CITIZEN POWER ALLIANCE

ALBANY -- With the stroke of a pen, Gov. David Paterson could give a significant boost to the natural-gas boom in the Southern Tier or slow the process to better plan for the expected surge in drilling.

Paterson so far isn't saying publicly what he intends to do to the bill, passed last month by the Legislature, but insiders expect him to sign it.

Supporters and opponents are lining up on either side of the bill as they await Paterson's decision.

The measure would streamline the permitting process for new wells and bring it up to date with new technology that allows explorers to drill horizontally as well as vertically.

The new drilling technique is considered crucial as developers go after what might be the largest pool of natural gas in the country beneath a geologic formation that stretches from the Southern Tier west into Ohio and south as far as West Virginia.

The largest estimate of the gas waiting to be extracted from the formation, about 500 trillion cubic feet, is two and a half times as much as the entire country uses in a year.

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The future might see medium and large trucks with hybrid electric-combustion engines running on the roads, provided their production starts in a big way.

According to a report in New Scientist, sales of small- to medium-size hybrid passenger cars, like the Toyota Prius, are growing fast, but hybrid technology for trucks is about a decade behind.

"We are just now starting to see hybrid trucks coming into production," said Richard Parish of the Hybrid Truck Users Forum, an organisation partly supported by the US Army to develop the industry.

Compared to passenger cars, trucks operate for more hours a day at lower fuel efficiency, meaning hybrid technologies could offer greater cuts in fuel use and emissions per vehicle. "Hybrid trucks have developed slowly because the complexity of hybrid vehicles is a bad fit with the way trucks are built," said Parish.

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LIBERTY, NY — It was supposed to be a closed meeting with state officials and town officials only, to talk about gas drilling regulations, but when people heard about it, they crowded into the meeting room.

Everybody has gas drilling on their minds lately.

The meeting was hosted by the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and held at the Cornell Cooperative Extension on July 1. Bradley J. Field, director of the Bureau of Resource Management and Development, was on hand to answer questions.

What came across more than any other concern was that the town officials want the DEC to help them deal with the many issues that drilling raises.

“I’m concerned with the open ponds at the drilling sites,” said Callicoon supervisor Linda Babicz. “We’re in a flood zone and it would make more sense to have steel collection ponds.”

Babicz was referring to the on-site storage of the fluids used in drilling—each well requires about two million gallons of water, which is mixed with sand and a “recipe” of toxic materials and collected in a pond. This pool of water must then be removed and taken to a treatment plant.

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No more solar cells covering a roof, but around the edges of a flat glass panel, as shown in the artist’s representation by NSF.

MIT engineers say they’ve created a new approach to harnessing the sun’s energy that provide windows with a clear view and illuminate rooms at the same time without the need for tracking devices.

According to a news release from MIT , the solar concentrator collects light at the edges, and dye molecules coated on the glass absorb sunlight and re-emits it at different wavelengths. The light is trapped within the glass and transported to solar cells along the edge, creating electricity and allowing light into the room as well.

The mixture of dyes is applied to the surface of the glass and allows light to travel a much longer distance. Mapel said, that as a result, light transportation losses were significantly reduced, resulting in a “tenfold increase in the amount of power converted by the solar cells.”

Marc A Baldo, leader of the work, is quoted as saying; “the focused light increases the electrical power obtained from each solar cell by a factor of over 40″. The article went on to say that because of its simplicity and ease of manufacture, the system could be implemented within three years. It could even be added to existing solar-panel systems, increasing their efficiency by 50 percent for minimal additional cost.

Other researchers involved in the project are Michael Currie, Jon Mapel and Timothy Heidel, all students of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Shalom Goffri, a postdoctoral associate in MIT’s Research Labortary of Electronics.

The new technology will be developed and commercialized by a new company, Covalent Solar, formed by Mapel, Currie and Goffri.

The Apalachin Landowners Group has hired Levene Goulden & Thompson to assist with gas lease negotiations.

The group is accepting new members who own property in Apalachin, South Owego, Lounsberry, Nichols, Vestal and Campville. Membership will be closed July 31.

For information, call Loretta Sullivan at 625-4543 or Annette Gibson at 625-2743, or go online to www.apalachinlandowners.blogspot.com. A public meeting is planned for 6:30 p.m. July 17 at Apalachin Elementary School, 405 Pennsylvania Ave.

