Roy Hales

SAN DIEGO SOLAR ENERGY ON THE RISE. NEW POLL OFFERS INSIGHTS.

 

Originally Published on the ECOreport

By Roy L Hales

April 17, 2015 (San Diego’s East County) - A new poll confirms California's solar revolution appears to be unstoppable. The respondents were parents, 81% of whom said they want to live in a solar powered home. The majority, 67%, also wants solar to be the world's primary energy source when their children grow up.


Error message

Support community news in the public interest! As nonprofit news, we rely on donations from the public to fund our reporting -- not special interests. Please donate to sustain East County Magazine's local reporting and/or wildfire alerts at https://www.eastcountymedia.org/donate to help us keep people safe and informed across our region.

REVIVING GAIA: NEW ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS SITE FEATURES MANY LOCAL AND NATIONAL ISSUES

Photos courtesy of Boeing, Brad Gibson and Jim Pelley

January 24, 2014 (San Diego)--A new website is dedicated to exploring how lifestyle choices and technologies impact the environment.  Reviving Gaia (www.revivinggaia.com) has considerable San Diego content, including some of Miriam Raftery’s articles reprinted from East County Magazine on regional energy and environmental issues, news stories from Jo Communications and features by San Diego biologist Renee Owens.  

The site’s owner/editor, Roy L Hales, was the editor of San Diego Loves Green last year and frequently wrote about net-metering, the biofuel industry and the industrialization of East County. (Some of these articles were reprinted by East County magazine.) He continues to cover these topics in Reviving Gaia.


Error message

Support community news in the public interest! As nonprofit news, we rely on donations from the public to fund our reporting -- not special interests. Please donate to sustain East County Magazine's local reporting and/or wildfire alerts at https://www.eastcountymedia.org/donate to help us keep people safe and informed across our region.

ARE ARIZONA RATEPAYERS PAYING +9 MILLION FOR ATTACK ADS?

 

Reprinted with permission from San Diego Loves Green

By Roy L. Hales

November 27, 2013 – In the wake of a widening misinformation scandal in Arizona, the Alliance for Solar Choice (TASC) is calling on utility trade organization Edison Electric Institute (EEI), “… to disavow APS’ underhanded behavior and state whether or not they have also used dark money.”


Error message

Support community news in the public interest! As nonprofit news, we rely on donations from the public to fund our reporting -- not special interests. Please donate to sustain East County Magazine's local reporting and/or wildfire alerts at https://www.eastcountymedia.org/donate to help us keep people safe and informed across our region.

WHEN "GREEN" IS NOT CLEAN

 

Originally posted on San Diego Loves Green

By Roy L. Hales

November 18, 2013 (San Diego’s East County) – The #1 source of Greenhouse Gases is not buildings or transportation, but electricity. That’s because 42% of it is still generated from coal. There are other questions regarding natural gas, which now supplies a quarter of the nation’s power, and aging nuclear plants. Renewable energy sources – hydroelectricity, biomass, wind, and solar – supply 13%. These are supposedly all “clean,” but some have actually caused great damage to the environment.


Error message

Support community news in the public interest! As nonprofit news, we rely on donations from the public to fund our reporting -- not special interests. Please donate to sustain East County Magazine's local reporting and/or wildfire alerts at https://www.eastcountymedia.org/donate to help us keep people safe and informed across our region.

LAS VEGAS PREMIERE SET TO EXPOSE BLM MISMANAGEMENT

 

Secretaries of Interior and Energy invited to showing of "Who Are My People?"

By Roy L. Hales

August 6, 2013 (Las Vegas) – It is no coincidence that the Las Vegas premiere of “Who Are My People?” is on August 13. National Clean Energy Summit 6.0 takes place the same day.


Error message

Support community news in the public interest! As nonprofit news, we rely on donations from the public to fund our reporting -- not special interests. Please donate to sustain East County Magazine's local reporting and/or wildfire alerts at https://www.eastcountymedia.org/donate to help us keep people safe and informed across our region.

BILL POWERS COMPARES ROOFTOP SOLAR AND THE SUNRISE POWERLINK

 

Originally posted July 27, 2013 on San Diego Loves Green

By Roy L. Hales

I recently asked one of San Diego’s better known engineers, Bill Powers, a number of questions about the Sunrise Powerlink and rooftop solar energy. These are his answers.


Error message

Support community news in the public interest! As nonprofit news, we rely on donations from the public to fund our reporting -- not special interests. Please donate to sustain East County Magazine's local reporting and/or wildfire alerts at https://www.eastcountymedia.org/donate to help us keep people safe and informed across our region.

OCOTILLO WIND FARM DOES NOT APPEAR TO BE DELIVERING THE ENERGY PROMISED

 

Originally posted Tuesday, June 18, 2013 at San Diego Loves Green

By Roy L. Hales

June 20, 2013 (San Diego’s East County) – I had to chuckle when I checked my email late last night.

That morning I had posted a press release called, “A Year Later, SDG&E’s Sunrise  Powerlink Delivering on What it was designed to do.” It was up for hours before it dawned on me that anyone reading the title, but not opening the article, would assume it comes from San Diego Loves Green. So I changed the title to “SDG&E says Sunrise Powerlink is delivering on what it was designed to Do.” The most important part of the article was a paragraph in which SDG&E described the projects already feeding the grid:


Error message

Support community news in the public interest! As nonprofit news, we rely on donations from the public to fund our reporting -- not special interests. Please donate to sustain East County Magazine's local reporting and/or wildfire alerts at https://www.eastcountymedia.org/donate to help us keep people safe and informed across our region.

