Colorado Isn’t Alone in Considering School Finance Reform “Grand Bargain”
I’ve shared with you before my concerns about the work of Colorado’s School Finance Partnership — too weighted down by established interests, too vague and unambitious thus far, etc.
The Partnership put out a report in August, but now is transitioning to a series of technical discussions on how to make effective changes to school […]
European Housing Disasters
Land-use planning has made British housing so expensive that more than half of all homeowners expect to have to downsize the next time they move while only 22 percent expect to upsize. Home prices in Britain and other European countries with lots of land-use regulation tend to bubble as much as prices in California and […]
Amy Oliver Show: Taking Colo. K-12 Parental Involvement to New Level
Karin Piper, executive director of Parent Led Reform, talks about her group’s growing statewide presence as she works to bring parental involvement in K-12 education to a new level. She specifically discusses her opposition to expanding state education bureaucracy and her support of transparent negotiations between school boards and unions.
10/10/12
Education Policy Center Newsletter October 10, 2012
— DPS Removes Social Activism Language from Teacher Evaluations
— DeGrow Contributes Facts to School Tax Hike Debate
— Adams 12 Union Makes Noise, Parents Get Security Escort
— Won’t Back Down Movie Brings Education Reform into Mainstream
— Center Staff Sound Off as Radio Hosts
— Eddie Rounds Up the K-12 Scene
New trend in job-based insurance: Defined-contribution for health insurance replace defined benefits as 401(k)s replaced pensions
WSJ: “A radical change in the way they provide health benefits to their workers-giving employees a fixed sum of money and allowing them to choose their medical coverage and insurer from an online marketplace.” Continue reading
Renationalization or True Privatization?
United Kingdom’s Department for Transportation is in trouble over a plan to transfer the franchise to run passenger trains over the London-Glasgow West Coast route from Virgin Trains (which is 49 percent owned by Stagecoach) to rival First Group. After fifteen years, Virgin Trains’ franchise is set to expire in December, and when the government […]
How Medical Licensing Laws Harm Patients and Trap Doctors
[A]s with all other forms of occupational licensing, medical licensing actually serves primarily to protect the practitioners at the expense of the public. Continue reading
Will Modern Skyview Campus, Choice Set Stage for Mapleton Academic Success?
Yesterday I shared some thoughts about how a growing Brighton district with some crowded schools might find some creative solutions to its problem. While securing safe, functional and adequate facilities is a high priority for some school districts, others can bask gratefully in their new quarters and hopefully focus even more on the mission of […]
Raaki Garcia Show Debuts on Colorado Spanish-Language Radio
Today the Education Policy Center’s Raaki Garcia-Ulam debuts her own weekly free market talk show on Colorado Spanish-language radio station AM 1150 KNRV. Education will be one among a many relevant and timely topics discussed on the program. Read the Independence Institute press release for details.
Washington Times Quotes Benigno on DPS Teacher Evaluation Controversy
In an October 8 story for the Washington Times, reporter Valerie Richardson quoted Education Policy Center director Pam Benigno on a recent Denver Public Schools controversy over teacher evaluation language promoting social activism: “Let’s face it, in DPS, roughly 50 percent of the children across the board can’t even read at grade level. In math […]
The Limits of Wind Power
Environmentalists advocate wind power as one of the main alternatives to fossil fuels, claiming that it is both cost effective and low in carbon emissions. This study seeks to evaluate these claims.
Existing estimates of the life-cycle emissions from wind turbines range from 5 to 100 grams of CO2 equivalent per kilowatt hour of electricity produced. This very wide range is explained by differ- ences in what was included in each analysis, and the proportion of electricity generated by wind. The low CO2 emissions estimates are only possible at low levels of installed wind capacity, and even then they typically ignore the large proportion of associated emissions that come from the need for backup power sources (“spinning reserves”).
Wind blows at speeds that vary considerably, leading to wide variations in power output at different times and in different locations. To address this variability, power supply companies must install backup capacity, which kicks in when demand exceeds supply from the wind turbines; failure to do so will adversely affect grid reliability. The need for this backup capacity significantly increases the cost of producing power from wind. Since backup power in most cases comes from fossil fuel generators, this effectively limits the carbon-reducing potential of new wind capacity.
The extent to which CO2 emissions can be reduced by using wind power ultimately depends on the specific characteristics of an existing power grid and the amount of additional wind-induced vari- ability risk the grid operator will tolerate. A conservative grid operator can achieve CO2 emissions reduction via increased wind power of approximately 18g of CO2 equivalent/kWh, or about 3.6% of total emissions from electricity generation.
The analysis reported in this study indicates that 20% would be the extreme upper limit for wind penetration. At this level the CO2 emissions reduction is 90g of CO2 equivalent/kWh, or about 18% of total emissions from electricity generation. Using wind to reduce CO2 to this level costs $150 per metric ton (i.e. 1,000 kg, or 2,200 lbs) of CO2 reduced.
Congress Still Perplexed by Wildfire
“U.S. runs out of funds to battle wildfires,” misstates a Washington Post headline. “In the worst wildfire season on record, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service ran out of money to pay for firefighters, fire trucks and aircraft that dump retardant on monstrous flames,” continues the article, making two more errors. Smoke from the […]
