Archive for the ‘environment’ Category
Thursday, May 2nd, 2013
Back in the day, we only had little wind turbines.
Click to expand
“Anheuser-Busch and Foundation Windpower assembled a white wind turbine with a tower some 320 feet tall at the Budweiser brewery along Interstate 80. Hundreds of such mammoth turbines are in place 10 miles to the east in rural Montezuma Hills pastureland, but this one is in Fairfield city limits. Brewing beer at Budweiser should soon be a breeze. Plant General Manager Kevin Finger estimated the turbine could provide 20 percent of the electricity for the brewery.”
Tags: $100, 100 series, Anheuser-Busch, big, biggest, Bud, Budweiser0, central valley, Don't Disturb This Groove, electricity, factory, fairfield, Foundation Windpower, freeway, generation, i80, i80\i-80freeway, land cruiser, metal, shots from the, tall, The System, toyota, video wind mill, windmill, windmills
Posted in environment | No Comments »
Thursday, March 28th, 2013
Here’s a map to get you situated and the release is below.
Some of the stuff in there was news to me…
“Diablo Canyon Unit 2 Safely Returns To Full Power After One Of Most Successful Refuelings In Plant History
Project Provided a Major Economic Boost to the San Luis Obispo Region
AVILA BEACH, Calif., March 28, 2013 — Unit 2 at Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s (PG&E) Diablo Canyon Power Plant is running at full power again following a planned maintenance and refueling outage that began Feb. 3.
The outage was among the most successful in Diablo Canyon’s history, given the depth and breadth of the work involved, the excellent employee safety performance, and its conclusion ahead of schedule. Unit 1 continued to reliably generate electricity throughout the Unit 2 outage.
“Diablo Canyon Power Plant plays a major role in helping PG&E deliver some of the nation’s cleanest electricity to its customers,” said PG&E Senior Vice President and Chief Nuclear Officer Ed Halpin. “The work performed during this and other planned outages supports our safe operation of the facility, and ensures a steady flow of affordable, reliable and carbon-free energy to more than three million Californians.”
About 30 projects were completed during the 48-day window, in addition to standard maintenance. Crews performed about 12,000 outage-related activities, involving about one million hours of inspections, maintenance and equipment upgrades.
Major project work included replacing a portion of the Unit 2 reactor fuel, upgrading a crane system that moves key plant components, and installing a new digital Process Control System (PCS). The PCS monitors and controls various plant systems. The Diablo Canyon team set an industry record by completing the upgrade, which involved thousands of electrical connections, in less than 50 days.
Halpin attributed the success of the outage in part to effective preparation and planning by plant personnel.
“Completing the outage in a safe and efficient manner and returning the unit to service ahead of schedule is a testament to the hard work and commitment of our dedicated employees and contractors–both before and during the outage,” Halpin said. “When considering the scope of work conducted, our team of professionals turned in a world-class performance.”
Each of Diablo Canyon’s two reactor units is refueled about every 18 months. During a planned outage, more than 1,000 trained supplemental workers from around the country are brought in to assist the plant’s nearly 1,500 employees.
Pismo Beach Chamber of Commerce Chief Executive Officer Peter Candela said these outages provide a major economic boost to the region as out-of-town contractors and their families lodge in hotels, rent homes and patronize local businesses while working at the plant.
“Planned outages at Diablo Canyon help our local businesses thrive,” Candela said. “During each outage, around $5 million is spent locally by visiting workers and their families. We always appreciate the time they spend in our community, and hope they enjoy their experiences visiting Pismo Beach and the region.”
Diablo Canyon Power Plant’s two units together produce approximately 2,300 net megawatts of electricity without greenhouse-gas emissions. That total represents about 10 percent of all electricity generated in California, enough energy to meet the needs of more than three million Northern and Central Californians.
Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a subsidiary of PG&E Corporation (NYSE:PCG), is one of the largest combined natural gas and electric utilities in the United States. Based in San Francisco, with 20,000 employees, the company delivers some of the nation’s cleanest energy to 15 million people in northern and central California. For more information, visit www.pge.com/about/newsroom/ or www.pgecurrents.com.
Click herefor more information on how planned outages at Diablo Canyon Power Plant provide economic benefits to the Central Coast.
SOURCE Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E)
Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E)
CONTACT: PG&E External Communications – (415) 973-5930
Tags: 2013, bay area, california, diablo canyon, electricity, pg&e, plant, power, press release nuclear, refueling, San Francisco, tsunami
Posted in environment | No Comments »
Monday, March 4th, 2013
UCSF is finally getting off its ass and doing something about all those eucalyptus trees and this is the response?
I cry foul.