Susquehanna Wayne Oil and Gas Group, along with Rails-to-Trails, have agreed to combine resources to negotiate gas leases with energy companies seeking to drill in northeastern Pennsylvania.

The group has roughly 340 landowners in Susquehanna and Wayne counties, and covers approximately 24,000 acres, according to a news release.

Use Blimps to Move Stuff to the Tar Sands

First up is the Skyhook JHL-40 Rotorcraft. A cross between a dirigible and a helicopter, Skyhook prez Peter Jess says the patented craft will be capable of hauling 40-tonne loads up to 320 kilometres in areas without basic infrastructure such as roads. Boeing will build them for Skyhook, and says that "the blimp would be environmentally friendly because it would eliminate the need to build roads and rail lines to remote locations, where transportation can be costly, inadequate or unreliable." Right. So how are they going to get the crap out? ::Calgary Herald



Put a Dome over the Tar Sands

Bucky thought he could put one over Manhattan; oil company Petro-Canada wants to put a giant inflatable dome over the tar sands. According to the Globe and Mail,

Measuring 200 metres by 200 metres, and 50 metres high, the proposed "superdome" would allow work to continue even during northern Alberta's punishing winter months, when the cold grinds construction to a standstill.

Petrocan is looking at whether the inflatable structure would cut transportation and construction costs by allowing more key work to be done on site, Neil Camarta, the company's vice-president of oil sands, told investors at an energy conference.

"Working up north can be kind of inhospitable and looking at this kind of technology is something that we're constantly doing," said Petrocan spokesman Peter Symons. ::Globe and Mail

The CSIRO has achieved a major breakthrough for Australia by capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) from power station flue gases, its energy technology chief says.

Trapping CO2 is a significant stage in the global quest to prevent greenhouse gases amassing in the upper atmosphere and generating global warming.

The landmark was achieved at the post-combustion-capture (PCC) pilot plant at Loy Yang Power Station in Victoria's Latrobe Valley.

CSIRO energy technology chief Dr David Brockway said the milestone followed the Garnaut report's recognition that Australia had an important role to play in developing low emission coal technologies such as PCC.

"PCC uses a liquid to capture CO2 from power station flue gases and can potentially reduce CO2 emissions from existing and future coal-fired power stations by more than 85%," he said in a statement.

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With fuel costs rising, the search for alternative fuel sources is on, and East Resources, Inc. of Warrendale, Pa. is looking for gas and oil fields in southern Allegany and Steuben counties,. However, it is asking for a change in the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s current regulations pertaining to drilling.

The variance the company is asking for concerns setback regulations for drilling near the boundaries of established fields. Currently 660 feet is required. It also concerns setback from other oil or gas wells which are in the same pool. Currently 1,320 feet is required. East Resources has proposed a boundary setback of 150 feet and 350 feet from other wells.

The land in question has been sectioned into 40-acre grid plots as required. It stretches from the Beech Hill-Independence Field to north of the New York and Pennsylvania border in Cryder Creek No. 9, or from the western part of the Town of Willing, parts of the Town of Independence into and including parts of West Union. Independence Town Clerk Cindy Clark has the map of the plotted sites included in East Resources’ plan posted on the wall of the Town Hall, and information is available in her office. At 7 p.m. Monday there is a special informational meeting for the public with the Independence Town Board at the Town Hall.

Letters concerning a hearing, to take place at 1 p.m. July 15 at Whitesville Central School, were sent to more than 500 landowners. Immediately following the hearing there will be a pre-adjudicatory hearing issues conference. The conference will be to determine, narrow, and resolve, if possible, the proposed issues for adjudication which will continue at 9 a.m. the next day in the same location. Afterwards a law judge will make a determination unless further adjudication is required.

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The news has been abuzz the past couple of weeks with news of rotating towers, which will magically extract lots of energy from the wind, and with this abundance of energy, will be able to rotate their individual floors to face any aspect. There are some nice 3D rendered architects drawing on the internet at the moment, which seem to have captured everyone’s imagination. It's a lovely concept in the 3D playground of the conceptual architect, and whilst I can see that the idea might take off in a virtual world such as second life...I'm not sold on the idea.

There are a number of reasons. Gazing into my green ball, I think that the engineering challenge is... not insurmountable - but impractical.

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