Feed-In Tariffs, also known as “power payback laws,” make renewable energy more cost effective and easier to integrate into the general energy grid. FITs allow renewable energy producers, whether they be homeowners, businesses, or private investors, to be paid a cost-based price for the renewable electricity they produce. Producers are given access to the power grid, long-term contracts, and purchase prices for the energy produced based on the cost of generation. As a whole, Feed-In Tariffs are designed to accelerate investment in renewable energy. Similar laws have allowed countries like Germany to reach nearly 20% renewable energy production in the last decade.

Not only did Rhode Island pass a law allowing FITs, the state is implementing the system at a faster rate than any other state. This quick implementation will help the New England state reach its Renewable Portfolio Standard of 16% total renewable energy by 2019. Way to go Rhode Island!

To read the full article and the complete specifics of the plan, please visit: http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2011/09/rhode-island-rapidly-implementing-feed-in-tariffs-for-distributed-generation

On Saturday the 15th of October, approximately 75 people crowded into the Argos Municipal Building to hear retired Major General George Buskirk, Navy veteran Dan Martin, and Army veteran Lincoln Capstick talk about the connection between clean energy development and our national security.

We had been invited to come to the community to speak by the Economic Development Corporations of Marshall and Fulton Counties.  At this meeting, these entities were represented by their Executive Directors, Jennifer Laurent and Terry Lee.

We had a lively discussion and, although some in the room were opposed to the proposed wind farm in the area, everyone was civil and heard each other out.

For more information about the event, read the write-up in the local newspaper here. You can also find more photos of the event on our Facebook page:  http://www.facebook.com/OperationFREE.

Over Labor Day weekend, Operation Free veteran Nick Anderson and I had the chance to work a booth at the Marshall County Blueberry Festival and talked with hundreds of Hoosiers about the connection between our nation’s energy policy and national security.

One of those Hoosiers, Mike Good, writes a blog in favor of wind energy development in the area.  He featured a video with Nick talking about why he supports clean energy, and also put in a plug for the event that we are having on Saturday, October 15 in nearby Argos.

Overall, most of the people we talked to were enthusiastic about clean energy.  They recognize that Indiana has a great chance to lead the way in the areas of wind and biofuels.  In fact, many people wanted to know how they could get a personal wind turbine for their homes!

I look forward to continuing the conversation at our event on Saturday, October 15.

Active-duty Coast Guard blogger Ryan Erickson, over at 1790.us, draws attention to the fact that — even amid all the recent talk about the Arctic becoming a hot tourist destination, the new Strait of Gibraltar, or a place where oil and gas can be drilled — the Coast Guard really doesn’t have much capacity to operate up there.

Retired Coast Guard officer Chuck Hill goes even further in CGBlog, suggesting that the Coast Guard may be interested in developing a class of Arctic Patrol Cutters and highlighting a few possible models for such a cutter class in the fleets of Denmark and Norway.

Beyond the blogosphere, the concern is no less real.  Just this month, Rear Admiral Thomas Ostebo, the incoming commander of Coast Guard forces in Alaska, talked to an Alaska news station about how the changing Arctic environment will effect Coast Guard operations:  “We have to be proactive and think about how we’d respond today – and even more appropriately, how we can prepare ourselves as traffic increases over the next years. We really do need to start now.”

This is where — I hope — the discussion on climate change is headed.  These folks are not pie-in-the-sky idealists.   They’re sober-minded national security thinkers who have identified a problem — climate change — and proposed various actions we need to take in order to address this problem.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:  we need more people in Washington thinking this way.

We carried with us the message that the DoD and CIA consider climate change a national security threat.  We also wanted to underscore the point that energy efficiency measures funded by the RGGI program are reducing the Granite State’s reliance on home heating oil.

A week later?  The Senate voted 16-8 to reform — rather than repeal — RGGI.

One of the key Senators supporting a reform of the RGGI system in New Hampshire was Senator Gary Lambert, a Republican in his first term representing Nashua in the Senate.  He penned an OpEd on Sunday that explained his reasoning.  The whole thing is worth a read, but this is a particularly interesting passage:

Personally, I have a number of reasons for supporting RGGI and its associated environmental benefits:

-As an avid outdoorsman, I have witnessed the effects of climate change on our state.
-As a patent attorney with degrees in biology and chemistry, I trust the American Chemical Society when it says growth in the use of fossil fuels is increasing global warming.
-And as a colonel in the Marine Corps, I heed the Department of Defense warnings that climate change may act as an accelerant of instability or conflict around the globe.