Now, leaving aside the fact that the Mount Sutro “cloud forest” aint a cloud forest and it aint a forest* neither, UCSF does stuff.
What do the whiny millionaire NIMBY neighbors of UCSF do? Nothing.
Advantage: UCSF.
Of course, there are impoverished hippies who similarly oppose UCSF doing anything to manage this area, so I’m going to look into this when I can.
But the assumption is:
WHY SHOULDN’T UCSF BE ABLE TO MANAGE ITS LAND?
See? UCSF does stuff. What do YOU do?
Click to expand
To Be Continued…
*What is it really? A stand, a grove, a wood? (Which is the most insulting?) Alls I know is that Christopher Robin used to play in the Hundred Acre Wood, not the Hundred Acre Forest, right?
Tags: 2013, bay area, california, cloud, cut, eye, forest, glaucoma, grove, medical, mobile eye service, mount sutro, San Francisco, stand, sutro, that man may see, trees, truck, UC, ucsf, ucsf campus, university of california, wood
Posted in environment | 18 Comments »
Monday, January 28th, 2013
Well of course you know how much juice you’re using on a a monthly basis, but if you go to your local branch library you’ll be able to check out an electricity meter that’ll tell you how much each of your appliances is sucking down.
Like this:
Click to expand
The entire program is ably explained here by the San Francisco Chronicle’s Deb Wandelll. (And obviously, people, make sure you unplug you old analog 13″ CRT TVs that you don’t even use anymore…)
I’ll tell you, I haven’t borrowed anything from the lieberry in a good long time, but this thing I just checked out myself.
The big fridge is brand new and you can tell by looking at this meter, so that’s good. (I wish it didn’t have to be an expensive counter-depth model but this one was the biggest model available that would fit through some super-narrow Victorian doorways (after taking both fridge doors off, yish))
Now the mini fridge and the chest freezer, well, they’re just not built as well so they cost a pretty penny to run even though they’re newish. Oh well.
The 70″ Sharp is from 2011 – it’s fine. It’s LED after all.
Speaking of which, you can light up a whole room with a “25 watt” LED light on a desk lamp, as I do. The meter says that these bulbs burn 5 watts, which is about what I figured.
You can’t use the meter to see what your overhead room lights are using, but you can just look at the bulbs’ ratings for that. (2012 was probably the first year it made sense to convert to LED lighting - Costco is now selling heavily-subsidized bulbs so you ought to get some yourself.)
Or if you want, you can just buy a meter from Amazon, I don’t care. But then what do you do with the meter when you’re done with it.
Congratulations to the SFPL for this program
Tags: 2013, bay area, Borrow, california, check out, electricty, Green Stacks, loan, meters, public library, San Francisco, San Francisco Public Library, What’s Your Watt
Posted in environment | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 9th, 2013
In perpetuity.
Check it:
“A valid telephone number is required in order to process and verify opt-out requests. Incorrect or omitted information may prevent us from honoring your request.”
Why do they say they need your phone number? So they can ask you if you really, really think phonebooks are so useless these days that you don’t want them anymore.
And then, they’ll call you the next year and the next year and the next year. You know, to make sure. Again.
Forever.
So. which is worse? Would you rather get a useless phone book or a useless phone call?
Weeks after delivery, these books are still around:
Via Warzau Wynn – click to expand
YP Yellow Pages Local Search people, nobody in San Francisco wants what you’re selling.
Why don’t you go away?
Tags: 2011, 2012, assn, association, bay area, book, buggy whip, california, change, changed, delivery, group, horse throttle, in, industry, It's a trap!, law, lawsuit, local search association, localsearch, localsearch association, name, opt, opt in, opt out, out, pages, rachel gordon, San Francisco, scam, season, ShoppyBag, telephone, trade, useless, wasteful, website, wet, yellow, Yellow Pages Association, yp, ypassociation
Posted in environment | No Comments »
Monday, December 31st, 2012
Hey PG&E! Are you going to end up turning a profit on the killing of those eight people down in San Bruno?
You remember them, right? The eight people you killed?
Thusly:
Click to expand
Hey is San Francisco shadow-Mayor Willie Brown still on PG&E’s payroll?
Sure, why not?
And hey, is the leader of the San Francisco Democrat party still on PG&E’s payroll?
Again, sure, why not?
Is that a good thing?
Oh well.
Here’s today’s happy talk from your energy monopoly:
“PG&E Rates to Change Modestly at Start Of 2013
Gas Rates Will Dip, Electric Rates Will Rise in Line with Inflation to Pay for Enhanced Safety, Reliability and Clean-Energy Programs
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 31, 2012 /PRNewswire/ — Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) said today that with the start of the new year, residential customers will see a significant decline in natural gas rates, and a modest increase in electric rates to cover the utility’s costs of maintaining and modernizing its system and of meeting a state mandate to buy more renewable energy. (See table below for average estimated bill impacts.)
