Who Knew Iowa Is #2 in U.S. Wind Power?

After seven days riding into frequent headwinds as part of the 37th edition of the Register's Annual Bike Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI) and not seeing any wind turbines, it came as a surprise to see these turbines along I-80 east of Des Moines. All along the 442-mile southern Iowa route for RAGBRAI I had been wondering (among other things) why no wind power out here? There was plenty of corn, making ethanol a huge deal there, but it turns out that Iowa also is a major player in wind generated electricity.

According to the American Wind Energy Association, Iowa actually ranks second in the nation in wind generation capacity, ahead of California, Minnesota, Washington (my home state), Oregon, New York and Colorado. (Texas is first by more than double Iowa's capacity.) Indeed, Iowa leapfrogged from 4th to 2nd in the space of just two years.

The jump in wind generation is partially attributable to a state mandate that the two investor-owned utilities, MidAmerican and Alliant Energy Interstate Power & Light, obtain a combined total of 105 MW of renewable energy. In addition, the governor in 2001 established a secondary voluntary goal of 1000 MW of wind by 2010. Clearly those goals have been exceeded.

Iowa seems ideal for wind power. Not only is there frequent wind (and seemingly constant if you're on a bicycle), but the state also is close to major load centers -- Chicago is 300 miles and St. Louis 270 miles from Des Moines. Apparently some developers are offering higher lease rates for turbine locations, giving landowners a powerful economic incentive to site turbines on their property.

But, of course, wind power isn't without its pitfalls, as this article last year describes. The Adair project had its detractors, but it appears that Iowa already is thinking big when it comes to generating power from the wind.

N.J. Blogger Shield Law Case

The New Jersey court decision denying shield law coverage for blogger Shellee Hale is getting a lot of attention in the blogosphere, but if you dig just below the surface you'll find its not actually a blogger case, but is a more garden-variety message board commenter case. Consequently, its hard to expect a court to expand the shield law to cover a commenter, even if they happen also to be a blogger. Nor should bloggers want this case to go up on appeal because its not at all certain that it would be flipped.

According to Mary Ann Spoto in the Star-Ledger article, http://bit.ly/DEO9N, the lawsuit involved posts Ms. Hale made on a message board. The court apparently analogized Ms. Hale's comments to those that appear at the end of an online article rather than actual reporting and I think that's a better analogy than to a blog post.

There is a wide range of reactions, none of which point out what I see as the crucial distinction between a message board post and a blog. TechDirt focused on what it viewed as the judge's lack of understanding about the Internet, http://bit.ly/PIqaG; while on law.com's LegalBlogWatch, Carolyn Elefant commented: "It seemed as if Hale filed irresponsible comments and invoked the shield law to defend against a defamation claim. It did not seem from the description that she was operating as a journalist under any sense of the word." http://bit.ly/1HX7L. Law and More, http://bit.ly/JBIbh, described the decision as one reflecting the the need for the law to catch up with the technology. Wendy Post in the Daily Online Examiner commented that the case should be appealed to "fix the ruling and make sure that news reporting is news reporting." http://bit.ly/IREjG.

My take on this (based on 12 years as a t.v. reporter and now 21 years as a lawyer who stays in touch with defamation issues) is that this really isn't reporting. An online comment to an article, like a message board posting, is usually brief and without citation to any independent facts. Where is the reporting in that? It seems that proponents of shield law coverage for bloggers are focusing more on Ms. Hale's status as a blogger,whether or not the posts at issue occurred in a blog. I'm not arguing that bloggers aren't journalists; in many situations these days they do act as reporters and one need only look at dailykos, talking points memo, or more locally horsesass.com, to see real reporting going on. But you also don't have to look too deep in the message boards to see that what's happening there is more commentary and opinion than actual reporting.

Bad facts often make bad law and I'm not sure that bloggers want this case to go beyond the trial court level. Right now, its not precedential for anyone but the parties. But take this up to an appellate court with these facts and a reported opinion, even by an intermediate appeals court, might not come out the way bloggers want. As any good appellate lawyer will tell you the best way to win on appeal is to represent the respondent, i.e. the party that isn't bringing the appeal.