Senator Lambert and his colleagues in the New Hampshire Senate have heard our message loud and clear.

As politicians in Washington endlessly debate the science of climate change, the military continues to plan and take action to deal with the many threats that a changing climate pose to our national security.

This much is clear in a recently-completed report commissioned by the US Navy which concludes that the effects of climate change will have a major impact on the nation’s three sea services (the Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard) and that we must take action to prepare.

As a former Coastie, I paid particular attention to the section of the report that discusses the need to build up our maritime presence in the Arctic, since the Coast Guard has traditionally been the lead agency exerting US sovereignty in the Far North ever since the purchase of Alaska in 1869.

Indeed, the report notes that the Arctic is where we are already seeing the effects of climate change on maritime operations, since the decline in summer sea-ice has already increased the number of ships operating in polar regions.  As the above quote by former Commandant ADM Allen indicates, the Coast Guard has responded to this by expanding its presence above the Arctic Circle considerably.

The report recommends a significant upgrade in Coast Guard polar icebreaking capabilities, noting that the mission has been under-resourced for many years.  But with Washington in a budget-cutting mood, the Coast Guard may not be able to even sustain current operations, as ADM Robert Papp (who took over for ADM Allen as Commandant last summer) has acknowledged.

Clearly this report is yet another reminder that the military services, including the Coast Guard, have all acknowledged that climate change is happening, and that action is needed now.

If only Congress would get the message.

As the North Africa Journal noted yesterday, Colonel Gaddafi built his long-lived regime on two pillars.  The first pillar was a set of brutal police state tactics that might have made Saddam blush.

The second, of course, was oil money.

Gaddafi’s ability to fund revolutionary groups as varied as the Provisional IRA and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front stemmed from his captive country’s relative oil wealth, as did his government’s ability to directly commit acts of terrorism like the 1988 bombing of Pan-Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.  More recently, Gaddafi’s attempts to claim a leadership mantle over the African continent and move towards a “United States of Africa” have been supported largely by humanitarian disbursements of oil revenues to various sub-Saharan nations.

My point is this:  oil money gives undemocratic leaders like Muammar Gaddafi outsized influence and power.  Controlling a mere two percent of the world oil supply can eventually turn an obscure young Libyan Army captain into the so-called “African King of Kings.”

So, in case you needed another reason for us to start moving away from oil, keep watching Libya.

–
For more on the situation in Libya, check out Truman Project Policy Director Camille Eiss’s piece today in The New York Times.

By Noah Rothman

On February 4, 2011, Campaigns & Elections magazine held the third annual Reed Award Dinner in Washington, DC.  Political consultants and public affairs executives were recognized for their outstanding work and creativity in the 2010 mid-term elections.

“Winning a Reed Award is considered to be one of the most prestigious honors in the business of politics and Campaigns & Elections congratulates the finalists and winners,” said Publisher of Campaigns & Elections, Paul Plawin.  “It is truly a remarkable achievement and we would like to thank the judges and the winners for their contributions to electoral politics and making the Reed Awards such a memorable experience.”

For the full article, click here.

Serious thanks should go to all the Operation Free veterans who made it happen.

The staff did the groundwork and “made the bus run on time” (usually), but it was the quality of the OpFree membership that put us over the top.

]]> http://www.operationfree.net/2011/02/08/and-the-reed-award-goes-to/feed/ 4 http://www.operationfree.net/2011/01/28/connecting-with-a-good-story/ http://www.operationfree.net/2011/01/28/connecting-with-a-good-story/#comments Fri, 28 Jan 2011 16:30:28 +0000 Brendan Flynn http://www.operationfree.net/?p=2247 I had the great opportunity this past weekend to participate in a panel at the Pennsylvania Progressive Summit focused on getting veterans involved in advocacy for various causes and candidates.  As you might expect, Operation Free, and the wider effort to educate the public about the connection between oil dependence, climate change, and national security, was a major topic of discussion.

