Greenpeace Flavored Green Hypocrisy

 

One of Greenpeace’s most senior executives commutes 250 miles to work by plane, despite the environmental group’s campaign to curb air travel, it has emerged. 

Pascal Husting, Greenpeace International’s international programme director, said he began "commuting between Luxembourg and Amsterdam" when he took the job in 2012 and currently made the round trip about twice a month.

The flights, at 250 euros for a round trip, are funded by Greenpeace, despite its campaign to curb "the growth in aviation", which it says "is ruining our chances of stopping dangerous climate change”. 

One Greenpeace volunteer on Monday described Mr Husting's travel arrangements as "almost unbelievable". 

Another said they were cancelling their payments to support Greenpeace in the wake of the disclosure and series of other damaging revelations of of disarray and financial mismanagement at the organization, in documents leaked to the Guardian newspaper. 

Greenpeace was last week forced to apologise for a "serious error of judgment" after it emerged that it had lost £3m of public donations when a member of staff took part in unauthorised currency dealing. 

Each round-trip commute Mr Husting makes would generate 142kg of carbon dioxide emissions, according to airline KLM. 

That implies that over the past two years his commuting may have been responsible for 7.4 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions - the equivalent of consuming 17 barrels of oil, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. 

But Mr Husting defended the arrangement, telling the Telegraph that while he would "rather not take" the journey it was necessary as it would otherwise be "a twelve hour round trip by train". 

"I spend half my life on skype and video conference calls," he said. "But as a senior manager, the people who work in my team sometimes need to meet me in the flesh, that’s why I’ve been going to Amsterdam twice a month while my team was being restructured." 

He said that from September he would switch to making the trip once a month by train due to "the work of restructuring my team coming to an end, and with my kids a little older". 

The head of Greenpeace in the UK on Monday denied that funding Mr Husting's commute showed a lack of integrity.

Read More: The Telegraph

Smith Electric Vehicles, Yet Another Green Failure

 

Four years have passed since President Obama visited Kansas City's main airport, rolled up his shirt sleeves and admonished the skeptics who said Smith Electric Vehicles was unlikely to make good on its promises to build 510 experimental electric-powered trucks and buses suitable for commercial use.

“Come see what’s going on at Smith Electric," the president said, inspecting a table full of bright green truck batteries in what was once a maintenance hangar for TWA. "I think they’re going to be hard-pressed to tell you that you’re not better off than you would be if we hadn’t made the investments in this plant.”

The skeptics turned out to be right.

Despite $32 million in federal stimulus funds and status as one of Obama's favorite "green" companies, the firm has halted production, having built just 439 of the promised 510 vehicles.
   

It has also left a trail of broken promises and unpaid bills.

Smith created just a quarter of the jobs it initially promised the state of Missouri it would create in return for $1.4 million in tax credits. Meanwhile, it has also stiffed the Missouri University of Science and Technology, the state government, and a local electrical supply company, as well as its landlord, the Kansas City city government, for hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to interviews and reviews of public records by the Washington Examiner.

As of today, the company still owes $36,000 to Missouri S&T for work the university performed as a subcontractor on a U.S. Army project.

“If you’re not going to pay your [subcontractors] for satisfactory work that was performed, then it does wave a red flag whether the company was a responsible company and whether it should even be doing business with the federal government," said Scott Amey, general counsel for the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight.

An American subsidiary of a British firm, Smith Electric stopped production at the end of last year, a fact that was made public only last month. Angela Strand, the firm's chief marketing officer and a company spokeswoman, declined to discuss its financial problems, telling the Washington Examiner in an email, “we do not comment on financial matters.” The company hopes to resume production this summer.

Smith failed to hire at least 100 workers over a two-year period in return for up to $1.4 million in state tax credits. At the end of two years, it had hired only 54 workers, records show.

The firm's original promise was for a minimum of 202 new jobs, but the Missouri Division of Workforce Development halved that goal — a change that division official Alicia Roling described in a 2011 internal email as an “unprecedented modification.”

Read More: The Washington Examine

Why is the US Navy wasting our Green on the Green Hoax?

 

The Department of Defense (DOD) paid $150 per gallon for alternative jet fuel made from algae, more than 64 times the current market price for standard carbon-based fuels, according to a report released on Wednesday.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) noted in its report that a Pentagon official reported paying “about $150 per gallon for 1,500 gallons of alternative jet fuel derived from algal oil.”

GAO’s report examined the financial challenges facing increased purchases and use of alternative jet fuels by federal agencies. “Currently, the price for alternative jet fuels exceeds that of conventional jet fuel,” the report noted.

The price for conventional jet fuel is currently $2.88 per gallon. GAO’s report reveals that federal agencies have paid significantly higher prices in an effort to promote biofuels in commercial and military aviation.

