Sen. Ben Nelson said he and Sen.Maria Cantwell of Washington have introduced legislation enabling major wind power development in Nebraska that would create jobs and provide Nebraskans with more electricity produced from renewable energy.

Nelson said Nebraska’s key utilities welcomed the bill for promoting renewable Nebraska power.

 “Our experience with ethanol has shown Nebraskans we can be a national leader in renewable energy, and wind is the next frontier,” Nelson said. “Nebraska ranks fourth among the states for potential wind energy development, but today we’re 24th in actual production of wind energy.”

He said the bill will open the door for Nebraska’s public power utilities to obtain tax incentives they need to build and own wind power projects.

“That, in turn, will provide jobs and clean energy for our future, while also holding down electricity rates for Nebraska consumers,” Nelson said.

 The Cantwell-Nelson bill provides incentives to the nation’s public power utilities, putting them on par with similar tax incentives already available to investor-owned utilities. Investor-owned utilities now can take advantage of a federal Production Tax Credit that has allowed them to invest greater amounts in renewable energy. 

 The Cantwell-Nelson “Clean Renewable Energy Investment Act of 2010” modifies the existing federal Clean Renewable Energy Bond program to provide a more effective federal incentive to Nebraska public power and rural electric systems, which collectively serve 100 percent of Nebraska’s retail electric consumers. 

Nelson said this will enable Nebraska consumer-owned utilities to develop and own renewable resources directly, rather than buying energy under a power supply contract with a third party. It also will ensure that the full benefit of the federal incentive flows to electric consumers – resulting in lower costs to their consumers and creating green jobs, he said.

 “With access to these energy development tax incentives, our non-profit public power utilities will be able to build renewable projects at a lower cost to their ratepayers and begin construction quicker, leading to more immediate job creation,” Nelson said. “We can harness the windy plains and win with wind.”

During the decade, Nebraska has benefited from trade with Cuba for agricultural goods. But still Congress is slow in lifting its trade ban with Cuba and denying Nebraska farmers and ranchers an even greater share of trading opportunities.

According to the National Pork Producers Council, exports to Cuba will more than triple if restrictions on travel and export financing for products going to the Caribbean island nation are lifted.

NPPC bases that statement off of an Iowa State University analysis.

 The National Pork Producers Council said they are urging House lawmakers to take up legislation (H.R. 4645) that would let U.S. citizens travel to Cuba and allow direct transfers of funds from Cuban to U.S. financial institutions for products authorized for sale under the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000.

That law, according to NPPC, granted exceptions for agricultural and medical products to the unilateral trade embargo the United States placed on Cuba in 1960 after that country nationalized the property of U.S. citizens and corporations.

 The House Foreign Affairs Committee is expected to mark up the bill Wednesday.

In a letter sent Tuesday (Sept. 28), NPPC asked the panel’s members to support H.R. 4645 and to oppose any amendments to it. Senate companion legislation is pending action in the Finance Committee.

 According to NPPC, Iowa State economist Dermot Hayes estimates that U.S. pork exports would increase by $28.2 million once the travel and financing restrictions on Cuba are lifted. Over the past year, the United States shipped about $13.4 million of pork to Cuba. The policy change also would create about 6,000 additional jobs in the United States, according to a study conducted by Texas A&M University, which also found that total U.S. exports would increase by $365 million a year.

 Earlier this year, Rep. Adrian Smith voted against the bill.

But the NPPC said the bill is critical to improving U.S. trading opportunities.

“Because of its proximity to Cuba – just 90 miles separate the countries – the United States is in position to capture a large share of the Cuban pork import market,” said NPPC President Sam Carney, a pork producer from Adair, Iowa. “For the U.S. pork industry to remain successful and viable, we need new and expanded market access, and H.R. 4645 can provide that access.”

 Exports are vital to the U.S. pork industry, which last year shipped more than $4.3 billion of pork products, an amount that added about $38 to the price producers received for each hog marketed.

Some may think this is another reason why the Canadian oil pipeline that is proposed to go through Nebraska may be a bad idea.

 According to the Center for American Progress Action Fund (CAPAF), a new analysis it has released concludes that “Big Oil and other special interests have spent millions of dollars in lobbying and campaign contributions to defeat clean energy legislation.”

According to a post on the DomesticFuel.com,  the CAPAF study, “Dirty Money” found that the top 35 spending companies and trade associations, including oil, mining and electric utility,  invested more than $500 million in lobbying and campaign contributions from January 2009-June 2010 to crush clean energy and clean tech legislation.

According to CAPAF,  ”this high dollar spending and political pressure has convinced enough legislators to oppose clean energy measures that would have created jobs, reduced oil use and cut pollution caused by global warming.”

According to the post,  no comprehensive environmental policy has been passed, the renewable electricity industry is struggling for a federal renewable energy mandate, the biodiesel industry has lost its tax credits,  and rumors coming out of DC this week are that the ethanol tax credit will not be extended either.

This opens the way for Congress to give its blessing to the Canadian oil pipeline. This hurts Nebraska, which is becoming one of the nation’s leading alternative energy producing states with ethanol and its developing wind energy. The oil pipeline doesn’t add wealth to Nebraska in the long-term if it distracts from the thousands of jobs alternative energy development in the state will create and the value-added plus it gives to our economy.

Nebraska needs biodiesel plants, more wind energy, solar energy, cellulosic ethanol. But we’ll probably get a oil pipeline that will continue to worsen our addiction to oil.

Maybe we need to start thinking of a vision of American and its economy powered by a diversity of energy sources (including oil) but not one dominated by oil. Will the pipeline, off-shore drilling and other environmentally hazardous ways of extracting oil only worsen our addiction to oil?

If the vast egg recall last month wasn’t bad enough, Meatingplace.com reports that “As many as 70,000 chickens are dead after a generator failure led to a lack of ventilation at a farm outside Shelby, N.C., Brian Long, North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services’s public affairs division.

Long said around 10,000 chickens survived the incident at Greenway Farms on McCraw Road in Cleveland County, N.C. Long said he believes the farm had a total of roughly 80,000 chickens.

The power company shut off the power to Greenway Farms sometime during the week of Sept. 13, Long said, and the farmer was using generators to control the ventilation system.

“As some point, we think over last weekend, the generators ran out of fuel and shut down,” Long said. “If you’re not getting ventilation through the poultry house, it’s going to lead to dead chickens.”

The Greensboro News & Recordcited neighbors who complained of intensified, “suffocating” odors starting Saturday, Sept. 18. Long said his department was notified last Wednesday that there was a problem and had animal health experts and veterinarians involved with the onsite burial of the dead chickens last Thursday.

“Our jurisdiction in this type of situation is somewhat limited because it was not a disease issue,” Long said. “When you have that level of mortality, obviously disposal is a very important issue.” Long said Friday he believed the burial was complete.