Transportation
OPG Wants You!
Citizens Urged to Help in Missoula’s Transportation Planning
If the population of Missoula County continues to grow at around 1.5 percent annually, which the state of Montana predicts it will, the county will double in size -- to 200,000 residents -- somewhere between 2050 and 2065.
“At some point in time,” said Roger Millar, director of the Missoula Office of Planning and Grants (OPG), “there are going to be 100,000 more people in the Missoula area.”
“At that point, when they are here, what do we want to see? Where do we want to see them living? Where to we want to see them working? To see them playing?”
OPG is preparing a long-range transportation plan to address how these questions of land-use are tied to Missoula’s transportation future, and invite Missoulians to share their ideas at interactive mapping workshops to be held in the middle of the month on the University of Montana campus.
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Connecting the Greater Yellowstone Area
Meeting Focuses on Regional Biofuel Public Transportation
With the hopes of creating a network of public biofuel transportation systems throughout the Greater Yellowstone Area—particularly between Livingston, Bozeman and Gardiner—local government officials and citizens held a community meeting at the Livingston Public Library on Friday, October 19, 2007.
The City of Livingston and Park County are currently involved in a Transportation Advisory Committee with David Kack of the Western Transportation Institute and Bozeman’s Streamline bus service. The committee’s goal is to provide a commuter bus service between Livingston, Bozeman and Gardiner.
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Offering free classes and parts
The Bozeman Bike Kitchen Assists Youth and Community
When Taylor Lonsdale and Emily Harrington were researching community cycle centers across the country to help create a model for their own, they came across the Missoula Free Cycle Web site. Their first piece of advice: Have a space before you have all those bikes.
For its first year, The Bozeman Bike Kitchen, a free community center to build and repair bikes, was operating out of Harrington’s driveway. As more donations came in, they quickly outgrow the space and needed a place to store their growing collection of bikes, bike parts and tools.
This summer, the center found a home on a plot of land where every Tuesday evening, the doors have been opened for every member of the community to build and repair bikes.
More than a bike shop, the organization hopes to promote bike advocacy through fostering the budding relationship with the Bozeman School District and local students by possibly integrating bike safety and mechanical education, especially those at risk of not graduating, in order to have a place to pursue a life-long skill and gain confidence.
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New West Energy Grok
Is Big Oil Blocking Ethanol?
Earlier this month POET Biorefining of Sioux Falls opened its 21st ethanol production plant, a Portland, Ind. Facility that will produce 65 million gallons a year. Poet now has the capacity to provide 1.1 billion gallons annually, making it the world's largest ethanol company.
Unfortunately, according to a report by BusinessWeek's David Kiley, the spread of ethanol into America's vehicles is being stalled by a likely suspect: Big Oil.
In other energy news: Interior Department analysts allege big underpayment for oil and gas leases on federal land; first new nuclear plant in 30 years to be built in South Texas; and DOE funds development of new batteries for plug-in electric cars.
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New West Energy Grok
New Solar Plant for Ft. CollinsCapitalizing on the growing market for electricity from advanced solar technology, a Fort Collins startup plans to open a factory to make so-called "thin-film" solar panels that could produce power at costs close to those of conventional fossil-fuel plants. Spun off from research by CSU mechanical engineering professor W.S. Sampath, AVA Solar Inc. could create up to 500 jobs – the largest new employer in the area in two decades according to local officials.
AVA Solar is backed, says Sampath, by "tens of millions" of dollars in venture funding plus a $3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy's Solar America Initiative.
In other energy news: "E85" ethanol pumps proliferate across Colorado; controversial power lines approved for Longmont; and Xcel keeps pushing to build a rail spur for coal delivery in the Yampa Valley.
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New West Energy Grok
Western States Pledge Emission CutsAs promised, the six Western states and two Canadian provinces that make up the Western Climate Initiative have made public their greenhouse-gas reduction goals. The state and provincial governments say they will reduce their aggregate carbon emissions by 15 percent below the 2005 levels by 2020. Like last year's landmark carbon-reduction legislation passed by California, the Western Climate Initiative goal represents frustration on the part of state and local leaders at inaction on climate change in Washington, D.C.
Created six months ago by the governors of Arizona, California, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington, and joined since then by Utah and the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and British Columbia, the Climate Initiative says its goals will not replace but augment greenhouse gas-reduction efforts in the individual states. officials say achieving its goal could cut 350 million metric tons of carbon dioxide A 15-percent total reduction would eliminate some 350 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere -- roughly equivalent to taking 75.6 million cars off the road.
