jilibay ap
jilibay ap
To the editor: Every month, California throws away enough solar and wind energy to power half a million homes — not because we don’t need it, but because our system is designed to waste it. While Sacramento celebrates expanded solar capacity, we’re forcing solar panels to “nap” during their most productive hours while keeping expensive gas plants running. (“ Solar power glut boosts California electric bills. Other states reap the benefits ,” Nov. 24) The problem is structural. Our regulated monopoly utilities are incentivized to build infrastructure where it maximizes their returns, not where the grid needs it most. The solution? Start by reining in utilities’ blank-check spending on questionable upgrades. Then transform the California Independent System Operator into a forward-looking grid operator where every watt of clean energy reaches its destination. California revolutionized wholesale electricity markets after the 2000s crisis; we shouldn’t wait for another crisis to fix transmission. Currently, these costs simply pass through the system with no incentive for efficiency, since neither utilities nor grid operators earn rewards for optimization. While artificial intelligence can help manage the grid, without meaningful transmission reforms at the state level, even the smartest technology becomes window dressing. We need a market that rewards efficiency over waste, not one that rubber-stamps natural gas investments while solar and wind sit idle. Until we align our grid operators’ incentives with our clean energy goals, we’ll keep paying premium prices for dirty power while our solar panels take their expensive naps. Jalal Awan, San Francisco The writer is an analyst at the Utility Reform Network. .. To the editor: California ratepayers spend hundreds of millions annually keeping gas power plants online that operate only sporadically. That’s because our grid needs surplus energy sources available when demand surges — much like keeping extra fire trucks ready for emergencies. The fact that a small amount of solar energy doesn’t make it to the grid on cool spring days isn’t alarming. All energy sources face curtailment, including gas plants that sit idle the vast majority of the year. What matters is having enough clean energy available to meet energy needs on hot summer days, and solar is vital for this. But California still has work to do. Sometimes we have no other option but to curtail solar power while fossil fuels are still being used elsewhere in the state simply because we lack the transmission lines to move clean energy where it’s needed. The solution for both affordability and reliability isn’t to slow solar development; it’s to accelerate transmission construction and battery storage to match our clean energy buildout. Melissa Romero, Sacramento The writer is deputy legislative director of California Environmental Voters. .. To the editor: As a longtime subscriber and homeowner with rooftop solar since 2005 (and batteries since 2019), I read with interest your article on solar curtailment, which made it sound like solar power is over-developed. It seems to me the criticism is really about solar farms, and mostly due to inadequate grid and storage development, not rooftop solar that generally keeps production local. What we really need to do is to promote more storage, including batteries for homes, grid-smart storage in electric vehicle batteries and pumped water storage, an old technology that already supplies more than 90% of existing grid storage (yet is hardly mentioned in the press). Science magazine had a great article about it last January . Rooftop solar with batteries also has kept my home working smoothly through multiple public safety power shutoffs by Southern California Edison — including one over a previous Thanksgiving Day when we had 12 guests. The world needs more solar and wind power replacing fossil fuels. Unfortunately, the utilities are compelled to find profits for themselves and their shareholders and move toward renewables only when they are forced to or they find a way to make money. Jed Fuhrman, Topanga .. To the editor: Let’s get creative! There are options for using excess renewable electricity. Data centers are crying for power (yes, battery storage will be necessary for night-time use). Also, the excess power from solar can be used to operate desalination plants along the coast. These could produce more potable water, solving a major cost inhibitor of that energy-intensive process and the long-running battle for water between the farmers and urban areas. With that, there might be no need to build expensive new infrastructure through the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta to transport more water from Northern California to Southern California. What are we waiting for? David Bach, Sacramento .. To the editor: It is not a bad thing to have excess solar power from rooftop solar. Rooftop solar produces energy where it is used and reduces the need for centralized power generation and long-distance transport. That is a problem only for power utilities, which have been working extra hard to kill rooftop solar so they can keep