By Barry Cinnamon
Article Launched: 02/26/2008 01:32:34 AM PST

This week the House of Representatives will vote on the Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Tax Act of 2008. This act would eliminate $18 billion in tax breaks for oil companies to help pay for extending renewable energy tax credits. If the House approves, we’ll see if Senate Republicans can vote for good energy and environmental policy – or just vote for Big Oil again.

We’ve been through this before. In December, at the urging of the White House, Senate Republicans voted along party lines to defeat a similar bill. This year, Republican opposition to this bill and favoritism to Big Oil are becoming themes of the presidential campaign.

The result is that solar power and other forms of renewable energy have become politicized, much to the detriment of everyone who uses electricity and cares about the environment.

We are fortunate to have leaders in California who understand both the need and the potential for the renewable energy industry. Sparked by the California Solar Initiative – Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “Million Solar Roofs” program – investments in clean tech and related technologies have exploded in California. On a local level, Mayor Chuck Reed’s “Green Vision” will create 25,000 new jobs in Silicon Valley as we move toward a future of 100 percent renewable power, alternative fuel vehicles and wastewater recycling.

So it looks like the next new thing is clean tech: silicon for solar cells as well as chips. But there’s a cloud on the horizon – the

federal government’s apparent hostility to any industry that has the potential to impede Big Oil. We’ve seen this with absurdly lame corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards, the Environmental Protection Agency’s refusal to allow California to regulate its own emissions and the outright obstruction of the Kyoto Protocol’s efforts. I’ve been a registered Republican for more than 20 years. This year I find it impossible to support a party that bends to the wishes of Big Oil. Their excuse is that the White House does not want to reduce incentives for finding new sources of oil and gas. We’ve obviously got an energy shortage, but let’s put these renewable energy incentives in perspective.

Renewable energy legislation that Republicans should pass moves $18 billion in tax incentives from Big Oil to the renewable energy industry over 10 years. In 2007 alone, the profits of the top five oil companies were more than $120 billion – at the current pace, they’d generate $1.2 trillion in profits during the same 10-year period.

Sound public policy is compromised when there is that much money at risk by incumbent industries. As a result, many people in the renewable energy industry are resigned to wait until the next president takes office for any substantive change in federal policy. But that delay will jeopardize thousands of Silicon Valley jobs, cost our local economy billions of dollars and, compared with the rest of the world, puts us just that much farther behind.

It’s an opportunity lost for the most obvious of reasons – Big Oil’s influence on our country’s energy and environmental policies. The impact is now being felt economically as higher energy prices create inflationary pressures. Our economy is going into a recession while our country writes continually bigger checks to foreign oil producers.

Big Oil does not need tax breaks while they’re earning record – some say windfall – profits. Senate and House Republicans need to wake up to the fact that their continued votes for Big Oil are embarrassing and politically suicidal. Our country’s energy policies are an economic and environmental dead end, and we cannot wait until next year to turn around. Let’s get an energy bill passed now that removes unnecessary support for Big Oil and accelerates the growth of clean, renewable power.

Powur of Citizenre – 10 Commandments of Advertising
Taken from the Associate Module 5
Rules of Advertising
______________________________

1.Thou shalt not use the Citizenre name in your advertising unless it
is an approved article or an approved resource created by the company
for your use.

2.Thou shalt not state that our solar units are FREE. This is a weak
posture. They are not free. Never try to “bait and switch” your
prospect. Trust is a delicate thing. You can say “No purchase
required” or “No equipment to purchase”–but our product is not free.
You can explain how our model is like providing the satellite to sell
the monthly programming… just don’t use the word free.

3.Thou shalt not imply employment or a job if you are advertising for
Ecopreneurs, and thou shalt not guarantee or promise an income.

4.Thou shalt not use our video on any website other than our corporate
site. The footage on our video has strict copyrights and any postings
on You Tube or Google video or any private sites could compromise our
use of that footage.

5.Thou shalt not use the names of our celebrity endorsers in your
advertising. Especially do not use the name of Morgan Freeman. It is
his voice on our video, but that clip was not recorded for
Citizenre.We were given the rights to use it.

6.Thou shalt always be professional and completely ethical when
communicating with prospects. Often the loudest skeptics become our
strongest advocates if you can answer all of their questions with
class. Even if you are not using the name of Citizenre in your ad,
your ad will still lead back to our site. The impression you make is
important.