The question now is , why haven't Colorado and Montana pitched in?
In other energy news: Colorado is ground zero for the new uranium mining boom; state auditors say mining tax distribution is out of whack; and chipmaker Intel moves into the solar business.
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New West Energy Grok
Guilt Relief or Real Climate Benefits?Last week's ahh, "discussion" of carbon offsets for individual drivers, which felt at times more like a body slam, mirrors a debate that has been going on the last several months across the country and around the world: are carbon offsets of any kind – from the Kyoto Protocols to a TerraPass – worthless, or do they actually accomplish some reduction in overall carbon emissions?
Despite the scorn of those who think that purchasing carbon offsets (a tactic endorsed by, among others, that famous energy hog Al Gore), the answer is a qualified "yes."
"In an ideal world, we'd tell people to stop engaging in polluting activities," Jamal Gore, a director of Web-based offset firm Carbon Clear, told Reuters, "but in reality that's not going to happen; people have to go on some flights, heat their homes and get to work,"
In other energy news: Salazar wins deferment of oil drilling near his San Luis vacation home; oil prices fall as liquidity crisis spreads worldwide; and coal mines across the West are examined for safety hazards.
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Monday Business Roundup
Coors Up, Frontier, Newmont DownThree of Northern Colorado's biggest companies made news in the last few days – and only one had a welcome story to tell.
Molson Coors, the third-largest U.S. brewer, announced a two-for-one stock split. The beermaker also found a convenient close to a three-month strike at its plant in Edmonton: it shut the plant down.
Despite a relatively new fleet of jets, a reputation for good service and reliability, and a hip marketing plan, Frontier Airlines has seen its stock nosedive by 43 percent in the last year. Last week the company's chief executive Jeff Potter said he will resign.
Not ripe for takeover is Denver-based mining giant Newmont Mining Corp., which reported that it lost $2 billion in its most recent quarter.
In other business news: Businesses profit from West Nile fears; anti-ladies' night crusader loses in court; convicted Nacchio tries ignorance-and-incompetence defense.
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Global Warming Guilt $$
Carbon Offsets for Individual DriversI've been writing this weekly Energy Grok for almost a year now, so it seems that a little full disclosure is in order. On the scale of major climate-changers, I’m a pretty small fish, but I'm still doing my part. Yes, I drive an SUV: a 2000 Toyota 4Runner. My rationalizations include a) I need 4WD to get up my driveway, especially in winter; b) I need plenty of space for camping and bicycling gear, my 7-year-old son's sports kit, and so on; and c) I have a short commute to work and I ride my bike and/or take the bus a couple of times a week, so I drive about one-third less than the average American's annual mileage.
That still leaves about 8,000 miles of driving, or around six-and-a-half tons of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere, every year. So, maybe it's time to do something about it, eh?
Like most Americans, I don't see giving up driving altogether. So, I've found another option: a TerraPass.
In other energy news: Marathon Oil becomes the latest U.S. energy company to buy into Canada's oil-sands reserves; Rolling Stone gets to the bottom of the ethanol boondoggle; and linking the electrical grids of Europe could take wind-power to the next level in supplying continental power demand.
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New West Energy Grok
Alternative Energy Tax Package FailsFaced with a chance to stand up and do something farsighted and courageous about the future of our energy supply and our climate, the U.S. Senate yesterday demonstrated again why the "world's greatest legislative body" currently has the lowest public esteem in its history: it ducked.
Rather than reversing eight decades of political favors and government handouts to the oil and gas energy -- by enacting a $29 billion redistribution of public wealth toward renewable and non-climate-altering power sources such as wind, solar, and hydrogen -- the Senate by a margin of 3 votes failed to protect the big tax package at the heart of an energy bill now withering into inconsequence. Two proposals to direct billions in subsidies to coal-based liquid fuels also failed.
The Senators did agree to raise auto fuel-economy standards, approving a somewhat scaled back amendment that requires carmakers fleets to attain an averge of 35 miles per gallon by 2020. The auto industry fought that provision hard and succeeded in removing a requirement for continued improvements after 2020, though the compromise deal on the so-called CAFE standards was seen as a defeat for Detroit. (Montana Democratic Senators Max Baucus and Jon Tester, who were undecided on the CAFE issue until the end and were thus targets of heavy lobbying by Big Auto, both supported the new requirements).
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