IEA says wind and solar can carry bulk of energy transformation
By Jonathan Gifford on 27 February 2014

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has released a report in which it concludes that the integration of large amounts of renewable energy can be achieved by any country at only a small increase on whole system costs, compared with the current fossil-fuel heavy electricity systems. Making the conclusion even more startling is that the IEA used present-day costs for solar PV and wind, with the two most widely-deployed renewable energy technologies set to provide the bulk of the generating capacity in these transformed electricity systems.

While renewable energy is often blamed for driving electricity prices up and having a costly destabilising affect on electricity grids, the IEA says that integration of renewables into electricity grids and markets can be done so at little cost. For the first 5-10 percent of what it calls variable renewable energy (VRE, essentially wind and solar), the IEA says this poses no technical or economic challenges at all. Even for higher levels of up to 45 per cent penetration, it says would cost only 10% to 15% more than the status quo.

These conclusions are particularly relevant in Australia, where there is a big push for Australia to even obtain up to 10 per cent wind and solar under the current renewable energy target (the remaining 20 per cent is hydro and biomass). South Australia, it should be noted, has reached 31 per cent wind and solar with little or any additional cost. In fact, wholesale prices have fallen the most in that state than any other.

The IEA says the key to incorporating high levels of wind and solar is for countries to employ renewable energy in a way that supports the grid, investing in additional flexible generating capacity and improving the operation of electricity markets.....

The Economics of Grid Defection

Distributed electricity generation, especially solar PV, is rapidly spreading and getting much cheaper. Distributed electricity storage is doing the same, thanks largely to mass production of batteries for electric vehicles. Solar power is already starting to erode some utilities’ sales and revenues.

But what happens when solar and batteries join forces? Together they can make the electric grid optional for many customers—without compromising reliability and increasingly at prices cheaper than utility retail electricity. Equipped with a solar-plus-battery system, customers can take or leave traditional utility service with what amounts to a “utility in a box.”

This “utility in a box” represents a fundamentally different challenge for utilities. Whereas other technologies, including solar PV and other distributed resources without storage, net metering, and energy efficiency still require some degree of grid dependence, solar-plus-batteries enable customers to cut the cord to their utility entirely.



This first installment of two reports outlines the possible scenarios in five different U.S. regions—Hawaii, California, Kentucky, Texas and New York—and identifies when solar PV and storage combinations could disrupt existing utility business models. The continuing decline of solar PV and battery storage costs, coupled with increasing retail electricity prices, has resulted in grid parity today for commercial customers in Hawaii. The most optimistic projections, based on certain solar and efficiency targets being met, depict grid parity for millions of residential and commercial customers in New York and California within this decade....

In early August, a few weeks before forensic scientists began exhuming dozens of unmarked graves at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, five older black men took a road trip to Marianna, a rural town on the Florida panhandle—historic Klan country—to confront their demons on the reform school’s vast, wooded campus.

At least 96 children died at Dozier between 1914 and 1973, according to school records, and while state officials say there’s no proof, former students insist that some of the deaths were the result of foul play. Boys of all races were routinely, brutally, and even fatally beaten by staff, they allege; some were raped, and “runners” were fired upon—at least seven kids were reported dead after trying to escape.

Tens of thousands of boys passed through Dozier’s gates between its founding in 1900 and 2011, when Florida officials shut it down (citing budgetary reasons) amid a Justice Department investigation that found ongoing “systemic, egregious, and dangerous practices” at the school.

At a state hearing last August, after years of agitating by former Dozier boys, researchers from the University of South Florida got permission to unearth bodies from the grounds and run tests to determine who those boys were—and how they died. Last month, the scientists came out with an announcement that was disturbing, if not surprising. They had excavated 55 sets of remains at Dozier’s Boot Hill cemetery, 5 more than they’d originally identified, and 24 more than were indicated in the school’s official records. Other campus locations remain to be searched....

Corporation Exploiting Major Loophole To Quickly Build 600-Mile Tar Sands Pipeline
BY KATIE VALENTINE ON FEBRUARY 26, 2014 AT 9:35 AM

In the five years since TransCanada submitted its first application to build the Keystone XL pipeline, protesters have held marches and vigils, chained themselves to pipeline trucks, interrupted a presidential speech and gotten themselves purposefully arrested, all in the name of stopping the pipeline.

For Debra Michaud, director of Tar Sands Free Midwest, getting these activists to just take notice of the pipeline her group has been working to stop since early last year would be a victory.

“Nobody’s heard of it,” Michaud said. “People know Keystone, but nobody’s heard of Flanagan South.”

Unlike Keystone’s northern leg, which has been mired in court challenges and political skirmishes since 2008, Flanagan South is already in the works, after about two years of negotiating with landowners along the route and going through its permitting process. Once completed, it will pass over approximately 1,950 wetlands and waterways, including the Missouri and Mississippi rivers.

