http://www.ncleg.net/gascripts/BillLookUp/BillLookUp.pl?Session=2007&BillID=S3

http://www.ncleg.net/gascripts/BillLookUp/BillLookUp.pl?Session=2007&BillID=H77

http://www.ncleg.net/gascripts/BillLookUp/BillLookUp.pl?Session=2007&BillID=H557

http://www.ncleg.net/gascripts/BillLookUp/BillLookUp.pl?Session=2007&BillID=S634

3/8/2007 6:08:24 PM

I find it interesting that State Senator Hoyle is pressing for conservation tax credits or anything green for that matter. He's a real estate developer that has been pushing environmentally damaging development for years, such as the Slash Creek Project in Hatteras, which filled critical estaurine wetlands for a condo project.

http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/PrintFriendly?oid=oid%3A19480

3/8/2007 6:38:09 PM

His way of doing penance perhaps? Or a way to deflect environmental criticisms of his real estate projects?

3/8/2007 6:47:06 PM

Perhaps its a conflict of interest and he wants to enrich himself at taxpayer expense on his own development projects. And he's a Democrat, although a NC Democrat.... which means he would ideologically be a Republican anywhere else.

3/8/2007 7:08:45 PM

Since when are we allowed to create new threads and have nothing in the initial post but links?

3/8/2007 11:34:57 PM

if you want, I can copy and paste all the bills for you.

3/9/2007 9:11:16 AM

I would like that very much, thanks.

3/9/2007 10:15:53 AM

^^No I would at least prefer you say one single word of your own in the opening post

You know, since thats how Soap Box works?

3/9/2007 10:45:41 AM

well, the title says it all. Face it, all you global warming deniers no matter how much you pout will not be able to stop green power and reducing the carbon footprint. Deal with it.

3/9/2007 3:34:57 PM

^That post would've been a lot more appropriate along with the links in the first post...you know since you cant just start a Soap Box thread with a link(s) and not commnt on them...I'm not telling you anything new

also for some reason you seem to be implying that these BILLS are somehow already LAWS

[Edited on March 9, 2007 at 3:40 PM. Reason : .]

3/9/2007 3:38:30 PM

that's because they are about to become laws. lock and step in easley's plan.

3/9/2007 4:58:15 PM

the only obstacle we've come up against when trying to build wind farms here in Maine has come from the environmental nutbag side. The only people I've ever seen against "green power" are environmentalists and oil companies.

But then again the oil companies can just invest a shitload of money into those power generation methods and come out on top if they wanted to.

[Edited on March 9, 2007 at 5:24 PM. Reason : .]

3/9/2007 5:22:21 PM

that's because wind power (in its current state) isn't green.

[Edited on March 9, 2007 at 5:45 PM. Reason : .]

3/9/2007 5:44:49 PM

bullshit.

So is green energy defined as whatever the most inefficient form of power generation thats available?

3/9/2007 5:48:00 PM

green means power that has the least impact on the environment and is renewable. windmills kill countless birds and bats each year. That is why wind mills in their current state are not green.

let's also not forget about the noise pollution that is caused by windmills.

[Edited on March 9, 2007 at 5:51 PM. Reason : .]

3/9/2007 5:51:34 PM

So what is renewable then?

There's solar, which is far too inefficient for many places.

Tidal? I bet that kills to many fish.

Geothermal would probably work, but is limited by location.

I mean what sources are you talking about?

[Edited on March 9, 2007 at 5:57 PM. Reason : for the record, noise pollution is also bullshit.]

3/9/2007 5:54:00 PM

how exactly is geothermal limited by location? You dig a fucking hole in the ground and set a pipe in it. It's widely available everywhere. you need to find non invasive forms of energy. That's not to say wind won't work in the future, but as it stands right now, wind is not the best form of energy out there.

Other examples of sensible energy use is landfill gas that would just be emitted into the air. Other examples are biofuels.

3/9/2007 5:57:22 PM

You'd have to be near some geothermally active area. You cant just dig anywhere.

And im not saying its a bad way to get power. Its great, ut limited by the location of geothermal hotspots.

3/9/2007 6:05:19 PM

Quote :

"You dig a fucking hole in the ground and set a pipe in it"

But what about the local ecosystems of worms?

