Our World and Everything in It

 

According to WXYZ News today, Governor Granholm signed a bill for $335 million in tax incentives beginning in 2011 thru 2016 that is “designed to make Michigan the center of U.S. efforts to develop high-tech batteries for electric and hybrid vehicles.”

 

It was approved 31-3 in the Senate and 94-0 in the House. Finally a green business move that our senate didn’t nix, although I don’t think it was the idea of going green that motivated Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop. It was more about helping the Detroit auto industry. The bill is designed with GM in mind relative to its plug-in hybrid “Volt.” It will ensure that all Volt related activities remain in Michigan.

 

At present there is no large-scale lithium-ion battery manufacturing in the U.S. This just shows how far behind we are on many green fronts. Japan, South Korea, INDIA and CHINA do all the manufacturing. The fact that India and China are ahead of us should be a warning to “catch up” fast.

 

And that’s what Governor Granholm hopes to do now that she has a little cooperation from what looked to be for a long time ”anti-environmental” senate. She hopes Michigan will “become a battery epicenter and draw a piece of an estimated $1 billion investment from the federal government.”

 

Read more: http://www.wxyz.com/news/story/Big-Battery-Tax-Credits-Approved/a5JpqyAFz0CjPXBjZnYh1A.cspx.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hemlock Semiconductor Corp. (HSC) is about to invest $1 billion dollars for expansion of its Thomas Township, Saginaw County manufacturing facility when “lawmakers offered the largest energy tax credit in the state’s history — $300 million to $350 million over 12 years.” The article on mlive.com also said this job will bring “300 full-time positions and the potential of drawing job-producing solar companies to mid-Michigan.” It couldn’t happen at a better time.

This was a hard won battle between Michigan and Tennessee where HSC plans to open a brand new $1.2 billion facility. Over the next few years HSC will funnel an additional $800 million either to Saginaw, MI or Clarksville, TN. So it looks like the competition is still on.

Now there are more jobs in the works. Dow Corning is a major owner of HSC. So HSC has decided to build a facility to manufacture monosilane gas also next to its Thomas Twp. facility. Monosilane is a specialty gas used in manufacturing thin solar cells and liquid crystal displays. 

Construction on all of these projects is to begin immediately because HSC says they are tapped out for production. Their product is bought as quickly as it’s produced. The Thomas Twp. job will bring total employment to more than 1,500 workers by finish in 2011 and at least 800 to 1,200 construction workers will stay on the site until the work is finished. Yesssss!

Maybe now all will have a little more faith in what we environmentalists have been saying all along and that is to let the green companies move forward. Nurture them if we have to. They are bursting to create product, which will boost the economy. GE has been having a hard time keeping up with wind turbine production and now this leading solar corporation says that they can hardly keep up—a good sign that there is possibly a rainbow on the horizon, a green rainbow.

Read more: http://www.mlive.com/saginawnews/business/index.ssf/2008/12/hemlock_semiconductor_splits_i.html

A recent meeting between Obama, Biden, and Gore resulted in a consensus that the time for both delay and denial about global warming is over. They see that “addressing energy and climate policy can drive the nation’s economic recovery by creating jobs across the country in all the states to repower America,” according to ENS.
The ENS article stated: “The plan to Repower America outlines immediate investments in three areas: energy efficiency, renewable generation and transmission.”

? Energy Efficiency: A national upgrade to eliminate waste, save money, and improve comfort. Make every bit of energy we produce work harder for us.
? Renewable Generation: Accelerate the ramp-up of clean, renewable electricity sources through policies that support increased private and public investment in technologies that work, like wind, solar, and geothermal.
? Unified National Smart Grid: Modernize transmission infrastructure so that clean electricity generated anywhere in America can power homes and businesses across the nation. National electricity ‘interstates’ that move power quickly and cheaply to where it needs to be; local smart grids that buy and sell power from households and support clean plug-in cars.

Ur, um, the plug-in cars at this moment in time may or may not be from GM.

With a new administration on the way, the U.S. is about to get much more environmentally friendly. As a matter of fact the environment is a priority on a very crammed transition agenda. As an article in the Washington Post reported: “While Obama said at a news conference last week that his top priority would be to stimulate the economy and create jobs, his advisers say that focus will not delay key shifts in social and regulatory policies, including some — such as the embrace of new environmental safeguards — that Obama has said will have long-term, beneficial impacts on the economy.” Yeah, a lot of new jobs.