“Of the two alternative jet-fuel production processes approved for use in commercial and military aircraft (Fischer-Tropsch and HEFA), DOD, according to a DOD official, paid from about $3 to $150 per gallon,” GAO reported.

HEFA is an acronym for Hydroprocessed Esters and Fatty Acids, and refers to “renewable oil (e.g., vegetable oils, animal fat, waste grease, and algae oil) … processed using hydrogen treatment (hydroprocessing) to yield a fuel in the distillation range of jet fuel and diesel.”

GAO interviewed 23 “academic, federal government, and private industry stakeholders” about challenges facing the increased adoption of alternative jet fuels. Twenty-two of them cited the fuels’ exorbitant costs.

“Five of these stakeholders noted that for fuel produced using the HEFA production process, the cost of some types of feedstock—even before it is transported or converted—currently exceeds that of conventional fuel,” the report says.

Read More: The Washington Free Beacon

Are Electric Cars Another Green Energy Failure?

 

Testing by AAA has found that how far an electric vehicle can travel on one charge varies widely depending on the weather. Frigid temperatures can reduce that distance by 57%.

The research is important to the Automobile Club of Southern California because it maintains mobile recharging trucks for people who misjudge how far they can go in their electric car.

“EV drivers need to carefully monitor range in hot and cold weather,” said Steve Mazor, the engineer who manages the Southern California club’s Automotive Research Center.

The center conducted tests on a 2013 Nissan Leaf,  a 2012 Mitsubishi iMiEV and the electric version of a 2014 Ford Focus. 

The cars were tested for city driving to mimic stop-and-go traffic and to better compare with Environmental Protection Agency ratings listed on the window sticker, AAA said.

The average EV battery range in AAA’s test was 105 miles at 75 degrees but dropped 57% to just 43 miles at 20 degrees. Heat also sliced the cars' ranges but by not as much: The cars averaged 69 miles per full charge at 95 degrees, 33% less than in 75-degree weather.

The research center tested the cars following the same EPA drive cycles that provide the data for the mileage window stickers on new cars. The vehicles were charged up and then driven on a machine with rollers called a dynamometer in a climate-controlled room until the battery was exhausted.

Watch the Video at: The LA Times

The US Green Building Council and Another Big Green Fail

 

Washington, D.C. may have the highest number of certified green buildings in the country, but research by  Environmental Policy Alliance suggests it might not be doing much good.

The free-market group analyzed the first round of energy usage data released by city officials Friday and found that large, privately-owned buildings that received the green energy certification Leadership in Energy Design (LEED) actually use more energy than buildings that didn’t receive this green stamp of approval.

LEED is the brainchild of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), a private environmental group.

 

Washington, D.C.’s Department of Environment made the capital the first city in the nation to mandate LEED certifications in the construction of public buildings. The standards are now being phased in.

The results are measured in EUI’s, a unit that relates a building’s energy consumption to its size; the higher the number, the more energy is expended by a smaller building.

Take the Green Building Council’s Washington headquarters. Replete with the group’s top green-energy accolade, the platinum LEED certification, the USGBC’s main base comes in at 236 EUI. The average EUI for uncertified buildings in the capital? Just 199.

Certified buildings’ average comes in at 205 EUI, still less efficient than that didn’t take home the ultimate green trophy.

“LEED certification is little more than a fancy plaque displayed by these ‘green’ buildings,” charged Anastasia Swearingen, LEED Exposed’s lead researcher on the project. “Previous analyses of energy use by LEED-certified buildings have consistently shown that LEED ratings have no bearing on actual energy efficiency”

Read More: The Daily Caller

As Many As 50 Obama-backed Green Energy Failures

 

The October bankruptcy of solar company Satcon Technology Corp. puts the number of bankrupt or troubled green energy companies as high as 50, according to one estimate.

During the first presidential debate, Republican candidate Mitt Romney said the Obama administration had doled out $90 billion to green energy companies, half of which he said had failed, which sparked a media-wide debate over the accuracy of the claim.

The Romney campaign later clarified that he was talking about the DOE’s 1705 loan program which doled out $16.1 billion to green energy companies, according to the Washington Post. Of the 33 companies that received 1705 loan guarantees, only three have declared bankruptcy.

However, when other subsidies, outside of the 1705 loan guarantees are factored in, the number of government-backed green energy failures is much higher.

The blog Green Corruption’s “Obama green-energy failure” list contains 23 bankrupt and 27 troubled green energy companies which were backed by the federal government. This list uses data compiled by the Heritage Foundation, but also includes some things the conservative think tank doesn’t.

According to the Heritage Foundation, $80 billion was set aside in the 2009 stimulus package for clean energy loans, grants, and tax credits, and 10 percent of these funds have gone to companies that have filed for bankruptcy or are in dire straits.

The Green Corruption estimates are on the high end as others have total number of bankrupt and troubled green energy firms much lower.

