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Talkin' Coal Blues

All the Coal in China:

The industrial muscle that has built China into the world’s factory relies on three key inputs: first, an army of flexible, low-cost workers; second, ready access to foreign capital and technology; and third, cheap energy, which means coal, the source of two-thirds of China’s total power and 79 percent of its electricity. Most things we buy today seem to be Made in China, and run­ning through them is a hidden seam of coal.

All the coal in China may be the world’s single biggest environmental problem because, while China’s coal is inexpensive and abundant, it is also pernicious. Coal mining kills thousands of Chinese workers each year, and China burns coal with meth­ods that both pollute the air and water and vastly increase the volume of climate-warming gases pumped into the atmo­sphere. But China’s coal is a fact of environmen­tal and economic life—a particularly potent and unacknowledged fact.

And yet, it may not even be that abundant (via):

A recent essay by Richard Heinberg brings these important preconceptions into question. In his essay, "Burning the Furniture", Heinberg reviews a recently released study by a German organization named Energy Watch Group, in which it is asserted that worldwide coal production will peak in the next 10-15 years.

Peak coal!?  The mind boggles

It's little wonder there's so much interest in alternatives.  Citizenre is a company that we heard about this weekend, which, you could say, offers photovoltaic energy on demand:

The Citizenrē Corporation is making renewable energy cost competitive with today’s electricity rates. Moreover, with a fixed cost of electricity, Citizenrē’s offering is not just cost  competitive, it is also financially profitable. This makes  participating in the Citizenrē REnU; program a financially sensible choice.

The Citizenrē REnU program is the first to give residential customers the chance to use green energy in their home without the usual dilemma. A photovoltaic (“PV”) array, inverters, and an exchange point (“XP”) are prepackaged to deliver energy to the customer or the utility from power generated at the home. Our new program takes care of all the usual headaches: it provides hassle free installation, operation, and maintenance – and does so with the most attractive terms in the industry. Customers have the option to rent the system for either 1, 5 or 25 years. This arrangement eliminates the traditional up-front investment and associated investment risk. With all of the customary barriers removed, customers can get down to the bottom-line choice of do they want more renewable energy, do they want more reliability, and do they want more responsiveness.

There's just one problem: the company isn't in operation yet.  In fact, it hasn't even built its first photovoltaic panel, so until it does that, it can't start renting out the panels to customers.  In fact, the whole thing is pretty controversial, since some believe that it's basically just renewable energy vaporware (though what isn't?).

May 21, 2007 in Energy |

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Comments

Jeff Wolfe

You're right that CitizenRE is vaporware. See my article at http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=47419. Not much has changed since I wrote it.

However, I must disagree with the last part of your statement "renewable energy vaporware (though what isn't?)" The rest of the installing solar energy business is not vaporware. There are thousands of tradespeople and business people working every day to increase solar energy installations across the country and across the world. We have real products, right now, in real installations. No vapor, just clean electrons.

Jeff Wolfe, CEO, groSolar

Posted by: Jeff Wolfe | May 22, 2007 at 07:36 AM

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Frank Knight

Howdy,
It has been a long time since I have hit the blogs about Citizenre and am happy to say there is some great news!
After a lot of passion and dedication of those of us who did not give up on the mission to bring renewable energy to the masses we have now got what we need to really make a difference.
We had a press Release this morning and I am happy to share three of the links where you can read about recent developments:
http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Citizenre-Signs-Development-Agreement-1392962.htm
http://newsblaze.com/story/2011020906124600002.mwir/topstory.html
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Citizenre-Signs-Development-iw-1095316263.html?x=0
We are finally doing what we started out to do even tho' we had to make many changes.
Our plan is now even simpler... there is no longer a deposit required and all it takes to get a system is to be a home-owner in one of our service areas, have a home suitable for solar power, and the first month's rent.
No credit checks and a fixed rate for 10-years so many citizens can produce their own clean green energy.
WE will be adding new service territories as time progresses.
Peace,
Frank Knight
P.S. I have literally over 400 blogs to post to that basically wanted not to hear from us until there was some serious action so you may see this same message repeated... I certainly don't have time to make individual posts right now and will have many hours just copying and re-posting!

Posted by: Frank Knight | February 09, 2011 at 09:07 PM

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