Some things to be looking for right off the bat:

Declaring carbon dioxide emissions endanger human welfare.

Rescinding the Bush administration’s decision last December to deny California the authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles, (17 states are lined up right beyond California to do the same).

Creating a National Energy Council

Improving Food and Drug Regulations

Not a bad start. Anything has to be better than an administration that consistently pushed science aside in lieu of ideological beliefs or for politically motivated reasons. Hopefully, we are about to see many brand new industries emerge that will provide new construction, new jobs, new investments, and new futures for many people.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/08/AR2008110801856.html?hpid=topnews

I was watching PBS news last night and found out a little more about how the foreclosed home situation is being handled. No wonder banks/lenders are in trouble. The waste is unbelievable. It’s called “trashing out a home” when mortgage lenders pay someone to carry everything out of a house to a dumpster. The items are many times top notch household furnishings and electronics. It all ends up in a landfill. What a waste. This pillage should be spread around.

I watched a whole new genre of mover called “trash-out crews.” They go into foreclosed homes and strip the house of all its belongings and send it to the trash dump. You might think that wouldn’t be much, but many upper middle class homes that have been vacated, leave behind much of their high-end belongings too. In some cases it looked as if someone came through and yelled “run for your lives the damn has burst” because food was left out, and toys were still on the floor. There is a large amount of TV’s and electronics like PCS left behind. These items could be put to use in schools.

When the interviewer asked the head of one of these trash-out companies about giving it to charity he said the logistics of hooking up with a charity is slim. They don’t show up, or aren’t on time, or leave things of little value behind so that he has to go back a second time. Unfortunately, he said he tried the eco friendly way and it ends up costing him money. His company is paid by the mortgage companies to pick up perfectly nice items and send them to the landfill where they pay fees to dump the stuff too.

Don’t think this happens much? The same guy with the trash-out company started with 3 employees and now has 73. His trash out crews trash 15 homes per day—high scale stuff from the edge of the golf course homes. It was sickening to see what went into a dumpster knowing the mortgage industry is in serious trouble and wasting like this. To think people somewhere are living in huts on dirt floors, and the amount and variety of things that are getting buried in the earth here is ridiculous. 

I ran across one article that wanted to know where the entrepreneurs are when it comes to trashing out homes? Think about it. It’s a never ending supply of free merchandise that you can actually resell on eBay or Craig’s list, and the bank/lender pays you to pick it up. If you don’t resell it, you store it and in the future you charge the same bank that paid you to pick it up in order to stage the same empty homes for resale using the furniture you took from them in the first place. Think of it as getting paid to pick it up, then put it back.

My first thought was, “Where is Habitat for Humanity?” After all, if an organization like Habitat is going through the trouble of enlisting volunteers to build someone a brand new home, it shouldn’t be an empty home with all this “trash” around.  The same volunteers for Habitat could be working with the mortgage lenders for “clear out” not “trash out” jobs. Imagine presenting someone with a new and “furnished” home.

Is this socialist ideology? It’s certainly “spreading the wealth” around. I see it as recycling whatever, whenever from someone who didn’t care enough to take it, store it, or donate it in the first place. Besides the amount spent on trashing and landfill costs is not that much cheaper than doing the right thing.

I don’t buy it that there is no way to hook this stuff up with charity. There is always a way. If someone offered good money for a solution there would certainly be a way to do it, but then it wouldn’t be charity.

http://www.news-press.com/article/20081022/RE/810220376/1014/RSS02

http://www.maxgladwell.com/2008/10/foreclosure-crisis-where-are-the-green-entrepreneurs/

Well if you are a proponent of offshore drilling because you want to see pump prices decrease even though you’ve been told over and over it won’t alleviate the high gas problem—then celebrate. The quarter century ban will be allowed to expire after congress recesses for the election.

You may be wondering why I’m taking this so quietly? Well it’s because this bill serves as a stopgap and pushes much needed legislation through. As the article in the AP said: “Lifting the drilling ban gives considerable momentum to the underlying bill, which includes the Pentagon budget, $24 billion in aid for flood and hurricane victims and $25 billion in loans for Detroit automakers in addition to keeping the government open past the Oct. 1 start of the 2009 budget year.” It also doubles funding for heating for the poor to $5.2 billion dollars. Good timing for what might be a bad winter.