House Passes Climate Change, Energy Bill

Some drama and a little bit of theatre of the absurd during the lenghty House floor debate on the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 ("ACES"), all of which C-SPAN helpfully streamed on-line. The Twitterverse also proved to be a good tool for staying on top of the minute-by-minute proceedings. When it was over the bill passed by a narrow margin of 219-212. http://bit.ly/1ajUjX. Eight Republicans, including my own Congressman, Dave Reichert, voted in favor; while 42 Democrats voted against.

At 1500-pages the extremely complex ACES will make for good bedtime reading for anyone with insomnia. A short summary is here: http://bit.ly/2O9py. ACES now goes to the Senate where it will take 60 votes to pass. Given the narrowness of the vote in the House there's no guarantee the measure will make it to President Obama's desk.

Waxman-Markley Bill Vote Coming Up

Word that the Waxman-Markley climate change bill, also known as American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES), will come up for a vote on the House floor this Friday certainly has made my Tweetdeck and e-mail a lot more full as the cyberspace lobbying effort heats up, so to speak. I won't even attempt to go into all the Tweets about the subject, although a quick search on #ACES should give you an idea of the volume of traffic there. And in the e-mail arena, so far just in the space of an hour this afternoon I've gotten a message from the Pew Center for Climate Change advocating for ACES and one from the Associated General Contractors opposing the bill.

AGC sent out an Issue Alert saying the bill will increase the cost of construction and make U.S. investments in manufacturing and industrial facilities less economically attractive and, by regulating smaller emitters the market for commercial construction could be adversely impacted by these regulatory regimes. AGC cites the American Petroleum Institute critique that the bill would increase the cost of a gallon of gas by an estimated 77 cents over the next ten years through additional refinery costs and that those increased costs would likely crowd out efforts to raise the motor fuels tax to fund infrastructure that could reduce congestion and save fuel. AGC also says the bill adds new and onerous "planning" requirements for states and metropolitan regions that will further slow an already comprehensive and arduous federally-mandated transportation planning process. Finally, AGC says the new requirements would create disincentives to state and local planners to include new highway and bridge capacity in their transportation plans.

Meanwhile, Pew's e-mail contains a letter from its president to members of Congress urging passage, and a link to a webpage that lists and refutes eight myths about ACES, http://www.pewclimate.org/acesa/eight-myths/June2009. I won't go into all of them here, but among the issues that Pew addresses is the claim about the projected per gallon increase in gas, citing an EPA study that ACES would result in only 25 cents per gallon over the next 20 years.

So my e-mail box probably is a micro-microcosm of what must be a fairly intense back-and-forth on ACES that members of Congress are encountering. We'll see what happens on Friday.

LEED for Existing Buildings -- A Whole New Ballgame

A requirement of the U.S. Government for renewing its lease of the EPA's Region 10 office in downtown Seattle is that the building obtain the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Environment and Energy Design (LEED) Silver* certification for existing buildings (LEED-EB). According to the Puget Sound Business Journal, http://bit.ly/QItPb, the owners of 1200 Sixth Avenue in Seattle are planning to go two better and seek LEED-EB Platinum, which would make it the first such LEED-EB in Seattle with that designation and only the 14th in the world.

This is an important step since buildings account for nearly 40% of the greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. While most of the attention on the LEED rating system has focused on new construction, bringing LEED concepts to the five million existing commercial buildings in the U.S. represents a much bigger carbon footprint reduction bang for the buck, although one that comes with its own challenges. Some of those issues were addressed by last year's revisions to the LEED-EB criteria to make them fit better with existing buildings. This article from an issue of "Greener Buildings" provides a good summary of the changes. http://bit.ly/ujGqv.

