The creaky old electrical grid that carries power around the United States is inefficient, outmoded, and perilously prone to failures. To make a start at remedying the situation, President Obama will announce today the 100 utility projects that will share $3.4 billion in federal stimulus funding to speed deployment of advanced technology designed to cut energy use and make the electric-power grid more robust. When combined with funds from utility customers, the program is expected to inject more than $8 billion into grid modernization efforts nationally, administration officials said. “We have a very antiquated system that we need to upgrade,” said Carol Browner, energy coordinator for the Obama administration [The Wall Street Journal].
The projects include the installation of “smart meters,” which are more advanced than typical electricity meters. They use digital technology to deliver detailed usage data both to the customer and the utility, as well as adding displays in homes that tell customers about their electricity use [The New York Times]. This allows for real-time monitoring of electricity use so that customers can adjust their usage, for example by turning off devices during peak hours when electricity is most expensive.
Federal stimulus money will also go to projects that improve the efficiency of power lines and electric substations, and for next-generation transformers that can wirelessly communicate their condition, so that power plant operators get a warning before a part fails. Other projects will set the stage for the smooth introduction of large amounts of electricity from wind or solar sources into the transmission system [AP].
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After months of meetings, the panel of space experts appointed by President Obama to evaluate NASA’s manned spaceflight program has returned with a dire assessment: lack of financing has put the program on an “unsustainable trajectory.” The executive summary (pdf) of the report, released yesterday, puts forth a number of ideas for how the space agency can live within its means, but the final decisions on whether to act on the ideas rests with President Obama and Congress.
Among other recommendations, the panel suggested that NASA shelve its goal of rapidly returning to the moon and instead focus on nurturing a robust commercial space industry that can handle short-term objectives of the nation’s space program, such as ferrying cargo and crew to the international space station [The Wall Street Journal]. By canceling a return to the moon (which had been scheduled for around 2020) and outsourcing routine resupply missions, the panel suggested that NASA would be able to work towards more ambitious, deep space missions like a trip to an asteroid or an expedition to Mars.
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In one week, the Interior Department has issued two bold new rules that reverse decisions on mining and old-growth forests that were made during the Bush administration. In the first ruling, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Monday called for a two-year “timeout” on new mining claims on nearly 1 million acres near Grand Canyon National Park in northern Arizona [Los Angeles Times]. That directive overrides the Bush-era decision to open land near the park to uranium mining claims.
The moratorium on new mining claims near the Grand Canyon will give the Interior Department time to study the environmental effects of mining in that area; the department then has the option of banning mining there for 20 years. Grand Canyon Superintendent Steve Martin has said previously that he was concerned that uranium could get into the watershed and affect the fish in the Colorado River at the bottom of the gorge — and the bald eagles, California condors and bighorn sheep that depend on the canyon’s seeps and springs [Los Angeles Times].
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President Obama has announced his nomination for the post of surgeon general: Dr. Regina Benjamin, a doctor in rural Alabama who has made headlines as a fierce advocate for the poor. Obama said today that Benjamin has seen first hand and up close many of the flaws of the current healthcare system and represents what is best about doctors who will do anything to heal the sick [Boston Globe]. The position is essentially a bully pulpit, from which the surgeon general can speak out on public health issues.
A decade ago, the New York Times called her “angel in a white coat,” a country doctor who made house calls along the impoverished Gulf Coast, paid whatever her patients could scrounge. From those early days she has emerged as a national leader in the call to improve health disparities, pushed by the need in her own fishing community of Bayou La Batre, Ala., and its diverse patient mix — where immigrants from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos make up a growing part of the population [AP]. She recently drew attention as she struggled to rebuild her destroyed health clinic in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. In 2008, Benjamin received a MacArthur “genius” grant of $500,000, which she dedicated to the rebuilding of her clinic.
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The man tasked with steering NASA through difficult transitions and pointing the space agency boldly towards the stars will be a former astronaut who has piloted the space shuttle. On Saturday, President Barack Obama announced his long-awaited nomination for NASA administrator: Charles F. Bolden Jr. If confirmed by the Senate, the former astronaut and retired Marine Corps general will be the first African-American to head the space agency.
The pick has been celebrated by NASA insiders, and is viewed as a signal that, after some signs of ambivalence, President Obama is now embracing the expensive manned spaceflight program. “Clearly Charlie Bolden would not have taken the job if he were being asked to shut down human spaceflight,” said John Logsdon, a space policy expert in Washington…. He added that a recent announcement of the administration’s plans to review the Ares 1 rocket and Orion spacecraft, which are to replace the space shuttle by 2015, is not a shot across the bow of NASA’s human spaceflight program. He said it would be a review of the hardware, not the destination or goals [Los Angeles Times].
However, it is not clear whether the new leadership will adopt all of the goals for human exploration of the solar system that were laid out by the Bush administration: namely, returning to the moon by 2020 and then working towards landing humans on Mars.
