Orange (County's) convention center will feature South's largest solar project (FL)

[jpak]

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/orl-solar0507dec05,0,3223425.story?track=rss

The Orange County Convention Center's massive rooftop will soon shoulder the largest solar project in the Southeast.

County officials approved a $7.3 million plan Tuesday to blanket the roof of the nation's second-largest convention center with panels that can turn sunshine into energy, without producing pollution.

<snip>

However, not everyone is buying into big solar-power projects. Some say solar is more of a "feel-good" solution that now competes poorly against conventional energy sources and the promise of nuclear power.

"Wind and solar power are just pomp and circumstance," said Jay Lehr, science director at The Heartland Institute, a Chicago nonprofit research center.

<more>

[diane in sf]

1. I wonder where the "Heartland" Institute is getting its funding.

[diane in sf]

2. Heartland=Republican astro turf group...

their website homepage, heartland.org, is replete with ads for Global Warming Snowjob--a video slamming Al Gore and denying global warming.




"Heartland's mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. Such solutions include parental choice in education, choice and personal responsibility in health care, market-based approaches to environmental protection, privatization of public services, and deregulation in areas where property rights and markets do a better job than government bureaucracies.

Heartland has been endorsed by some of the country's leading scholars, public policy experts, and elected officials. Dr. Milton Friedman calls Heartland "a highly effective libertarian institute." Cato Institute president Edward Crane says Heartland "has had a tremendous impact, first in the Midwest, and now nationally."


etc.