3/9/2007 7:04:58 PM

Quote :

"You'd have to be near some geothermally active area. You cant just dig anywhere. And im not saying its a bad way to get power. Its great, ut limited by the location of geothermal hotspots. "

you are miscontruing what geothermal is. You are thinking of the system in place in Iceland. I'm talking about the geothermal units people have in their houses. that does not require you to be near a hotspot.

3/10/2007 10:07:38 AM

at the college i went to before transferring to state they built two new dorms and used geothermal heating. i think they said they would recoup the initial extra cost in like 10 or 20 years.

All they do is dig really fucking far down into the ground.

[Edited on March 10, 2007 at 6:46 PM. Reason : http://www.nyserda.org/programs/geothermal/default.asp]

3/10/2007 6:41:16 PM

I don't think the power is actually green.

I just want to get us straight on that technicality.

3/10/2007 9:14:06 PM

study up on the new wind turbines... one of the "greenest" sources of energy

3/12/2007 5:53:09 PM

I'm for green power. Well according to Simpson's its green, warm glowing green nuclear power. Let build some nukes and save the coal for later. And stop with the ethanol until you don't have to starve South America's corn supply. Your hurting real people now, not hypothetical costal peoples 50-100 years down the road.

3/12/2007 6:31:41 PM

^ Our government is paying people to not grow corn. We have more than enough to provide for ourselves and for ethanol. None of it is starving South Americans.

^^ Environmentalists in Texas are suing the state to stop wind farms cause no one thought about the birds.

Goes to show collective idiocy.

Here's a good economics show regarding power production from this past weekend.

http://www.netcastdaily.com/broadcast/fsn2007-0310-1.asx

Go to the 40-minute mark.

Starts off by touching on private entity buyouts, but then wonders why people are so stupid when it comes to realizing where their power comes from and how much of it is required for daily life to function.

[Edited on March 12, 2007 at 7:18 PM. Reason : .]

3/12/2007 7:17:35 PM

^^ Bush wants to invest $2.1bn to promote cellulosic ethanol - ethanol from the fermentation of cellulose. If cellulosic fermentation becomes cost effective, it would greatly reduce the impact of ethanol on our corn supply. Current corn ethanol producers will be able to switch to cellulosic feedstocks, such as switch grass, sawdust, etc. That being said, this is at least 5 years down the road, so corn prices will remain in the $3/bushel range for the near future. But in the long run this shouldn't be too big of an issue.

Another way to reduce the impact on south america would be to simply start importing ethanol from Brazil. But the corn lobbies will probably never let congress reduce the current 54 cent/gallon tariff on imported ethanol, as this would immediately flood our market with cheaper sugar cane based ethanol.

^ our government is paying people not to grow corn? i dunno, at current corn prices, plus a 51 cent/gallon subsidy for bio-ethanol producers, plus a goal of 35bn gallons of bio-ethanol in our fuel supply by 2017, sure looks like it's definitely a great to grow corn! This past year we had a record corn crop - huge crop - and we still ran into supply issues due to a massive increase in ethanol production. with ethanol production expected to double in just the next two years, there will most definitely be issues with corn shortages causing our food prices to go up in the short term. i'm all for biofuels, but one can't deny that there are some adverse effects on other parts of our economy.

[Edited on March 12, 2007 at 8:41 PM. Reason : ..]

3/12/2007 8:34:23 PM

i read somewhere that ethanol produced in brazil is like 5 times more cost-effective than ethanol produced in US.

is that solely because in brazil they produce it from sugarcane, whereas in the US from corn? that implies that growing sugarcane and producing ethanol from it is a lot cheaper than growing corn and producing ethanol from it.

so why doesn't the US shift to sugarcane?

also, the cars they have in brazil that can run on ethanol, are they locally produced, or modified imported cars?

3/12/2007 8:40:36 PM

^ yeah, it's solely because sugar cane in brazil is much much cheaper on a dollars per fermentable sugars basis than corn in the U.S. the reason why we don't produce from sugar cane in the states is because there's just not enough land suitable for growing sugar cane here - and to import the raw sugar cane from another country would be extremely costly. it takes a huge amount of sugar cane, on a volumetric basis, to produce any significant amount of ethanol, so production really needs to be close to the source of the feedstock. in brazil, most ethanol producers are actually backwards integrated and own their own sugar cane plantations because of this. in the U.S. the situation is similar with corn as well, as 90+% of our domestic ethanol production is in the midwest.

i'm not sure about where the cars are made, though. could be both domestic and import. it really doesn't take much extra to produce a flex-fuel car vs. a normal car, primary differences are in the chipping and the materials in the gaskets. it does, however, cost a lot to retrofit a car after production, which is why it's going to take a while before we have a really high penetration of flex fuels in the states.

