It all started with bombs. During the First World War, the federal government built two nitrate plants at Muscle Shoals, Alabama, for making explosives. Wilson Dam was built to supply electricity to these plants. After the war ended, there was disagreement over what to do with the site. Industrialists like Henry Ford envisioned the rise [...]
Charlie Coggeshall, SACE Renewable Energy Manager, also contributed to this post. Last month the Tennessee Valley Authority proudly announced what they considered to be good news: That their 2013 Green Power Provider (GPP) program had already met its 2013 solar application target as of April 24th. Even though there is still a strong demand for [...]
Today, SACE released a new report on Dry Sorbent Injection (DSI) technology – a troubling new sulfur dioxide control method recently touted by some utilities as a cheap, quick answer to comply with EPA’s new mercury and air toxics (MATS) regulations. SACE commissioned the report from Dr. Ranajit (Ron) Sahu, a leading environmental engineering consultant, after learning that the Tennessee [...]
Today, the 8 Directors who sit on the Board of the Tennessee Valley Authority gathered in Columbia, TN for one of its quarterly board meetings (the 9th Director seat remains open after the failure to reappoint Dr. Marilyn Brown). As usual, the board meeting began with a public listening session, in which members of the public may [...]
Do you want to invest in solar, but you can’t? Maybe your roof doesn’t point south, or it’s shaded most of the time. Maybe you rent. Maybe you just can’t come up with the up-front cost of a solar system. Well, if your local distributor is Duck River EMC, all those problems are solved! Duck [...]
Recently I presented at the 15th annual Alabama Water Rally, which is the yearly meeting of the Alabama Rivers Alliance. The presentation focused on the report, Freshwater Use by U.S. Power Plants, a product of the Energy and Water in a Warming World (EW3) Initiative, which details the vast amounts of water required for thermo-electric power [...]
Although it has been over four years since more than a billion tons of coal ash were dumped on the small town of Kingston, TN, the city is still working to clean up both its river and its image. As part of that image cleaning effort, the city of Kingston recently approved a contract for construction [...]
This article, written by Dr. Arjun Makhijani, was originally published in the Knoxville News Sentinel. Dr. Makhijani is the President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Takoma Park, Md. The highly touted “nuclear renaissance” is ending with a whimper. Private investors don’t want the risk of the huge investments new reactors require. [...]
This article, written by Don Safer, was originally published in the Tennessean. Don Safer is board chairman of the Tennessee Environmental Council. It has been two years since the natural and man-made nuclear disaster at Fukushima, Japan. It is a somber time to review the tragic aftermath and take a look at nuclear power in [...]
Just over a year ago we made the decision to continue to practice what we preach with the installation and activation of our own solar photovoltaic array at our Knoxville, TN office. As part of a series of energy efficiency improvements to our new office, we knew that installing the solar system was the ideal [...]
