This Week in News: July 31st
Government
Senate Democrats are calling for the resignation of the EPA chief Stephen Johnson. Stemming this decision is detailed in a previous article I had about the EPA ignoring the Supreme Court’s ruling on the danger of greenhouse gases. Many of the senators are saying that they have no more confidence in the Johnson and that he also made false statements earlier in the year. Whatever decision is made, I just hope whoever is the head of the EPA decides to take better action to improve our environment.
With the absence of Senators Barrack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain, a renewable energy tax credit bill failed to meet the required number of votes to pass. The tax credit would allow Abengoa Solar to build the Solana solar plant in Arizona, the home state of John McCain. This solar plant would be the largest in the world and would provide a large number of jobs for the state. The tax credit is still short 7 credits even with the three senators being absent which makes it seem like it wouldn’t pass regardless of whether they were there or not they were there. A new power plant needs to be built in Arizona regardless, so why not push to make it solar? It makes me really angry that our Congress continues to fight against moving towards renewable energy and keep our reliance on energy sources that produce tons of carbon emissions.
Wind Energy
BP and Clipper Windpower plan on splitting the costs for a project to build one of America’s largest wind farms in South Dakota. The project will be called Titan wind project and is expected to produce around 5,050 MW which will make it the world’s largest wind farm. If the proposed plan is successful, it will provide wind power for approximately 1.5 million homes and offset nearly 24 billion pounds of carbon emissions. It’s great to see an oil company starting to invest in more renewable resources, but their motives are still to make more money.
Solar Energy
In much lighter news, Johnny Depp is planning on running his private island completely on solar and hydrogen power. The cost of the project will cost around 150,000 pounds or $300,000 US dollars. Depp decided to go to Mike Strizki to build the system for him. The system will use solar energy in the day and store any excess energy as hydrogen during cloudy days or at night. The hydrogen is stored in 10,000 gallon propane tanks to hold him over during the nights. Regardless of how efficient this system is, it just seems wrong that you need such a large system to power an island just for two people.