The panel was led by former Congressman Patrick J. Murphy, the first Iraq war veteran in Congress.  Congressman Murphy talked about the tendency for folks on the more progressive end of the political spectrum to talk mostly in dry “seven-point policy paper” language.  For example, when the previous administration opposed a 3.5% across-the-board pay increase for the military, claiming it was “too generous,” Congressman Murphy talked not about the dry facts of the budgeting itself, but rather about how his young gunner, Manuel “RV” Arevalo, made only around $15,000 a year as he put his life on the line in Iraq.  The human side of the pay-raise issue hit home with people, and the measure ended up passing over President Bush’s objections.

We should be talking about energy and climate change in the same way—in human terms. Instead of just citing numbers on how many jobs are going to be created in clean energy, we should tell the story of folks like Jordan Latva, a Marine and Purple Heart recipient who got trained up by the organization Veterans Green Jobs and now works as a weatherization technician in Denver, Colorado.  We have to get away from the dry recitation of the money that the military can save by “going green” and start talking about the lives the Marine Corps has already preserved by quickly deploying solar technology to the front lines in Afghanistan.

Connecting through stories and common-sense policy is a great way to get people on board with Operation Free.  For more information about how you can help, please feel free to contact me at brendan@trumanproject.org.

Until now.

Last Saturday, on a beautiful early Spring day, we braved the winding backcountry roads of rural New Hampshire to visit the Lempster Mountain Wind Power Project and meet the Onnelas, the family that owns the land.  These 12 wind turbines produce a full 24 megawatts of energy — enough to power 10,000 homes.  And all without disrupting the lives of the Onnelas, who live just a few hundred feet away from one of the windmills.

Just as interesting as the wind turbines themselves are the folks who own the land.  Much like the generals and analysts at the Pentagon and CIA who have identified climate change and oil dependency as a security threat, land owner Kevin Onnela is not your typical clean energy advocate.  He drives a well-used pickup truck, drinks Coors Light from the can, and pointedly refers to himself politically as “somewhere between Republican and middle-of-the-road Tea Party.”

But at his heart, Kevin basically wants what most Americans, liberal and conservative, want:  to maintain his self-reliance and live the way he wants to live.

In a larger sense, this should be our goal as a nation as well.  We need to stop relying on petro-dictators who don’t have America’s best interests at heart.  America needs to stand up, take back control, and put together an energy policy that strengthens our security through clean, American power.

In Lempster, on the top of a mountain in rural New Hampshire, we saw the future — the leading edge of a movement towards clean energy that will help us defeat terrorism and make America great again.

So call your Senators now and urge them to support clean energy and climate legislation.

Indeed, the Turnpike was, in its day, revolutionary.

Pennsylvania, my home state, has often led the way in this manner.  In fact, PA was the site of the first commercial oil well, drilled by Edwin Drake near Titusville in 1858.  We led the nation in steel production, and many important inventions — such as the “hookless fastener” (zipper) invented in Meadville in the early 20th century — came from this state.

Now Pennsylvania has the chance to lead in a new field — clean energy industry.  The state has a large, well-trained blue-collar workforce, and factories that are below capacity and available to be re-tooled to build wind turbine blades and solar panels.   It’s already happening in some places, but for clean energy to really blossom, we need comprehensive national policy.

And that’s where Senators Specter and Casey come in.  They have a great opportunity to bring the Commonwealth and the nation into the industry of the future.  By supporting a comprehensive clean energy and climate bill, they will ensure that we strengthen our security, and at the same time create new jobs for a new Pennsylvania.

From the Turnpike to the zipper, here is nothing that Pennsylvania cannot do if we have leadership and vision.  So it’s time for Senators Specter and Casey to stand strong and support clean energy/climate legislation.

I was with Jon and other veterans from across the country at the Clean Energy, Jobs, and Security Forum on Wednesday where we joined with leaders from the national security, agriculture, business, labor, and faith communities to discuss the need for legislation that will create a market solution to the problem of carbon pollution and reduce our dependence on oil from people who don’t like us.

As Jon wrote in his piece, we heard from top administration officials like Steven Chu and Carol Browner, as well as key Senators in the effort such as John Kerry, Debbie Stabenow, and Sherrod Brown.