Other issues remain, not the least of which are the frozen credit markets and stalled commercial leasing that make it difficult for building owners to consider the expense of upgrading to LEED-EB when their bigger problem right now is hanging on to tenants who can pay the current rent. When the economy improves, however, the LEED-EB path could prove to be a whole new opportunity for both commercial real estate and the environment.

*[6/9 update -- Correcting the lease requirement for LEED Silver, not Gold]

Hey I Know, How About If I Ride Across Iowa Just for Kicks?

The clock for RAGBRAI (Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa) is counting down inexorably...less than 50 days to get ready for my first attempt at the largest, multi-day ride/rolling party in the country. http://ragbrai.com. And, no boys and girls, Iowa is not flat. Its rolling hills and the course this year reportedly is one of the hillier in the ride's 37-year history. While no one will ever describe my training grounds around the Puget Sound area as "flat," I still need some quality miles and strategic callouses to be ready do 442-miles over 7 days in July. This ain't no Seattle-to-Portland (STP) jaunt that I can knock off 200-miles in a day just so I don't have to get back on the bike a second day -- in fact She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed even suggested I do STP in TWO days just for the experience! Well, that isn't going to happen, but I hope to get more mileage and seat time this weekend between Little League playoff games, the Seattle Country Day Crazy Carnival, and combat weeding. Keep on spinning!

Climate Change Convergence

An interesting convergence of climate change issues on Thursday. May 21st started in Washington, D.C., with the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee entering its fourth day of markup on HR 2454, the American Clean Energy & Security Act, while in the other Washington (Seattle) the Environmental Protection Agency held the second of its two public hearings on the proposed CO2 endangerment ruling.

I had hoped to tweet from the EPA hearing (@USClimateLaw), unfortunately my Blackberry apparently didn't have T-Mobile coverage...at Pier 66 in downtown Seattle! Don't know whether it was operator-error (highly possible) or a lame network, but I did attend Gov. Gregoire's post-testimony press conference where she signed Executive Order 09-05, "Washington's Leadership on Climate Change" and then issued a Lane Powell Hot Sheet on the Executive Order, http://www.lanepowell.com/5267/washington-climate-change-executive-order-signed.

Given that the recession-driven budget constraints that doomed the Washington state cap-and-trade bill are continuing, its hard to see how much real impact the executive order can have, but it is an effort to move policy forward. The Governor characterized the Executive Order as the "next best thing" to the cap-and-trade bill that failed in the last legislative session and it does set up the state to implement whatever cap-and-trade ultimately gets adopted, whether by the feds or the Washington legislature in a later session.

Meanwhile back at the EPA public hearing in Seattle, 185 witnesses signed up to testify for three minutes each. While there was a ritualized feel to the process (which I have to confess may be due more to my perceptions from covering countless public hearings in my previous life as a t.v. reporter), the hearing was well-organized and people expressed their positions in well-articulated concise statements. Not surprising for an environmental hearing in Seattle, the vast majority of speakers favored action by EPA even as Congress considers legislation that could preempt the agency's action. Indeed, the consensus seemed to be that since nothing is guaranteed in the legislative process its important for the EPA to continue with the rulemaking, if for no other reason than to keep pressure on Congress.

Watching Day Four of the C-SPAN stream of the House Energy and Commerce markup of HR 2454 brought to mind Otto Von Bismark's adage: "Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made." Republican committee members had filed some 400 amendments, but only about 56 of them were considered and most rejected. Notwithstanding the 36 hours of debate on a 900+ page bill and the palpable desire of committee members to get out of town for the Memorial Day recess, as the waning moments of the markup went past 8 pm EDT, there seemed to be less partisanship and vituperation than might be expected and more of a sense of resignation by the minority. The bill passed by a 33-25 margin, mostly on a party line vote. The New York Times describes the future for the bill as "a tortuous path" through several more House committees before it can come to a floor vote and then an even more doubtful fate in the Senate. http://tinyurl.com/r9f7ty.

As the day wore down there was a sense that the history and convergence between the two Washingtons was not to be missed.