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The Obama administration announced on Friday that it will keep a Bush-era rule that limits the steps that the government can take to protect polar bears. The rule prevents the Endangered Species Act from being used to curb greenhouse gas emissions, even though those emissions contribute to the shrinking of polar bear habitat by causing global warming and melting Arctic sea ice. The decision comes despite recent moves to undo former president Bush’s environmental legacy. It was announced on Friday by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who rejected special authority given to him by Congress and the pleas of Democratic lawmakers, environmentalists and scientists to overturn the regulation [Greenwire].
According to federal officials, the Endangered Species Act was written for a different kind of threat. In cases where an animal is threatened by logging, trapping or land development, it is used to identify—and punish—individual actions that harm them. That framework cannot be applied to climate change, they said, because the sources of that problem are global [San Francisco Chronicle]. Salazar said that the polar bear will still be listed as “threatened,” but instead of protecting it through the Endangered Species Act, the administration would push for legislation to limit U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. A “comprehensive global change strategy” is needed, he said.
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The Obama administration is once again working to reverse the path of former president Bush in another series of environmental policy changes, with two moves in particular looking to some like a crackdown on the coal industry. The Justice Department announced this week that it will challenge Bush’s mountaintop coal mining rules, the EPA has withdrawn a permit for a coal power plant scheduled to be built on Navajo land, and the Interior Department has strengthened endangered species rules.
On Monday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar asked a federal court to abandon a rule approved during the final days of the Bush administration that allows coal mining companies to dump their waste near waterways. Prior to the change, regulations in place since 1983 have barred mining companies from dumping waste within 100 feet of streams if the disposal would diminish water quality or quantity [AP]. However, the Interior Department’s move didn’t go far enough for some environmentalists, who oppose this method of coal mining in general, regardless of the proximity of waste dumping to streams. In mountaintop removal operations, miners blast away large areas of a mountain in order to expose the buried coal seams. A spokeswoman for environmental law firm Earthjustice notes that Salazar’s move won’t halt the practice of mining itself, and says that reverting to the status quo is not enough because it won’t prevent coal companies from filling valleys with mine waste. “That’s not helping the communities concerned with mountaintop removal” [AP].
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The Obama administration’s new guidelines for research using human embryonic stem cells have staked out a compromise position, avoiding some controversial areas while still encouraging a large expansion of federally-funded research. The proposed regulations would allow research on stem cells taken from surplus embryos at fertility clinics, where in vitro fertilization generally creates more embryos than will be implanted, and embryos not used are destroyed or kept frozen. The guidelines would allow couples to donate embryos for research, as long as they are not paid and are fully informed of their options [Washington Post].
However, the guidelines do not sanction the use of embryos created specifically for research purposes, an extra step that officials say does not yet have public or political support. The draft guidelines also forbid funding for lines derived through parthenogenesis, a form of asexual reproduction in which an unfertilized egg is developed into an embryo. The International Stem Cell Corporation, a California company, has reported deriving stem cells from parthenotes [Nature News]. Finally, the guidelines prohibit the use of stem cells from human embryos created by cloning, although no such embryos are known to exist.
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In large industrial experiments across the globe, factories and power plants are trying to capture the carbon dioxide that streams out of their flues in order to bury it deep underground. Researchers believe the greenhouse gas will stay put for thousands of years and therefore won’t contribute to global warming, but the costs and long-term effects of the procedure are still unclear. The experiments currently underway are expected to determine whether carbon capture and storage will allow nations to continue burning fossil fuels for energy without ill effects.
In France this month, the first retrofitted power plant will begin to use its new carbon capture and storage technology. The system used by the natural gas-burning power plant will transport and store 60,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide every year in the nearby depleted gas field at Rousse – once the biggest onshore natural gas field in Europe, but which is now almost empty [The Guardian]. The carbon dioxide will flow through existing pipelines that once brought natural gas to the power plant. While the first new power plant using carbon capture and storage opened last year in Germany, some environmentalists say that the French plant’s retrofit is an important example of how existing industries can be adapted to a future that requires clean energy.
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U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced yesterday that the federal government will not prosecute all sales of medical marijuana, marking another stark change in policy from the days of the Bush administration, which conducted frequent raids under a zero tolerance policy.
Medical marijuana distributors were targeted by federal officials under Bush even in states that had passed laws allowing use of the drug for medical purposes by cancer patients, those dealing with chronic pain or other serious ailments. Holder said the priority of the new administration is to go after egregious offenders operating in violation of both federal and state law, such as those being used as fronts for drug dealers [Los Angeles Times]. Under the new policy, medical marijuana dispensaries that abide by state laws will be left alone.