their profits. Rooftop solar saves massive amounts of new land from being eaten up by solar farms. It’s ecologically more sound to put solar panels on roofs and not on massive land-eating farms. Hannes Ziegler, Redlands .. To the editor: California’s financial losses from solar power underscore the idiocy of capitalism. We pay neighboring states to take our solar-generated electricity. This, in turn, leads to higher electricity costs for Californians while enriching middlemen through arbitrage, and lowering electricity rates in the neighboring states. Those states can then benefit financially by shutting down their own solar installations, while keeping coal and gas plants operating. In a more rational system, all utilities would be publicly owned, as would an extensive array of electric vehicle chargers. During times of excess solar power production, instead of paying other states to take our electricity, Californians could have free access to all state chargers for electric cars, buses, and trucks—- another incentive to go electric. Banks, hedge-fund middlemen and other money leeches would have to find something socially useful to do. David Klein, Northridge .. To the editor: So, our brilliant California legislators have allowed renewable energy to become yet another corporate robbery of its citizens. The most economic approach to renewable energy — rooftop solar — has been de-incentivized in favor of huge solar farms that cover sensitive desert habitat and must have their energy sold out of state at a loss to Californians. This is corporate welfare. It’s time to wake up and get reasonable. These corporations — not just energy producers — need to be reined in. The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision must be overturned. No profit-oriented corporation is going to take human welfare into account. Betsy Rothstein, Long Beach
MACON, Ga. (AP) — Myles Redding returned an interception 25 yards for a first-quarter touchdown and Whitt Newbauer threw a four-yard touchdown pass to start the fourth quarter as No. 7-seeded Mercer beat No. 10 Rhode Island 17—10 on Saturday. Mercer advances to the FCS semifinals for the first time and will face No. 2 North Dakota State, which beat No. 15 Abilene Christian 51-31. Redding swooped in front of Hunter Helms' intended receiver for his seventh interception of the season with 3:33 left in the first quarter, tying him with teammate TJ Moore for the most in the nation. Rhode Island got a 17-yard field goal from Ty Groff as time expired in the first half and took the lead late in the third quarter when Helms connected with Marquis Buchanan on a 56-yard touchdown for a 10-7 lead. Senior Dwayne McGee set up two fourth-quarter scores for the Bears, slashing through the right side for a 33-yard gain to give Mercer a first-and-goal at the Rhode Island 10. On third-and-goal from the 4, Newbauer found Adjatay Dabbs for the go-ahead touchdown. After the Bears twice forced the Rams to punt in their own half of the field, McGee ran 40 yards on first down to give Mercer a first down at the Rhode Island 25, setting up a 24-yard Reice Griffith field goal for the game's final score. McGee finished with 114 yards on 21 carries and CJ Miller added 81 yards on 10 carries for Mercer (11-2), which remained unbeaten in seven home games. Helms finished 22 of 33 passing for 266 yards and Buchanan caught 11 passes for 119 yards to lead Rhode Island (11-3), but the Rams managed just 46 yards on 26 carries on the ground. — Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here . AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-football
It was no different for Jimmy Carter in the early 1970s. It took meeting several presidential candidates and then encouragement from an esteemed elder statesman before the young governor, who had never met a president himself, saw himself as something bigger. He announced his White House bid on December 12 1974, amid fallout from the Vietnam War and the resignation of Richard Nixon. Then he leveraged his unknown, and politically untainted, status to become the 39th president. That whirlwind path has been a model, explicit and otherwise, for would-be contenders ever since. “Jimmy Carter’s example absolutely created a 50-year window of people saying, ‘Why not me?’” said Steve Schale, who worked on President Barack Obama’s campaigns and is a long-time supporter of President Joe Biden. Mr Carter’s journey to high office began in Plains, Georgia where he received end-of-life care decades after serving as president. David Axelrod, who helped to engineer Mr Obama’s four-year ascent from state senator to the Oval Office, said Mr Carter’s model is about more than how his grassroots strategy turned the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary into his springboard. “There was a moral stain on the country, and this was a guy of deep faith,” Mr Axelrod said. “He seemed like a fresh start, and I think he understood that he could offer something different that might be able to meet the moment.” Donna Brazile, who managed Democrat Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign, got her start on Mr Carter’s two national campaigns. “In 