7.Thou shalt never use any advertising that is misleading. Citizenre
does NOT sell electricity. That would make us a utility and put us
under a completely new set of regulations. We are the manufacturer and
renter (not lease) of an appliance that happens to produce
electricity. The customer actually produces their own power from the
system we rent them. Hence, we give power back to the people. Do not
state or imply that we sell electricity.

8.Thou shalt not promote our service or opportunity on any
“questionable” websites. This includes, but is not limited to,
websites that promote pornography, gambling, or anything that some
people might find offensive or that could tarnish our stellar image.
Also, you can not post on Ebay (or any auction site) or any site where
you are breaking their policies. Don’t try to cheat your way to
success. Be smart.

9.Thou shalt not represent yourself as an employee or agent of
Citizenre. If you use the name Citizenre on your answering machine,
you MUST use the words Independent Ecopreneur or Independent Associate
or Independent Direct Seller.

10.Thou shalt follow the Policies and Procedures and represent
Citizenre in an ethical and professional manner at all times. You will
be the initial point of contact many people will have with our mission–
make a great impression. You are the first line of enthusiasm and your
energy creates the Powur of Citizenre. You make a difference.

Check out www.Greendrinks.org

If you are looking for a way to Grow your business /meet and greet others that share an environmental interest . This just might be the place to do it .

I hear this all the time so I made a page just for you .

Click on the link below . It shows you the artwork that will post and gives you the code to put in your web page.

http://www.houseofsolar.com/pics/

Tim Padden
House of Solar

JUST LIKE THIS- Click to test

Now is the time to get out and promote yourself on the Web looking for customers and associates. When the announcement is made your advertisement will become one of thousands but today it can be front and center.

If you would like to learn more about how to do this send me an email and I will put together a Conference call to walk you through being effective with inexpensive advertising.

How_to_Place_Google_Ad

Google online PPT 

-Tim Padden

House of Solar

By Solar Nation

January 4, 2008On the energy and environmental front, anyone following the presidential primaries today can make some fairly safe predictions about our sustainable future without even picking a winner from the thirteen major candidates. In its 2008 Voters’ Guide, the League of Conservation Voters has compared and tabulated the energy policies of all the presidential hopefuls (see tables below). The League doesn’t over-editorialize, but it’s clear from even an unbiased reading of their positions that the country will go in a diametrically different direction in 2009 depending largely on the party of the 44th president.

To compare the competing Democrats, one would think they were vying to establish which of them is the greenest one of all. And while this could be construed as one-upmanship at this point in the race, it’s also a good indication of how seriously each of them takes ‘green’ issues. They have all published detailed, thoughtful plans on how they would deal with the issues of energy independence and climate change, and what’s most encouraging about them is the extent to which they see the twin issues as interdependent. Here’s a simplified summary of their positions:

For the most part, Republicans also talk up a storm on energy independence, but somehow miss the connection to climate change mitigation. This leads them to interpret our energy future mostly in terms of new nuclear power plants, old coal, clean coal, liquid coal and business-as-usual in Detroit and the oil states. Examining their positions on the same seven issues listed above, we see a wider spectrum of responses, ranging from mildly supportive to insouciant to frighteningly hostile:

As can be seen, Governor Huckabee and Senator McCain lift themselves somewhat above their competitors with support for fuel efficiency and carbon emission limits, but with these exceptions noted, the Republican candidates seem to be sharing a generally reactionary platform. Candidate Ron Paul’s position on energy is perhaps scarier than most, as he does not appear to have given much thought to the seven major issues measured; on fuel efficiency and coal plants he has shown himself no friend to clean energy or the environment, while on the other five issues he hasn’t recorded any position whatsoever.

Giuliani’s and Thompson’s records show opposition to virtually everything beneficial to the environment, and support for continued use of coal in any form. And the campaign promise of the former governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, to bring large-scale clean energy technology to market, clashes with his public opposition to the nation’s largest proposed offshore wind project off the coast of the Bay State.

Overall, the impression given by the campaign literature of GOP hopefuls is that the energy/environmental debate has not been worthy of serious thought, nor has it featured in their spoken rhetoric as much as immigration, healthcare or the Iraq war. Compared with some of the Democratic candidates’ meticulously crafted plans with their targets, pricetags and deadlines, the Republican contenders seem to be paying lip service to an issue they know does not excite the general public. And so far as government support for clean energies such as solar is concerned, most of them mention it only as afterthoughts to ideas for increased use of coal, drilling in the ANWR and building more nuclear plants, measures that may offset some fossil fuel imports but will exacerbate environmental problems already approaching crisis levels.