The Heritage Foundation’s list contains 34 companies that have either filed for bankruptcy or are faltering as of October 18. Of those 34 listed, nineteen have filed for bankruptcy and fifteen are considered faltering.

The Heritage list only contains companies that received federal funds from the Obama administration’s Energy Department and other agencies, and does not include “other state, local, and federal tax credits and subsidies,” which would raise the amount of taxpayer dollars that was given to these companies.

Another list compiled by the Senate Republican Policy Committee shows a total of 19 government-backed green energy companies that have either gone bankrupt, are in distress, or failing — twelve bankrupt, six in distress, and one failing.

The committee’s list, however, does not include the most recent green energy failure, Satcon Technology Corp., which received a $3 million DOE grant earlier this year and filed for bankruptcy on Oct. 17, making it the second green energy company to file for bankruptcy that week.

Read More: The Daily Caller

One of Green Energy's Dirty Little Secrets

CORYDON, Iowa (AP) - The hills of southern Iowa bear the scars of America's push for green energy: The brown gashes where rain has washed away the soil. The polluted streams that dump fertilizer into the water supply.

Even the cemetery that disappeared like an apparition into a cornfield.

It wasn't supposed to be this way.

With the Iowa political caucuses on the horizon in 2007, presidential candidate Barack Obama made homegrown corn a centerpiece of his plan to slow global warming. And when President George W. Bush signed a law that year requiring oil companies to add billions of gallons of ethanol to their gasoline each year, Bush predicted it would make the country "stronger, cleaner and more secure."

But the ethanol era has proven far more damaging to the environment than politicians promised and much worse than the government admits today.

As farmers rushed to find new places to plant corn, they wiped out millions of acres of conservation land, destroyed habitat and polluted water supplies, an Associated Press investigation found.

Five million acres of land set aside for conservation - more than Yellowstone, Everglades and Yosemite National Parks combined - have vanished on Obama's watch.

Landowners filled in wetlands. They plowed into pristine prairies, releasing carbon dioxide that had been locked in the soil.

Sprayers pumped out billions of pounds of fertilizer, some of which seeped into drinking water, contaminated rivers and worsened the huge dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico where marine life can't survive.

The consequences are so severe that environmentalists and many scientists have now rejected corn-based ethanol as bad environmental policy. But the Obama administration stands by it, highlighting its benefits to the farming industry rather than any negative impact.

Farmers planted 15 million more acres of corn last year than before the ethanol boom, and the effects are visible in places like south central Iowa.

The hilly, once-grassy landscape is made up of fragile soil that, unlike the earth in the rest of the state, is poorly suited for corn. Nevertheless, it has yielded to America's demand for it.

"They're raping the land," said Bill Alley, a member of the board of supervisors in Wayne County, which now bears little resemblance to the rolling cow pastures shown in postcards sold at a Corydon pharmacy.

All energy comes at a cost. The environmental consequences of drilling for oil and natural gas are well documented and severe. But in the president's push to reduce greenhouse gases and curtail global warming, his administration has allowed so-called green energy to do not-so-green things.

Read More: My Way News

Another Big Green Energy Fail

Now here’s a fine mess, as Laurel and Hardy used to say. One of the biggest electric vehicle charging companies, Arizona-based ECOtality (a Nissan Leaf partner), went bankrupt, stranding about 13,000 commercial and residential stations. We all have a stake in this, because American tax dollars supported these installations through the so-called EV Project.

In the early rounds, only one bidder emerged, an unknown company called Tellus Power, which proposed acquiring ECOtality's assets for just $3 million. Consider that the federal grants totaled almost $115 million (of which almost $100 million was spent) and you begin to see the issue here. There are clear parallels to what happened to the U.S. investment in Fisker Automotive, which went bankrupt after spending $192 million of a $529 million loan (the feds then seized $21 million in assets).

But just as I was writing this, the Florida-based Car Charging Group said that it had won the prize, price unspecified. "We believe this will solidify our position as the leader in the electric vehicle charging industry," said Michael Farkas, the CEO. CCG has been aggressively expansionist, and owns pay-to-charge stations in such places as the parking garages of New York City. He's right; this makes the company a big player.

One of the issues with ECOtality's bankruptcy was making sure its network remains active, so users can swipe cards and get billed for the electricity. The worst possible outcome would have been to have ECOtality’s 3,300 public chargers (the rest are residential) inoperable because nobody could turn on their billing and operating systems. Nissan was so concerned about the network that it lent ECOtality $1.25 million to get through the auction, spokesman Brian Brockman confirmed.

Come to think of it, if those home units didn’t work, that would have been horrible, too. If you see parallels to the big and still-evolving government shutdown, you’re paying attention. It’s not quite veterans unable to get into war memorials, but it’s along the same lines.

Read More: The Huffington Post