Q&A WITH DIANNE JACOB ABOUT INDUSTRIAL SCALE WIND & SOLAR PROJECTS IN EAST COUNTY

 

Originally posted Friday, June 14 at San Diego Loves Green

(Image left: taken from Supervisor Dianne Jacob’s website)

By Roy L. Hales

June 17, 2013 (San Diego’s East County) – There has been a great deal of talk about little places like Campo, Boulevard and Ocotillo ever since construction began on the Sunrise Powerlink.  There have been multiple lawsuits as environmentalists, Native Americans and other East County residents have fought to protect their habitat, ancestral lands and homes from the encroaching pace of “development.” As much of this area lies within the East County District represented by County Supervisor Dianne Jacob, I sought her perspective about what is going on.


Error message

Support community news in the public interest! As nonprofit news, we rely on donations from the public to fund our reporting -- not special interests. Please donate to sustain East County Magazine's local reporting and/or wildfire alerts at https://www.eastcountymedia.org/donate to help us keep people safe and informed across our region.

RESPONSE TO SUPERVISOR DAVE ROBERTS' COMMENTS ABOUT RENEWABLE PROJECTS IN EAST COUNTY

 

Originally posted Saturday, June 15 at San Diego Loves Green

(Image left: courtesy East County Magazine)

By Roy L. Hales

June 18, 2013 (San Diego’s East County) – I disagree with one of the statements County Supervisor Dave Roberts made in his recent editorial. I do not think the County Board of Supervisors is as powerless, in regard to the final decision about wind farms going onto the Federal and tribal lands in East County, as he seems to think. I suspect that, if they were willing, the Board could bring a lot of assistance to the East County residents fighting to preserve their quality of life.


Error message

Support community news in the public interest! As nonprofit news, we rely on donations from the public to fund our reporting -- not special interests. Please donate to sustain East County Magazine's local reporting and/or wildfire alerts at https://www.eastcountymedia.org/donate to help us keep people safe and informed across our region.

WIND TURBINES, THE POWER OF DENIAL AND THREATENED ERADICATION OF A SPECIES

 

Originally posted Sunday, June 2, 2013 at San Diego Loves Green.

By Roy L. Hales

(Image left: Jim Wiegand, of Save the Eagles, sent me this amplification of an image from Google Earth with the explanation, “The blades hung out past the search area. They only looked in the cleared/gravel area around the turbine.”)

Some people are reminiscent of Old Testament Prophets speaking to a people that do not want to listen. While they may not speak in the name of God, they know something is wrong and dedicate their lives to righting it. Jim Wiegand has assumed that mantle in his defense of America’s eagle population. He sometimes uses words like “fraud” and “complacency,” which I find difficult to hear – we often underestimate the extent to which denial, lack of responsibility and hard heartedness guide decisions – but I am also beginning to wonder if they are appropriate. There are very definitely appear to be forces at work to trying stop us from making a conscious choice.


Error message

Support community news in the public interest! As nonprofit news, we rely on donations from the public to fund our reporting -- not special interests. Please donate to sustain East County Magazine's local reporting and/or wildfire alerts at https://www.eastcountymedia.org/donate to help us keep people safe and informed across our region.

PATTERN ENERGY RECEIVES AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING ENVIRONMENTAL ANALYSIS AT OCOTILLO

 

Image left: Bighorn Sheep at Ocotillo - Robert Baran photo, East County Magazine

By   Roy L. Hales at San Diego Loves Green, originally posted April 21, 2013

April 23, 2013 (San Diego’s East County) – The California Association of Environmental Professionals has awarded the Ocotillo Wind project with its highest award for Outstanding Environmental Analysis and Documentation at a joint conference of AEP and the National Association of Environmental Professionals (NAEP). The Builder, Pattern Energy, claims,  “The Ocotillo Wind project will provide enough clean and renewable energy to power nearly 125,000 homes in Southern California each year.”

Speaking as a non-scientist, the first thing that comes to mind when I hear the name Ocotillo is a stream of videos (click on this link to go to the Save Ocotillo index page) that stretches beyond the four months this project has been online and continues to document the scarcity of wind. Though not a “scientific study,” they never-the-less constitute a visual chronology that includes a great many details that would not otherwise be available to the public. One has to merely scan the titles to realize something is very wrong:


Error message

Support community news in the public interest! As nonprofit news, we rely on donations from the public to fund our reporting -- not special interests. Please donate to sustain East County Magazine's local reporting and/or wildfire alerts at https://www.eastcountymedia.org/donate to help us keep people safe and informed across our region.

TWO PERSPECTIVES ON THE RAPID EXTIRPATION OF SAN DIEGO COUNTY'S GOLDEN EAGLES

Reprinted with permission from San Diego Loves Green.

By Roy L. Hales

March 6, 2013 (San Diego) -- According to a recent "Golden Eagle Threat Alert" by the Wildlife Research Institute (WRI), “human activity is causing the rapid extirpation of our last remaining Golden Eagle Territories.” They claim that over the past few decades, the number of San Diego’s “active golden eagle territories” has dropped from 103 to 49.

The US Fish & Wildlife Service states that wind turbines kill almost half a million birds every year. More recent studies suggest the number is much higher, somewhere between 13 and 39 million birds. Many of these are raptors.


Error message

Support community news in the public interest! As nonprofit news, we rely on donations from the public to fund our reporting -- not special interests. Please donate to sustain East County Magazine's local reporting and/or wildfire alerts at https://www.eastcountymedia.org/donate to help us keep people safe and informed across our region.