[GWSG] Transmission win; 530 new mws; new Gen 4 nuke plans; Arctic C release; watching enviros?

[Tilley, Al]

1.  An attempt by utilities and regulators in Michigan and Illinois to resist paying for transmission of wind energy into their states has been blocked in federal court.  The effect is to enable plans for regional wind power and for the transmission of renewable energy generally.  States will not be able to favor local renewable energy in their renewable energy portfolio plans.    http://www.eenews.net/stories/1059982660

2.  Three renewable energy projects totaling 520 megawatts have been approved in Arizona and Nevada.  One is a 100 mw concentrating solar project with power storage.  http://www.doi.gov/news/pressreleases/secretary-jewell-announces-approval-of-three-renewable-energy-projects-in-arizona-and-nevada.cfm

3.  Two MIT nuclear engineering grads have worked up a modular molten salt 500 megawatt nuclear reactor.  Like other Generation 4 plans, it is walk-away safe, uses spent fuel as input, and produces only low level waste, having gotten 96% of the energy out of the fuel in its process of boiling water to drive a turbine.  Also like other Gen 4 plans, it faces technical and regulatory hurdles, but perhaps its time has come.  The article explains the Gen 4 idea well.  http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/06/a-new-way-to-do-nuclear.html?mbid=nl_Daily%20(265)

4.  A report in the 3rd year of a 5-year NASA study of carbon release in the Arctic finds “amazing and potentially troubling” amounts, much more than models projected.  http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/earth20130610.html  Scientists will need further measurements to estimate the risk of a runaway feedback (with released carbon causing heat which releases yet more carbon and so on).  If that were to happen the results could be more severe than we had anticipated, both because of the enlarged estimate of the amount of carbon stored in the Arctic and because new work raises the expected release rate.   http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/12/ticking-arctic-carbon-bomb-may-b.html  I will pass on immediately whatever new info I get on this topic, and urge you to forward to me whatever might be of interest.

5.  This Guardian essay argues that internal surveillance by the US government in part anticipates hostility toward the government and corporations arising from climate crises, and in part is done on behalf of corporations.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/earth-insight/2013/jun/14/climate-change-energy-shocks-nsa-prism
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