Plus, by time anyone actually gets around to drilling, we’ll be on to new and better things. Although congress is opening up drilling off both the east and west coast, it’s still up to the states whose shores will accommodate the drilling and pretty much the new president and his policies.

Enough said. I don’t really think this drilling thing will get much momentum. And by the time the public finally realizes how long it will actually take to see any refined gasoline from it, they will be disenchanted with the idea because it just doesn’t suit America’s penchant for instant gratification. Add to this increasingly powerful storms that continually threaten offshore drills and it’s just a matter of time that we deem the whole fossil fuel thing obsolete, especially when some of the really great alternatives debut and a greener economy starts providing many new jobs.

Working for green industries will serve to educate workers about environmental needs who will pass the information along to family and friends. These jobs will showcase the many possibilities and opportunities available besides fossil fuel energy.  And that will be the end of that—a good thing.

Read the whole article: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gB6bi0EyTozdEPy0KGisTQNaS2PQD93CNNRG0

Startech is an award winning environmental energy company that has devised an engine fueled by hydrogen that produces “green” electricity, meaning it leaves no carbon footprint. The electricity is meant for stationary facilities not cars, at least not currently.

Startech has a line of patented products like, “Startech Hydrogen, derived by [their] StarCell™ system from processing a wide variety of wastes in [their] Startech Plasma Converter.”

Get a load of this system!!!

The Plasma Converter System safely and economically destroys wastes, no matter how hazardous or lethal, and turns most into useful and valuable products. In doing so, the System protects the environment and helps to improve the Public Health and Safety. The System achieves closed-loop elemental recycling to safely and irreversibly destroy Municipal Solid Waste, organics and inorganics, solids, liquids and gases, hazardous and non-hazardous waste, industrial by-products and also items such as ‘e-waste,’ medical waste, chemical industry waste and other specialty wastes, while converting many of them into useful commodity products that can include metals and a synthesis-gas called Plasma Converted Gas (PCG).

I know a little about PEM’s, Polymer Electrolyte Membranes, that separate hydrogen from bio-fuels because I’m working on a product for patent, but Startech has one heck of a converter here that looks like it can transform just about anything prior to processing through the Star Cell for hydrogen extraction. 

This is the type of exciting new technology waiting to be unleashed that will not only bolster our energy supply but create jobs. This one converter will trigger all types of spin offs, and as more and more alternative sources for energy become available, prices will drop. That is if we ever get away from the stranglehold of fossil fuels.

Successes like Startech can and will create a whole new and dynamic industry, an industry that has not yet been monopolized. It’s a green industry that offers promise for a truly free market system at least among alternative energy sources, and a great way to dig ourselves out of the outrageous debt we’re about to face.

If ever we needed a brand new “Green Industrial Revolution” that offers many opportunities and that will boost the economy in a whole new way, it’s now and quickly. Think of new stocks available in brand new companies offering great promise for the future that we could all get behind.  I don’t know about anyone else but it’s time for new wealth for a new generation of pioneering Americans and a cleaner, brighter future for our world and everything in it.

http://world-wire.com/news/0809220001.html

Professor Rose Ann Cattolico of the University of Washington began her study of algae back when the other fuel crisis hit in 1973. Only unlike those that eventually gave up the search for alternative fuels Cattolico continued on for more than 30 years.

The results of her tenacity may help the entire world shed their need for crude in a very short period. For the U.S. it may happen within a decade. Her studies are so promising that according to an article on UW News website, “Allied Minds, an investment company that works with universities to commercialize early-stage technology, invested in the University of Washington biology professor’s work, forming a startup company called AXI.”

What Prof. Cattolico basically did was create an entire database of different types of algae. Different algaes produce lipids, or oil, as a result of photosynthesis. All algaes are different so that one type of algae may produce oil that is perfect for two stroke engines, another for home fuel, and another for jet or car fuel. There are so many forms of algae that genetic engineering is unnecessary. 

