a piece in New Scientist on why having sufficient wind turbines in an energy portfolio has been observed to lower energy prices to consumers.

After tweeting that article, I started to receive tweets with links to the anti-wind conservative echo chamber, including The American Thinker, and the Oil-money founded and partly funded Cato Institue.

continued at Daily Kos...

Largest U.S. Wind Farm Being Constructed in California

by Lawrence

This may not turn out to be the most germane of diaries, as my head had an unfortunate encounter with a rather nasty rock while hiking the other day, but I do want to write a few lines about this, as it is big news for the renewable energy sector in the U.S.

continued at Daily Kos...

A Tale of Two Neighborhoods

by Muskegon Critic

Some time back in the 1990s there was a poor to middle class neighborhood off of Sherman boulevard, not too far from the hospital. Peppered with large trees and scrubby oaks, it was more or less on the outskirts of town, but a very old neighborhood of the Muskegon Area...

And then one day Walmart and Lowes made the decision to locate in the area.

They picked that very spot, that very neighborhood to locate their store on. Not near. On. And so they bought up most of the houses in the neighborhood, and for the people who opted not to sell, Muskegon Township condemned their homes and kicked them out with a pittance for their trouble.

People living in the poor neighborhood in Muskegon, MI, USA were intimidated and kicked out of their homes, which were then bulldozed and a new Walmart and Lowes was built on it.

And this, my good reader, is where we come to the subject of wind turbines 6 miles away in Lake Michigan.

continued at Daily Kos...

Iowa Ag Sec.--Who's Afraid of Francis Thicke?

by Francis Thicke

Some farmers are afraid of me. I know this because a farmer named Jerry wrote a letterto the Des Moines Register recently saying that they are scared.  It would be a "scary scenario for mainstream agriculture" if I got elected as Iowa Secretary of Agriculture, he said.   Francis Thicke is a "true believer in everything organic," he shuddered. Running for office is an adventure.  But I never expected to learn that Iowa farmers, who are among the most resilient, shrewd and creative people on the planet, are afraid of a mild-mannered organic dairy farmer with a PhD in Agronomy and some ideas for helping them meet challenges such as peak oil.   So I thought I would write him a letter to reassure him that I'm not scary, because if we don't get our act together to deal with the real challenges of peak oil, the disruptions caused by climate change, and the growing monopoly power of corporate agribusiness, then we really will have cause for concern. (My letter, and a sincere thank you to DKGreenroots, below.)

continued at Daily Kos....