So in this exercise in crystal ball gazing, you could probably get just as accurate a result with a two-dollar snowglobe. With Huckabee and McCain, and to a greater extent with the six Democrats, there is a sense of recognition of the comparative importance of the energy issue. It’s the recognition that whereas we can survive not finding a perfect solution to some of the more emotionally charged issues in politics today, we can’t survive a failure to address effectively—and on a national scale—the interrelated issues of energy and environment.

It’s also difficult to escape the conclusion that, in the event of a candidate in the mold of Giuliani, Paul, Romney or Thompson being sworn in next January, the brotherly relationship between the oil & gas industry and Government that characterized the Bush Administration will become, if anything, measurably cozier.

There is a time and place for everything.

This is the time and place for American to make a global difference.

Energy Bill Woes

by Scott Sklar, The Stella Group, Ltd.

Washington, D.C.

One thing you learn in Washington, D.C., is that politics is never predictable. After a nine year career as an aide in the US Senate and over 25 years as a registered renewable energy lobbyist, I am still always amazed at the machinations and changes of course in the legislative arena. This year just typifies the mercurial nature of the legislative process.

Now is the time for everyone in this industry to pick up a pen, lift a phone, or gear up their e-mail — because the issues at stake are huge and action needs to be taken.

As early as November 8th, SEIA reported to its members, “At a press conference this morning, Speaker Pelosi stated that the House intends to take up and pass an energy bill before the end of next week (11/17) and it will include an energy tax title.” Four days later, the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate are seriously considering breaking off the three most contentious policy issues of the Energy Bill — vehicle mileage standards (CAFE), renewable energy portfolio standard (RPS), and the host of energy tax incentives (ITC/PTC).

The leadership has a series of conflicting needs within the Democratic Party, adhering to its own imposed “pay as you go” budget rules, and threats of Presidential vetoes. On November 9th, Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.) told reporters that he and Rep. Baron Hill (D-Ind.) wrote to Pelosi yesterday “saying we will garner our supporters to vote against any energy bill” that doesn’t include their fuel economy legislation (H.R. 2927) that would increase the corporate average fuel economy, or CAFE, standards to 32 miles per gallon for light trucks and 35 mpg for passenger cars by 2022.

Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) both support the CAFE increase passed by the Senate in June, which mandates an increase to 35 mpg overall for the domestic fleet by 2022. In the end, the Democratic leadership wants to have one sure piece of legislation that addresses cutting petroleum imports — and vehicle mileage is the way to do just that. In this case, the Administration does support a modest CAFE package and the big question mark is Democratic Energy Committee Chairman John Dingell who hails from Detroit.

The next symbolic issue has become the Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) which failed in a Senate vote but is included in the House Bill. Senior staff of the Congressional tax writing committees — the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee — have always raised the point that an RPS has a lower (no) budget impact as a regulation than the myriad of tax incentives for energy efficiency and renewable energy. The Gulf of Mexico oil lease issue (see below) has been a tough nut to cover the expected revenue loss from the renewable incentives, particularly the wind production tax credits, which could cost well over $1 billion per year. The national environmental groups, led by the Union of Concerned Scientists, have made this the core issue on renewables from an environmental group perspective, which is causing some ripples of concern by CEO’s in the renewable energy industries.The electric utilities are vociferously lobbying against an RPS through EEI, their trade group.

The White House and a handful of other electric utilities have said they can live with a very modest RPS, which some renewable advocates fear might be such a low bar, the market would achieve it even without an RPS. And of course, an RPS does NOT address renewable thermal applications from biomass, ground coupled heat pumps and solar water heating, nor non-grid connected renewables such as small wind or dedicated solar photovoltaic systems.

The extension and expansion of both the investment tax credits (ITC) and the production tax credits (PTC), has now brought an Administration veto threat based on cost and whether it is at the expense of the Gulf of Mexico oil and natural gas leases. The ITC has the solar and fuel cell industry organizations pushing for an eight-year extension rather than the two-year extension as done in the last energy bill passed in 2005 (EPACT05). The larger solar companies, for instance, have said that it will take longer than two years to get a concentrated solar plant on line, and thus a short extension would tilt public renewable energy incentives against large generation plants.