This is really laying the groundwork for the way they’re going to take over this country with pipelines.

But it’s not the...

Supreme Court divided on whether EPA has overreached on greenhouse gas rules
By Robert Barnes, Published: February 24

The Supreme Court was divided Monday over whether the Obama administration’s Environmental Protection Agency had gone too far in trying to regulate power plant and factory emissions of gases blamed for global warming.

Liberal justices seemed ready to defer to the agency’s interpretation about how to protect the environment from greenhouse gases under a contested portion of the Clean Air Act. Conservative justices were skeptical of how the agency had to essentially rewrite some of the law’s requirements to avoid “absurd” results.

But the justices also wondered whether it would make much difference in the long run. All sides agreed that the EPA has the power to regulate greenhouse gases, but they differed on how the agency should go about it. Even if the government lost, some justices said, it would make only a small difference in the number of facilities that could be regulated.

“It’s a question of whether they do exactly the same thing under one provision or another provision,,” said Justice Stephen G. Breyer.

The back-and-forth suggested the possibility of a narrow ruling ...

Study: Culprit leading to rheumatoid arthritis discovered

February 26, 2014
By RYOSUKE NONAKA/ Staff Writer

An international group of researchers is offering hopes of a cure for sufferers of rheumatoid arthritis, identifying the prime culprit behind the onset of the crippling disease.

This discovery could lead to the development of a drug for the first time to cure the autoimmune disease, in which a sufferer's immune system attacks his own tissues, instead of combating invading viruses and bacteria in the body.

The scientists, including researchers at Osaka University, have found that people susceptible to contracting rheumatoid arthritis developed the disease after cellular misfolded proteins are transported to the surfaces of cells without being processed into peptides. These proteins were processed within the cells in the bodies of healthy people.

“We can expect to develop a drug that is targeted at denatured proteins to dissolve them, or a method of examination that will allow doctors to make a diagnosis of the disease at an extremely early stage,” said Hisashi Arase, professor of immunology at Osaka University, one of the researchers.

The findings were carried in the online Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences...

Autoantibodies to IgG/HLA class II complexes are associated with rheumatoid arthritis susceptibility

Significance

Cellular misfolded proteins are transported to the cell surface by MHC class II molecules via association with the peptide-binding groove without processing to peptides. We found that IgG heavy chain is transported to the cell surface by MHC class II molecules. Furthermore, IgG heavy chain associated with MHC class II molecules is recognized by autoantibodies in rheumatoid arthritis patients. Autoantibody binding to IgG heavy chain complexed with different MHC class II alleles was strongly associated with rheumatoid arthritis susceptibility conferred by certain MHC class II alleles. These findings suggest that misfolded proteins complexed with MHC class II molecules could be targets for autoantibodies in autoimmune diseases, which might be involved in autoimmune disease susceptibility.

Abstract
Specific HLA class II alleles are strongly associated with susceptibility to rheumatoid arthritis (RA); however, how HLA class II regulates susceptibility to RA has remained unclear. Recently, we found a unique function of HLA class II molecules: their ability to aberrantly transport cellular misfolded proteins to the cell surface without processing to peptides. Rheumatoid factor (RF) is an autoantibody that binds to denatured IgG or Fc fragments of IgG and is detected in 70–80% of RA patients but also in patients with other diseases. Here, we report that intact IgG heavy chain (IgGH) is transported to the cell surface by HLA class II via association with the peptide-binding groove and that IgGH/HLA class II complexes are specifically recognized by autoantibodies in RF-positive sera from RA patients. In contrast, autoantibodies in RF-positive sera from non-RA individuals did not bind to IgGH/HLA class II complexes. Of note, a strong correlation between autoantibody binding to IgG complexed with certain HLA-DR alleles and the odds ratio for that allele’s association with RA was observed (r = 0.81; P = 4.6 × 10?5). Our findings suggest that IgGH complexed with certain HLA class II alleles is a target for autoantibodies in RA, which might explain why these HLA class II alleles confer susceptibility to RA.

St. Lucie nuke plant tube wear problem prompts calls for investigations
Ivan Penn February 24, 2014 12:59pm

Lawmakers and consumer advocates on Monday called for investigations into whether the St. Lucie nuclear plant in South Florida is safe and whether ratepayer money was used appropriately to boost the reactor's power.

The questions came a day after a Tampa Bay Times story detailed how tubes inside the steam generators that help cool the reactor had abnormal amounts of wear.

The Times report also prompted a former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission engineer to say that federal regulators aren't using the right criteria to measure the damage. Until they do, the plant cannot be declared safe, he said.

"There is damage there and quite a lot. How do you account for it?" said Joe Hopenfeld, an expert in degraded steam generator tubes who still consults on nuclear plant cases.

St. Lucie's owner, Florida Power & Light, the state's largest utility, replaced the steam generators at its St. Lucie 2 plant in 2007, intending them to last until the plant's license expired in 2043....