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The Obama administration is moving ahead with the development of the “clean coal” technology of carbon capture and storage, even though experts say that the technology’s high costs will prevent it from being widely adopted for decades. Carbon capture and storage requires that carbon dioxide emissions be captured in the smokestacks of coal-fired power plants and factories, and then converted into a liquid and pumped into reservoirs deep in the earth. “I won’t be surprised if we have some of these [systems] in place in the 2020 to 2030 decade, but … it’s going to be on the margins, just because it costs so much” [Reuters], says energy consultant Bill Durbin.
In 2008 the Bush administration canceled the flagship clean coal project, called FutureGen, which called for the construction of a near zero-emissions coal power plant that would test carbon capture and storage technology. The project’s costs had escalated to $1.8 billion by the time it was canceled, but new Energy Secretary Steven Chu has indicated that he may revive at least parts of the project, saying, “We are taking, certainly, a fresh look at FutureGen, how it would fit into this expanded portfolio” [Greenwire].
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President Obama will lift restrictions on human embryonic stem cell research today, reversing the policy put into place by George W. Bush eight years ago that strictly limited federal financing of the research. By signing an executive order today, President Obama will fulfill a campaign promise to encourage medical research on embryonic stem cells, which scientists believe hold enormous potential to treat a host of diseases and injuries. Researchers who have struggled to find funding for embryonic stem cell work are rejoicing over the decision. “Hallelujah! This marks the end of a long and repressive chapter in scientific history. It’s the stem cell ‘emancipation proclamation’,” said Dr. Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology in Massachusetts [Reuters].
A science adviser to the president also said that Obama will issue a memorandum to “restore public confidence in the process by which scientific policy is used to guide government action,” by directing his administration to draft guidelines for the use of scientific information and the appointment of outside science advisers [The New York Times]. Science advisers say the president wants to make clear that his political agenda will not trump scientific judgment, in sharp contrast to the previous administration. The decision by President George W. Bush to restrict funding for stem cell research has been seen by critics as part of a pattern of allowing political ideology to influence scientific decisions across an array of issues, including climate change and whether to approve the morning-after pill Plan B for over-the-counter sales [Washington Post].
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In a blow to the nuclear power industry, the budget released by President Obama last week eliminates most funding for Yucca Mountain, the Nevada site that for decades has been proposed for the permanent burial of radioactive nuclear waste.
The decision will likely be an expensive one, considering how much money the federal government might end up owing the utility industry, and how much—up to $10.4 billion—has already been spent and will have been wasted on the search for a nuclear waste repository since 1983. The courts have already awarded the companies about $1 billion, because the government signed contracts obligating it to begin taking the waste in 1998, but seems unlikely to do so for years. The nuclear industry says it may demand the return of the $22 billion that it has paid to the Energy Department to establish a repository, but that the government has not yet spent [The New York Times].
The 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act called for the establishment of a permanent, high-level nuclear waste repository. Eight proposed sites were narrowed to three, then to one. Over the strong objections of Nevada’s congressional delegation – and controversy over flawed studies – Congress voted in 1987 to approve Yucca Mountain as the sole candidate for a permanent nuclear waste repository. In 2002, President Bush designated Yucca Mountain as the site, and in June 2008, the Department of Energy submitted its license application [Christian Science Monitor].
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The new budget proposed by President Barack Obama boosts funding for NASA and shows the new president’s commitment to exploration of the moon and our solar system’s planets. Under the proposed budget, the agency would receive $18.7 billion in 2010. Combined with $1 billion in funding provided in an economic stimulus package signed into law last week, NASA would get $2.4 billion more than it did in 2008 [New Scientist].
Like his predecessor George W. Bush, Obama wants to return people to the moon and send robots further into space [Reuters]. But while the proposed funding boost pleases many in the space community, the budget disappoints “shuttle-huggers” who hoped that Obama would keep the space shuttle flying past the 2010 retirement date set by the Bush administration. Instead, the proposal instructs NASA to stick to that deadline, although it does offer one concession.
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Following up on President Barack Obama’s inaugural pledge to “restore science to its rightful place,” the economic stimulus package working its way through Congress includes huge chunks of money for scientific research and the development of green technology.
The bill’s final composition is far from certain, as Republican senators are trying to cut some provisions to trim costs, and the Senate version will eventually need to be reconciled with the version already passed by the House of Representatives. But the proposed numbers are impressive: The current Senate bill includes $10 billion for the National Institutes of Health, $40 billion for the Department of Energy, and more than $1 billion each for NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Many scientists were surprised and pleased to find that the money isn’t just intended for one-time costs like renovations and new equipment, but will also fund basic research. But that funding comes with conditions. With the exception of the NIH, research agencies under the House bill will have to spend the funds within 120 days. That means that the National Science Foundation (NSF), for example, would have to allocate $3 billion — a 50% increase in its budget — in four months. As of last week, the NSF was still figuring out how it could do that [Nature News].
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