3/12/2007 8:49:55 PM

Quote :

"so why doesn't the US shift to sugarcane?"

most of the us doesn't have the climate for sugarcane

3/12/2007 8:59:53 PM

Quote :

"^ our government is paying people not to grow corn? i dunno, at current corn prices, plus a 51 cent/gallon subsidy for bio-ethanol producers, plus a goal of 35bn gallons of bio-ethanol in our fuel supply by 2017, sure looks like it's definitely a great to grow corn! "

We pay people not to grow corn to keep that price artificially inflated. If we stopped, people would exploit the profit potential you are talking about and we would benefit as a people.

But then some guy might have to learn how to do something other than farm, and we can't have that.\

Oh, and I suppose I should respond to this post. You're vastly overestimating the amount of people who are "against" green power. I can't think of anyone (outside of the cartoonish depictions of oil tycoons you have lodged in your skull) who would NOT use green energy if it were as cheaply and widely available as other forms of energy. You remind me of one of those people who plugs their electric car into their home power supply and talks trash about their neighbors for driving a less eco-firiendly car, forgetting all about the fact that they're plugging into a coal-burning power plant to do so. You have some sad ideas about what is good for the environment and what isn't, and you take stabs at things that are counter-productive. One such example is recycling newspaper, which actually causes more economic damage than creating new newspaper.

Not that every carbon-reducing energy source is as bad as all that, but the second that green energy is efficient both economically and environmentally, we will all use it willingly and happily. The only thing that the government might need to be involved in is putting economic externalities into the equation by monetizing them. That's where pollution trading credits come in and help make other "greener" sources of energy competitive.

[Edited on March 12, 2007 at 9:19 PM. Reason : .]

3/12/2007 9:13:11 PM

Quote :

"and to import the raw sugar cane from another country would be extremely costly."

because of high tariffs on sugar because of the corn lobby (high fructose corn syrup anyone?)

3/12/2007 9:17:04 PM

^ yeah, i'm not sure about corn syrup vs. sugar tariff levels, as neither are used as direct feedstocks for ethanol production. i am sure, though, that even with no tariffs at all it wouldn't make financial sense to import sugarcane from overseas for ethanol.

3/12/2007 9:26:01 PM

Quote :

"One such example is recycling newspaper, which actually causes more economic damage than creating new newspaper. "

and your point?

and the reason why you can get a higher yield of ethanol from sugar than corn is because corn contains cellulose which is just emitted as pulp, where as sugar cane can be basically converted lock stock into ethanol.

The big thing we'll see here is the loosening of restrictions on biodiesel which will allow the north carolina fleet to use non-soy based biodiesel (lower costs as the bushel price of soy is extremely high right now)

[qute]i am sure, though, that even with no tariffs at all it wouldn't make financial sense to import sugarcane from overseas for ethanol.[/quote]

that's why you import the ethanol and not the sugar cane. We can also start making ethanol from sugar beets which will grow just about anywhere in the US

[Edited on March 12, 2007 at 9:26 PM. Reason : .]

3/12/2007 9:26:03 PM

Quote :

"^ yeah, i'm not sure about corn syrup vs. sugar tariff levels, as neither are used as direct feedstocks for ethanol production. i am sure, though, that even with no tariffs at all it wouldn't make financial sense to import sugarcane from overseas for ethanol."

corn syrup comes from corn. we don't import it. . .

3/12/2007 9:29:10 PM

^^ of course from a logistics standpoint you'd rather import the ethanol than the cane. my point is that there is a 54 cent/gallon tariff on imported ethanol that makes this difficult to do. i was simply answering a question that was posted.

and about biodiesel - if it weren't for the governement's $1.00 per gallon subsidy for the stuff, it would never make it. it's production costs/gallon are nearly double that of ethanol, and much higher than that of petro-diesel even at today's oil prices.

[Edited on March 12, 2007 at 9:41 PM. Reason : ..]