But perhaps the greatest ovation came for Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who has been unabashed in his support for strong clean energy legislation (and has come under fire from some in his party for doing so).

In pointed terms, Senator Graham spoke about how Senators from both parties need to come together on this issue.  He proudly proclaimed that “as a Republican, I believe clean air is a good thing.”  And he urged the audience to loudly express their support of clean energy legislation to their elected representatives in Washington.

Later that evening, President Obama echoed Senator Graham’s consensus-building tone in his first State of the Union address.

Clearly, there is a great deal of work to be done on this issue.  But if Pres. Obama and Sen. Graham’s comments last week on clean energy are any indication, there may still be a glimmer of bipartisanship in Washington.  And that spirit of bipartisanship may just get clean energy legislation across the finish line.

This hits home for me and fellow Operation Free veterans who just came off the latest installment of the Veterans for American Power tour through Indiana, West Virginia, and the Southwestern area of Virginia.  We rolled through once-mighty manufacturing areas like Northwest Indiana and the Northern Panhandle of West Virginia – cogs in the economic engine that helped defeat the Axis in World War II and outlast the Soviet Union in the Cold War (and areas not unlike my own Rust Belt hometown of Meadville, in Northwest PA).

In Wheeling, we talked to soldiers and Marines who came home from the battlefields of World War II and Korea and immediately found work at one of the many steel mills and foundries in the area.  This was a clear path to the middle class, where a hard-working young man recently out of the service could get a job in the mill and start a family – honest work for decent pay.

No longer.

Glenn Kunkel, a Marine veteran of the Iraq war who has been a stalwart of the bus tour, is from Toronto, Ohio, just upstream from Wheeling.  When he came back from his battlefield, the local mill that had once kept much of his family employed wasn’t hiring.  (As the Washington Post reports today in a long story about the plight of the Youngstown/Warren area – north of where we were on the tour and just west of my hometown – the story is the same across much of the former industrial heartland).

Glenn and I are both here at Operation Free primarily because we care about the need to strengthen our national security by investing in clean, American energy.  But we’re also here to encourage the growth of new clean energy jobs in our home areas, to harness the hard-working spirit of the industrial heartland where we both grew up.

Let’s be clear – this is not just simple nostalgia for a bygone era.  Many economists – including Lawrence Summers, Director of the National Economic Council at the White House – believe that the U.S. is in for a long period of persistent double-digit unemployment if we don’t do something serious to create new sectors of jobs.  While development of a new clean energy economy here in America won’t replace every job that has been lost over the years, it is a fundamental component in the long-term recovery of the American economy, and vital to our continued strength as a world power.  Furthermore, my native Rust Belt region is an ideal area for clean energy manufacturing development, owing to the pool of well-trained blue-collar workers who are currently un- or under-employed.

Since taking office, the Obama-Biden Administration has made progress towards greater development of clean energy manufacturing here in America (as outlined in a recent memo from the Vice President).  The $5 billion increase in Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credit is only the latest example of this commitment.

But this is only a fraction of what is required.  Operation Free is urging Congress to take the next step by passing a strong clean energy bill that includes market-based incentives to spur development of new sources of energy that can be produced right here in America. And even with the passage of a bill like the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (S. 1733, currently in the Senate), it will take a long, sustained national effort (not unlike the Manhattan Project or Apollo program) to create the right environment for clean energy industries to prosper.

The jobs won’t come back overnight.  We aren’t promising that the passage of clean energy legislation will bring back every single job that has been lost in the Rust Belt in the last four decades, or that all veterans returning home from overseas to the Ohio or Mahoning Valleys today will land a middle-class “green-collar” job tomorrow.

But what we do know is that the status quo is unacceptable.  The status quo has led to billions of dollars in oil money ending up in the hands of our enemies.  And it has seen untold thousands of jobs lost in the industrial heartland.

Development of a new clean energy economy will put America back in control of its own destiny by reducing our over-reliance on foreign energy sources.  We’ll make the world a less dangerous place by mitigating the effects of climate change.

And most significantly for my home region, the development of a clean energy economy will start putting the hard-working men and women of the industrial heartland back to work building the energy infrastructure of the future.