Cattolico stated, “Algae grow rapidly and do not require the use of productive farmland. Algae also can use various nutritional sources, including wastewater.” What a boon to be able to use wastewater to feed the algae. If it works in anyway like biodigestion, the effluent and/or any solids leftover are pure fertilizer.

According to Erick Rabins of AXI, “Entire infrastructures, from specialized growing facilities to processing plants, will have to be created. [] The most optimistic assessment that I’ve heard is that it could be six to eight years before there’s something that’s useable, but the tools and techniques to make it possible are being created right now.” he said.

The professor emphasizes what many environmentalists have been saying all along: “What we need is a Manhattan Project for fuel. If we can get a Manhattan Project for fuel, it won’t take 25 years.”

http://uwnews.org/article.asp?articleID=43454.

Marvin Odum, the new president of Shell Oil, the second largest oil company, said that Shell would be investing big in alternative energy today on ABC news. How big is big? More than their reported net profits of $27 billion. Incredible. I did a blog that did the math for the percentages that have been offered up by the top 5 oil companies in the recent past. It didn’t amount to a hill-of-beans compared to net profits.

But Shell is stepping up to the plate with the largest investment in alternative energy so far by the oil industry. Odum said it was historic. I would say so. Shell will invest $35 to $36 billion dollars yet in 2008.

Yesssss!  With this mindset, and example, we may just clean up yet.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=5632698&page=1 

Americans may be looking at 4-day workweeks soon in efforts to offset energy costs. Both Utah and Idaho’s state employee are on 4 tens. Some good things are happening as a result of the energy crisis. Not only are workweeks getting shorter, but employees are also allowed to work from home more and more. This can be good. This can be bad.

I can weigh in on the shortened workweek.  I worked 4 ten-hour days back in 1984. The extra two hours were split between morning and afternoon. My schedule started an hour earlier and ended an hour later than usual. So the bad thing was getting up earlier and getting home later. With longer hours, you might be a little more tired at days end also so after-work-projects aren’t likely to happen. But if you’re running your kids around most evenings anyway, this shouldn’t be a problem.

The real problem with 4-day workweeks is latch key kids. If working parents can tackle this problem then the rest of the attributes for working 4 tens are all positive. For one thing, your car is spared the trip. If you don’t use that up running all over town on Friday, then it’s a plus. It was reported that Utah figured all of its employees collectively saved $100,000 in gas money by not working on Friday. One woman said she only saved $72.00 for gas money during the month but finds the extra time spent with her kids invaluable.

From an employer’s point of view, a successful switch to 4-day workweeks depends on associated companies that work a 5-day workweek. Back in the early 90’s I actually worked a 3-day workweek for the same salary as 5 days.  I negotiated that by showing all the work I was doing that really belonged to others on the payroll. I got my way, a 3 day work week with Tuesday’s and Friday’s off, because I was able to show I was not only doing all of my duties in 5 days, but a bunch of other people’s also. Since I was a purchasing agent, and did payroll the 3-day problem came up. Tuesday was a slow day at work, and well Fridays, let’s get real here. I told my employer quite frankly that not much of anything would get purchased on a Friday anyway. Most of those orders will not hit someone’s desk until Monday. You’re not likely to get a sales rep to come around on Friday either. It’s like Friday “work” days dissolve somewhere around noon for quite a lot of professions. Most things are stalled until Monday because someone is usually missing on Friday. My employer acknowledged this. He was notorious for disappearing on Fridays. Monday and Friday off would have been sweet but that would have been pushing the envelope. I acknowledged that I needed to be there for payroll on Mondays. The best thing was when the company decided I needed to work 40 hours again. My wages almost doubled.

Like ABC news stated this morning, now is the time to negotiate for shared hours, shorter workweeks, and/or working from home. I did it when there was no energy crisis, late 80’s and early 90’s. A good employer should have no problem paying for a job well done regardless of the time involved. If you have a job that doesn’t involve other associates on 5 day work weeks, you’ve got a good case for a 4 day workweek. Prove you work faster and more efficient than most and you’ll probably get your way. It’s win win right now.

Once you get used to 4 days, and really using that Friday in an organized way so you can kick back on Saturday AND Sunday, you’ll probably find you do much less running around altogether. The solitary time away from the rat race is priceless. It might be good for America to learn to relax and quit all the running around. It would certainly be good for the environment.