Government program actually gets one right
 
It ain't the sexiest tip in the world, but next to recycling, it might be the most useful. In 2005, the EPA's Energy Star program helped Americans save $12 billion on utility bills and enough energy to avoid greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those from 23 million cars. Today the Energy Star seal appears on nearly every kind of electronic appliance there is, from television and computer monitors to washers and dryers, to light bulbs and ceiling fans.

For a helpful pre-winter tip on making your house as energy efficient as possible, check out Energy Star's interactive presentation. You'll be thankful for the knowledge and kind of in awe that the government could put something together that is so cool.

Gavin Poises SF for New Power Strategy

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom never misses an opportunity to be on the forefront of political change, especially when it comes to the environment. These days the flashy and charismatic Bay Area leader has embraced water power. Newsom plans to ride the energy wave of the future by installing turbines under the Golden Gate Bridge and current-catching generators off Ocean Beach with the goal of producing electricity for the city to sell or use, or both. "This has never been done in America,'' Newsom said of the generators that can convert water power to electricity. [Not entirely true, as New York has installed similar turbines under the East River with positive results]. Newsom recently took time to preview two ideas in the works for tapping ocean power.

One would plunk turbine generators into the stiff currents beneath the Golden Gate Bridge. The other would put a generating plant off Ocean Beach to convert the energy of the Pacific's rolling waves into electricity. "These are real, not just fantasy," Newsom told the San Francisco Chronicle recently. The ocean energy idea — which already is taking hold in other parts of the world — got its first strong push three years ago locally when Newsom's arch nemesis, then-Board of Supervisors president and Green Party member Matt Gonzalez, won approval of a resolution calling for a tidal-energy power project.

After a couple years of serious study, the nonprofit Electric Power Research Institute concluded: That San Francisco could tap enough wave power at Ocean Beach to keep the entire city lit -- depending, of course, on how large a wave plant it chose to build. And two: That the tides at the Golden Gate make that spot the best in the entire lower 48 states to produce tidal power.

For more information: www.sfgate.com

Enviros Battle Each Other Over Cape Wind Project

For anyone who wondered what happened with the wind turbine debate on Cape Cod you heard so much about a few years back, we can catch you up in one simple word: nothing. During the four years the argument has raged on between environmentalists and … well, environmentalists, not a single thing has been resolved. And instead of a progressive new alternative energy solution that would prove the merits of wind power, we have a progressively ugly battle between pretty much all of the prominent environmentalists in the country, giving credit to the unfortunate theories that the greenies can't get out of their own way, and that when it comes to your own backyard, sometimes the alternative solution is better for the other guy.

For those who don’t know about the battle, it was suggested by some forward thinker that 130 wind powered turbines six miles off the coast of Cape Cod could produce “a whopping 420 megawatts of electricity, enough to supply three-quarters of the average total power demand of Cape Cod and two islands off its shores, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket” Grist online reported.

The problem is that the wind farm would be placed 13 miles from some of the most prime shoreline in the country, where the rich and famous frolic and pay extra zeroes for homes. There’s also the issue of the migrating birds getting cut down by the turbine blades with the solution of blinking lights to warn them being even more of a hazard and eyesore than the blades themselves.

Now there are clear lines being drawn in the beach sand over who supports this project and who doesn’t. Robert F. Kennedy, one of the most outspoken and charismatic defenders of the earth is being harshly criticized by members of Greenpeace and other organizations for his position that the turbines will be a blight on the coast line and adversely affect the very ecosystem they’re designed to improve.
In an op-ed piece for The New York Times, Kennedy defended himself by stating:

“As an environmentalist, I support wind power, including wind power on the high seas. I am also involved in siting wind farms in appropriate landscapes, of which there are many. But I do believe that some places should be off limits to any sort of industrial development. I wouldn't build a wind farm in Yosemite National Park. Nor would I build one on Nantucket Sound, which is exactly what the company Energy Management is trying to do with its Cape Wind project.”

In response, prominent environmental advocates, including writer Bill McKibbon and Ross Gelbspan, circulated a letter that urged Kennedy to rethink his position, citing “a state of ecological emergency," and saying that “constructing windmills six miles from Cape Cod, where they will be visible as half-inch dots on the horizon, is the least that we can do."

When additional turbine supporters, including "Death of Environmentalism" authors Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus called on Kennedy to step down from his position at NRDC things started to get a little less fuzzy in the big warm embrace that is the eco-elite family. And when the authors criticized the entire Kennedy clan as "the privileged patricians of a generation for whom building mansions by the sea was indistinguishable from advocating for the preservation of national parks…” Kennedy called Shellenberger and Nordhaus's attacks "dishonest vitriol."

Meanwhile construction for the Cape Wind Project, as it is officially known, sat as idly as a, yes, turbine blade on a windless day. However, the permit process, which has taken almost six years, is near completion and, barring any sort of backroom political agreement, is set to begin in 2007.

To which we blithely say, too bad all this hot air couldn’t be harnessed for more useful purposes.