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While testifying before the House Energy and Commerce Committee last week, Former Vice President Al Gore endorsed the Green Bank Proposal, a measure introduced by Congressman Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) that would create a government-owned financial institution to provide support to qualified clean energy and energy efficiency projects.
RenewableEnergyWorld.com will have a complete rundown of the testimony from these hearings in the coming days.
“I think it’s a very imaginative, very excellent idea, and I commend it to your attention,” Gore said when asked about the Green Bank.
Van Hollen introduced the Green Bank Act on March 24, 2009. The legislation creates the Green Bank as an independent, tax-exempt, wholly owned corporation of the United States. The Bank’s exclusive mission will be to provide a comprehensive range of financing support to qualified clean energy and energy efficiency projects within the territorial United States.
The testimony came as part of the hearing the committee is holding on the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. Measures in the bill include a national Renewable Porfolio Standard and money for green jobs education and training. RenewableEnergyWorld.com will have a complete rundown of what makes the final bill following the committee's markup period, which will begin sometimes this week.
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The US generates enough fuel for over 600 new plants.
They could be built at existing landfills, since the fuel is already being delivered there.
They would create hundreds of thousands of jobs in building, supplying, operating and maintaining.
They make money by receiving the fuel, selling the electricity and steam, increased recycling, selling the ash and even collecting coins from the ash.
The EPA considers municipal solid waste as a renewable fuel and regulations require clean emmissions - cleaner than coal, oil and natural gas plants.
Here are some more viable, cost-effective, shovel-ready, job-creating ideas:
Nuclear power plants - when the greens ended the construction of nuclear plants, we got hundreds more coal plants instead. That kinda backfired, didn't it?
Natural gas vehicles - the Pickens Plan is a good model.
Still think you know where I'm coming from, Charles? How about you offer some solutions instead of insults?
You make some good suggestions. I think we also need to develop options that don't have CO2 emissions as well. That is why I support solar, wind and hydro initiatives as well. Using wind to add add generating capacity is a viable economic alternative to coal. As a prospective developer of wind energy, having multiple options for financing "green" projects gives me more confidence to proceed especially in tough economic times like we are currently experiencing. At this point in time, I think I would trust a "government bank" more so than a Wall Street bank.
I hope you are wildly successful in your wind endeavors. However, we seem to be missing one point... CO2 is not a pollutant. I'm all for reducing pollution, so I support green energy, but the reasoning for reducing emissions by most people is just wrong. Global warming is still just a theory - I personally believe it's a natural earth cycle caused mostly by the activity of the sun. It's not the CO2 we need to worry about, it's the SOx, NOx and other pollutants.
Aside from that, even if the US and Europe completely eliminate CO2 emissions, China, India and other developing nations are going to continue to emit more and more every year. They are building coal-fired generation too fast, because it's too cheap and concentrated than any comparables, besides nuclear. Whatever we eliminate in one year will be replaced by them in the next.
As for trusting Wall Street or the government, I'll take Wall Street - there is no profit potential from the government, all it does is take money from me.
"That on the roof made that, did it? Well I'll be!"
Chicken man former VP Gore making amends, via good environmental works, for his gavel ling down the Florida recount black caucus (see "Fahrenheit 911" documentary): Well Ill be!
CO2 emissions are a by-product of fossil fuel energy generation. I wish they were an emission that we needed not to be concerned about. For us as a species, we need to assume that they may play a significant role in affecting our climate. Is it going to cost us money to migrate from older, harmful technologies
Here is an interesting article that was in the New York Times the other day about the idea that emissions of heat-trapping gases could lead to global warming and that the fossil fuel industries were doing everything they could to suppress their own evidence.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/science/earth/24deny.html?_r=1&hpw
It really reminded me that all we need to able to make up our own mind and be capable of changing our mind at times.
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