PG&E’s average rates for residential gas customers will dip in January almost six percent compared to January 2012, thanks in part to lower wholesale costs for gas. However, customers should expect an increase in gas rates of about two percent as early as February, reflecting spending approved this month by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) for PG&E’s Pipeline Safety Enhancement Plan. This plan, one of the most aggressive and comprehensive gas pipeline modernization programs in the United States, will help PG&E achieve its goal of operating the safest and most reliable natural gas system in the country.
Average residential electric rates will increase about 2.6 percent system-wide compared to last January, close to the rate of inflation in Northern California. The increase is driven primarily by higher costs for acquiring clean, renewable energy to meet state mandates, and by spending previously approved by the CPUC for operating, maintaining and upgrading PG&E’s electric generation and distribution systems. Thanks to such upgrades, electric customers recently experienced the lowest rate of outages in the utility’s history.
Customers will likely face another electric rate increase this May of about two percent to pay for additional electric transmission infrastructure to modernize California’s power grid and deliver more renewable energy to customers.
“We know our customers care more than ever about their energy bills during these difficult economic times, so we continue to focus on keeping rate increases as modest as possible while raising enough revenue to continue improving our safety and reliability,” said Tom Bottorff, Senior Vice President of Regulatory Affairs for PG&E. “These revenues help us serve customers by reducing the frequency of electrical outages, improving the responsiveness of our call centers, providing more convenient services and, above all, continuing to upgrade the safety of our gas and electric operations. Although electric and gas rates fluctuate from year to year, our average customer bills remain well below the national average.”
Bottorff added, “We try to empower all of our customers with tools to help them better understand and manage their energy needs so they can control their bills and make the best use of our services.”
SmartMeter-enabled online tools like MyEnergy, money-saving programs like Winter Gas Savings, rebates for energy-efficient appliances and home retrofits, and bill payment options make it easier than ever for customers the get more value for their money.
Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a subsidiary of PG&E Corporation (NYSE: PCG), is one of the largest combined natural gas and electric utilities in the United States. Based in San Francisco, with 20,000 employees, the company delivers some of the nation’s cleanest energy to 15 million people in Northern and Central California. For more information, visit http://www.pge.com/about/newsroom/.
RESIDENTIAL ELECTRIC BILLS
Customer Usage January 2012 January 2013 Change
————– ———— ———— ——
550 kWh $89.31 $91.60 $2.29
——- —— —— —–
850 kWh $184.23 $188.05 $3.82
——- ——- ——- —–
1,200 kWh $301.54 $307.13 $5.59
——— ——- ——- —–
JANUARY RESIDENTIAL GAS BILLS @72 therms
January 2012 January 2013 Change
———— ———— ——
$82.37 $77.47 -$4.90
—— —— ——
SOURCE Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E)
Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E)
CONTACT: PG&E External Communications, +1-415-973-5930
Web Site: http://www.pge.com
Tags: 2012, bay area, california, CPUC, explosion, increase, kaboom, Mary Jung, nuclear, pacific gas and electric, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, pg&e, plant, power, Rate, san bruno, San Francisco, stp, willie brown
Posted in environment | No Comments »
Friday, November 30th, 2012
Here’s a good dozen what sat in the lobby for twelve long hours.
Guess what? Nobody took even a one.
So these books got hauled off to the big blue bin when I got home last night. Good times.
And best of all, those The Real Yellow Pages / AT&T / YP books are surprisingly small these days, so you can carry them all in just one trip, you know, before they get all soggy:
Click to expand
Uh, AT&T, what’s the point of this exercise?
Nobody in San Francisco wants your Yellow Pages.
I know you think that we do, but we don’t.
Does Verizon do this? No
Does Sprint do this? No
Does T-Mobile do this? No
So why do you do it?
I know that you can do it, you know, legally, but I don’t know why you do it.
If you want to get credit for giving minimum wage union members money, why not just give them money and be done with it?
Anyway, if I see any stack of your phonebooks anywhere about town anywhere near a big blue recycling bin or an AT&T store, they’re all going to get together tout de suite.
No charge.
See you in Hell, Yellow Pages people.
NB: Don’t try to “opt out,” San Francisco. All that does is give your contact information to AT&T so that they can ask you, every fucking year, if you still want to opt out. My conclusion: AT&T is a cancer.