A similar situation would be faced by large wind farms and geothermal plants if the PTC had a short extension. And the range of renewable and efficiency technologies that were left out of EPACT05 (or not treated equitably) all face being disregarded again — small wind, ground coupled heat pumps, solar daylighting, combined heat and power, and water energy (such as freeflow hydropower, tidal, wave and ocean currents and thermal).

The energy bill’s offsets for all the tax incentives has President Bush threatening a veto because the legislation requires companies granted leases in prior years to renegotiate the terms of their contract to include price thresholds, pay a conservation fee, or lose the right to bid on future leases.

Also, the $6 billion over five years to be raised by the energy bill’s provision was called into question earlier this week when a Louisiana judge, ruling on a lawsuit brought by what is now Anadarko Petroleum Corp., determined that the federal government could not collect royalties on offshore oil and gas leases issued in 1996-2000, even when oil and gas prices spike. But on November 9th, CRS supported a position of the Democratic lawmakers hoping to recoup billions of dollars in unpaid oil and gas royalties to fund pending energy legislation. Legislators do not need to fear a recent federal court decision in a report released Friday by the Congressional Research Service.

While every clean energy trade and advocacy group has unleashed a swarth of legislative alerts against dropping the renewable energy tax provisions, focused at the House Speaker and Senate Majority Leader — up to now they have played mostly an inside game — upping their PACs, attending fundraisers, and conventional lobbying. Playing such a conventional “inside game” now has caught the groups by surprise.

In a major speech by this clean energy expert this past week, I concluded, “this situation could be our worst nightmare, with passage of a weak RPS that truly doesn’t incentivize the market and loss of the ITC and PTC which truly drives the combined market penetration of renewable energy and energy efficiency.”

In fact, we could face the situation where loan guarantees for nuclear and incentives for cleaner coal come out of a core Energy Bill, a compromise on vehicle mileage standards are approved and a weak RPS is also approved which allows the Congressional Democrats to claim victory — something for everybody.

But we all know, that the tax incentives are what drives investment into these portfolio of clean energy industries — both to companies and projects. Loss of the credits or even just a small extension could be devastating. Now is the time for everyone in this industry to pick up a pen, lift a phone, or gear up their e-mail — because the issues at stake are huge and action needs to be taken.

I want to preface this account with a little background. When I first started with Citizenre back in March of 2006, I was your average American Citizen. I went to work. I paid my bills. I knew electricity prices were headed up but just accepted it. I knew gas was going up but really just swept it off as “a inevitable cost of living increase”. I have heard a lot about “Global Warming” and thought Al Gore was a “Fruitcake” who made a ass of himself in his run for the Whitehouse. O.k., I know some of you may disagree with the last statement but that is how I saw it.

Since becoming a Ecopreneur, my life has changed. My eyes are open. Peak oil is either here or has just passed. Oil prices are probably not coming down this time. And, whether you believe in “Global Warming” or not, you can’t argue that breathing in smog and pollution from our energy producing coal plants is good for us.

So now to our “Living with Ed” moment. I was helping my wife empty the groceries and noticed that she bought a four pack of 60w incandescent light bulbs. I asked why did you buy these instead of the compact fluorescents.

Her reply was “well they are much cheaper and those compact things burn out just as fast as the regular bulbs.” Now in the past I would have just let it go and moved on, but now, “Oh No.” I pulled out my calculator, pen, and paper and this is what I came up with:

For this example I used a 60w incandescent and its equal, a 14w compact fluorescent. In keeping with my wifes argument, “That the compacts burn out just as fast as the regular ones”, I used the 2000 hour life expectancy of the incandescent. Also we used the ave. Kwh rate of $0.13/Kwh.

60watts x 2000hrs=120,000watts/1000=120KwH x $0.13=$15.60 for electricity to run this bulb through it life.

14watt x 2000hrs=28,000watts/1000=28KwH x $0.13=$3.64 for electricity to run this bulb through the same life expectancy of the incandescent.

Keep in mind that the compact is rated to last for 14,000 hrs.

Conclusion: For each bulb we change in our house, we will save $11.96 in electricity through the life of the bulb. Since the incandescent cost $0.36 each and the compacts cost $1.74 each, the savings in electricity more than outweighs the $1.38 difference in cost.

Last Conclusion: We will be switching all of our lamps over to compact fluorescents as the “regular” ones expire. I hope you will do the same.

Louis Petrik
Senior Sales Director – citizenre– CapCitySolar team
www.longhornsolar.com

(If you have your own living with Ed moment email it in)