1976, it was just Jimmy Carter’s time,” she said. Of course, the seeds of his presidential run sprouted even before Mr Nixon won a second term and certainly before his resignation in August 1974. In Mr Carter’s telling, he did not run for governor in 1966, he lost, or in 1970 thinking about Washington. Even when he announced his presidential bid, neither he nor those closest to him were completely confident. “President of what?” his mother, Lillian, replied when he told her his plans. But soon after he became governor in 1971, Mr Carter’s team envisioned him as a national player. They were encouraged in part by the May 31 Time magazine cover depicting Mr Carter alongside the headline “Dixie Whistles a Different Tune”. Inside, a flattering profile framed Mr Carter as a model “New South” governor. In October 1971, Carter ally Dr Peter Bourne, an Atlanta physician who would become US drug tsar, sent his politician friend an unsolicited memo outlining how he could be elected president. On October 17, a wider circle of advisers sat with Mr Carter at the Governor’s Mansion to discuss it. Mr Carter, then 47, wore blue jeans and a T-shirt, according to biographer Jonathan Alter. The team, including Mr Carter’s wife Rosalynn, who died aged 96 in November 2023, began considering the idea seriously. “We never used the word ‘president’,” Mr Carter recalled upon his 90th birthday, “but just referred to national office”. Mr Carter invited high-profile Democrats and Washington players who were running or considering running in 1972, to one-on-one meetings at the mansion. He jumped at the chance to lead the Democratic National Committee’s national campaign that year. The position allowed him to travel the country helping candidates up and down the ballot. Along the way, he was among the Southern governors who angled to be George McGovern’s running mate. Mr Alter said Mr Carter was never seriously considered. Still, Mr Carter got to know, among others, former vice president Hubert Humphrey and senators Henry Jackson of Washington, Eugene McCarthy of Maine and Mr McGovern of South Dakota, the eventual nominee who lost a landslide to Mr Nixon. Mr Carter later explained he had previously defined the nation’s highest office by its occupants immortalised by monuments. “For the first time,” Mr Carter told The New York Times, “I started comparing my own experiences and knowledge of government with the candidates, not against ‘the presidency’ and not against Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. It made it a whole lot easier”. Adviser Hamilton Jordan crafted a detailed campaign plan calling for matching Mr Carter’s outsider, good-government credentials to voters’ general disillusionment, even before Watergate. But the team still spoke and wrote in code, as if the “higher office” were not obvious. It was reported during his campaign that Mr Carter told family members around Christmas 1972 that he would run in 1976. Mr Carter later wrote in a memoir that a visit from former secretary of state Dean Rusk in early 1973 affirmed his leanings. During another private confab in Atlanta, Mr Rusk told Mr Carter plainly: “Governor, I think you should run for president in 1976.” That, Mr Carter wrote, “removed our remaining doubts.” Mr Schale said the process is not always so involved. “These are intensely competitive people already,” he said of governors, senators and others in high office. “If you’re wired in that capacity, it’s hard to step away from it.” “Jimmy Carter showed us that you can go from a no-name to president in the span of 18 or 24 months,” said Jared Leopold, a top aide in Washington governor Jay Inslee’s unsuccessful bid for Democrats’ 2020 nomination. “For people deciding whether to get in, it’s a real inspiration,” Mr Leopold continued, “and that’s a real success of American democracy”.KOZHIKODE: Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan reiterated his criticism against Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) State president Syed Sadikali Shihab Thangal. Justifying his statement, Pinarayi said his criticism against Thangal was political and had no other shades. The Chief Minister was speaking after inaugurating the Kozhikode South CPM Area Committee office. Pinarayi Vijayan: “Congress party abetted in the demolition of Babri Masjid. At that time the League was with the Congress in the Kerala Cabinet. Despite Congress aiding the demolition, League didn’t utter a word and showed no resistance. They were afraid of losing power in the Kerala cabinet. And now, they have transformed into such a pity stage of doing any unscrupulous act to hang on to power. The league is now providing shelter to SDPI and Jamaat-e-Islami Hind. UDF propagated the by-polls to be the verdict of the government's performance. So then let us discuss Chelakkara. LDF won big while UDF’s Ramya even failed to amass the vote she got during the LS polls. The by-polls did nothing to hurt LDF. BJP meanwhile got battered by the Palakkad result. Their vote share plummeted by a large. The by-poll results serve as an encouragement for LDF as we worked well and even increased the vote percentage in all constituencies.”