Tags: 2012, at&t, bages, bay area, Blue, books, california, cell, cellular, garbage, opt, opt in, opt out, pages, phone, phone books, phonebook, phonebooks, rain, real yellow pages, recology, recycle, San Francisco, soggy, sprint, store, T-mobile, trash, unwanted, verizon, wet, yp, yp yellow, yp.com
Posted in environment | No Comments »
Thursday, November 1st, 2012
Remember this guy from a little while back, this Stephen Fowler asshole?
Here’s the notorious video. (Man that planning commish hearing about a certain place in Noe Valley just went on and on, huh? And hey, I wonder who ratted out that long-time Asian American dude* who lost his rental in NV owing to the lack of an Occupancy Permit? Mmmm… Anyway, Mr. Fowler is still reviled in Noe Valley.)
And before that, there was this one. Whew, good times.
And now there’s this, a new allegation that Stephen Fowler had something to do with these Marin County trees getting hacked (to death?) up in Mill Valley.
Click to expand
As always, We Report, You Decide.
I mean, maybe this tale is completely made up, you know, the way people would make up stories about Mussolini having a devil’s tail, you know, sometimes people decide to not like you and then they’ll just start making stuff up.
Here they are, the allegations:
“Just wanted to pass along another example of Wife-Swapping Stephen Fowler’s example of hypocrisy. He purchased a home this spring in Mill Valley, 317 Hillside for $800,000, tore it down and is now building a 3.5 million $$ spec house to flip. When the bank foreclosed on his neighbor at 300 Hillside across the street this spring, Stephen approached the owner, a general contractor at the time, a few days before the bank took the house away and paid the home owner to have a few of his employees illegally climb 10 Heritage Redwood trees, cut 20-30 feet off the tops of them thus freeing up the view of San Francisco for Stephens new house project. For a self proclaimed tree hugger, he has balls. See the photo’s of just a few of the trees…”
Now, didn’t S. Fowler go on the TV to promote environmental awareness? I think so.
And didn’t he have all these kinds of shirts on – who made them, one wonders. Who forced poor Mr. Fowler into doing things he didn’t want to and saying things he didn’t want to say?
Anyway, somebody up Marin way might want to look into these tree allegations.
But remember, S Fowler makes more in one week than you do in one year!
*Robert Hanamura – whatever happened to that guy?
Tags: 2011, 300, 317, 317 Hillside, 501c3, ABC, antics, Barcelona, bay area, Berkeley International Capital, Bioenergy, c. w., california, Cambridge, CEO, Chairman, charity, chronicle, Chubb Parsi, county, cut, cut down, drive, earth, email, environmental, forest ethis, forestethics, Fowler, green, hillside, house, husband, illegal, Larkspur, Lecturer, logo, London Business School., marin, Mill Valley, Nevius, Noe Valley, nonprofit, pacific environment, professor, real estate, redwood, Renee Stephens, Robert Hanamura, San Francisco, San Francisco Chronicle, secretary, senior, Senior Vice President, sfgate, sfowler, sfowler@terranovabio.com, spain, Stefan Fowler, stephen, Stephen Fowler, stephenfowler, stephenfowler@yahoo.com, Steven Fowler, street, Sustainable, svp, teacher, Terranova, Terranova Bioenergy, tops, Treasurer, tree, university, university of san francisco, USF, vice president, view, wife, wife swap
Posted in environment | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, October 17th, 2012
OK fine.
This is what outreach looks like:
Click to expand
I don’t know, I think if I wanted another shopping bag I’d hustle over to Costco and get four big-ass bags for like $4-something.
I mean, play big or stay home, right?
Anyway, SFGov had some events where they’d give away a bunch of bags but I couldn’t figure out when/where on the official website so I didn’t tell you all about it.
And I’ll tell you, I’m already buying less stuff per shopping trip owing to the bag ban, but that’s just me. Pretty soon, I’ll remember to schlep around with more bags more better…
And I’ll tell you, I don’t want to know what neo-corporate logos are on the bags themselves, you know, paid for by the Chubb Group or whatehaveyou.
I think I’m saying no thanks to your worthless freebie shopping bags, SFGov.
Tags: 2012, bags, bay area, california, department, environment, free, lucky, paper, plastic, San Francisco, shopping
Posted in environment | No Comments »
Friday, August 17th, 2012
Here’s the View from Seat 6A - August 2012 Over a Trapped Layer of LA Smog:
Click to expand
Wow.
I want to live in los angeles
Not the one in los angeles
No, not the one in south california
The got one in south patagonia
Tags: 2012, aircraft, airplane, august, bay area, california, Inversion, Layer, los angeles, San Francisco, smog, Temperature, Temperature Inversion Layer, View from 6A, View from Seat 6A
Posted in environment, weather | 1 Comment »