3/12/2007 9:38:09 PM

Wait until the supply catches up to petrol diesel. Then the prices will drop to about the same price. But the fact is about three companies in north carolina produce biodiesel at about 1,000,000 gallons per year. they simply can't keep up with the regular diesel being produced.

3/12/2007 9:55:54 PM

i hear ya, i was referring to production costs, though, not price. In order for the production costs to drop, the costs of vegetables oils would need to drastically fall. This isn't really just an NC/regional issue, this is pretty much the situation around the world right now. Where we have biodiesel in high volumes in Europe it's due to government mandates/subsidies, not process economics. There may be some hope in Asia, as palm oil and "rendered animal fats" are pretty cheap there, but the economics generally favor petro-diesel at crude prices less than $75/bbl.

[Edited on March 12, 2007 at 10:10 PM. Reason : .]

3/12/2007 10:09:16 PM

the big move will be to produce biodiesel from chicken and pork fat in NC. Plus if the market for soy increases more farmers will switch to it.

one of the biggest costs is testing to make sure the product is up to ASTM standards, but that hsould change with new technology and the availablity of infrared testing.

[Edited on March 12, 2007 at 10:16 PM. Reason : .]

3/12/2007 10:15:18 PM

^ hahaha, yeah, if any feedstock in north carolina is scalable, its pork and chicken fat! i hope biodiesel economics improve, but it's gonna have to come a long way before it's competitive, especially on an energy content basis, without subsidies.

3/12/2007 10:22:49 PM

just reduce the excise taxes on it.

3/12/2007 10:36:57 PM

Quote :

"Face it, all you global warming deniers no matter how much you pout will not be able to stop green power and reducing the carbon footprint."

Um...I was unaware of anyone who was actively trying to stamp out "green power" or intentionally and knowingly expand the carbon footprint. Denying them public funds, maybe, but that's rather a different issue.

3/13/2007 1:04:12 AM

Quote :

"Face it, all you global warming deniers no matter how much you pout will not be able to stop green power and reducing the carbon footprint. Deal with it."

I don't know anybody, on TWW or elsewhere, that is denying global warming.

Quote :

"So what is renewable then? There's solar, which is far too inefficient for many places. Tidal? I bet that kills to many fish. Geothermal would probably work, but is limited by location. I mean what sources are you talking about?"

There is no technology currently known to man that can meet all our energy requirements without C02 being a by-product. (There is nuclear that can help, but of course the greens are against those too)

Quote :

"i read somewhere that ethanol produced in brazil is like 5 times more cost-effective than ethanol produced in US. is that solely because in brazil they produce it from sugarcane, whereas in the US from corn? that implies that growing sugarcane and producing ethanol from it is a lot cheaper than growing corn and producing ethanol from it. so why doesn't the US shift to sugarcane? also, the cars they have in brazil that can run on ethanol, are they locally produced, or modified imported cars?"

It takes more energy to produce ethanol than you get out if it, and its use also results in the emission of C02. So basically its only use is to reduce dependency on foreign oil

[Edited on March 13, 2007 at 12:45 PM. Reason : k]

3/13/2007 12:44:04 PM

^ not true - only if you assume the most inefficient feedstock crops, with tons of fertilizer, and the most inefficient ethanol plant does ethanol production use more energy than it creates. one prof at Cal wrote this study, and it's full of holes.

The general consensus on the "greenness" of ethanol is that its CO2 balance is about 20% better than that of gasoline - nothing too dramatic, but still a bit better.

[Edited on March 13, 2007 at 1:20 PM. Reason : Cal...]

3/13/2007 1:18:29 PM

i remember the figures i read.

in the US: energy from ethanol is 1.7 times the energy that goes to produce it

in brazil: 8 times

3/13/2007 1:33:23 PM

It's too bad we don't have giant sugarcane fields all over the country

3/13/2007 4:25:03 PM

^^It must be the infidels' fault.

3/13/2007 5:38:04 PM

^^^^but how are they comparing it? You have to consume more ethanol to equal a lesser amount of gasoline to come up with the same energy output.

3/14/2007 2:28:56 PM

^ of course it's on an energy content basis, not a volumetric basis. these scientist aren't stupid.

3/14/2007 4:52:25 PM

I'd venture to guess that more birds die because of the power lines that run from wind farms to the consumer than are killed due to the wind farms themselves.

4/7/2007 11:39:38 PM

and you would also be an idiot

4/8/2007 12:49:56 PM