HELPING OUT IN THE COMMUNITY

As you may recall, for many years the local and our service contractors participated in the "Heats On" program in Baltimore City. COUNT will have its 2nd program "Heats On" as part of our local marketing and community involvement program.

On Saturday, October 30, 2010 we are going to sponsor a Harford County "Heats On" project in conjunction with Habitat for Humanity's "Fix It Up" program.

We are looking for service tech volunteers to do minor repairs for low incoome and elderly citizens.

"Fix It Up" will supply a list of prescreened residents that are in need. Each technician will be assigned a few residential properties to service. The material needed to make the repairs will be paid for by "Fix It Up" and supplied by a local supply house.

Service techs will meet at the Ramada Hotel, 1700 Van Bibber Road, Edgewood, MD 21040 at 8:00 AM and will be served a buffet breakfast before going out into the community to do good works.

Please let me know if you would like to be involved. Contact me at brianc@countprogram.org

ABC CLAIMS PROVEN UNFOUNDED

A preliminary report on ABC's claim to be the largest trainer of construction trades apprentice's in the country has been proven to be pure propaganda, as we have known all along.

According to the facts supplied by the department of labor, just using one sample for our local area, the Baltimore metro chapter of the Associated Builders and Contractors between 1990 and 2002 registered 1,848 apprentices covering all crafts.

Now here is where the rubber meets the road. Over that 12 year period 985 cancelled 500 disappeared for one reason or another and a total of 363 completed the apprenticeship. During this same period our apprenticeship school graudated over 450 plumbers and steamfitters. Now these are astonishing numbers when you consider the fact that we are just one construction trade.

Now that we have the real facts about true apprenticeship training in this country, we can truly use this information, to dispel the false and baseless information constantly given out to the public by the Associated Builders and Contractors propaganda machine.

Solar Power Now Cheaper Than Nuclear

08/09/2010 McClatchy/Tribune According to news aggregator Energy Collective, a historic era is upon us because solar power has become affordable. More specifically, solar power has become cheaper than nuclear power. The article sites researchers from Duke University in North Carolina, who found that the cost of "producing photovoltaic cells (PV) has been dropping for years ... at the same time, estimated costs for building new nuclear power plants have ballooned." Thus, it's cheaper to put solar panels on houses than to build a new nuclear power plant to service them. According to the article, this is a crossover moment because the researchers haven't even considered other pros and cons of solar power, including that North Carolina is not a "sun-rich" state. Other states with more sunshine could see more cost savings. The article also references an up-and-coming trend in solar power called concentrating solar power or CSP. According to the story, CSP "promises utility-scale production and solar thermal storage." This means that even after sunset, CSP-fitted homes can generate electricity. The story lists the crossover price point at about 16 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh). This year, in North Carolina, the price of one kWh of electricity from solar energy fell below this point for the first time. Some solar developers offer electricity from solar energy at 14 cents per kWh and predict that this price will continue to drop. The article ends by emphasizing how important it is to have an energy source that's more affordable than nuclear power, especially given the U.S. Senate's failure to pass a climate and energy bill this year. Since both nuclear and solar power are subsidized by the government, the author points out that "taxpayers now bear the burden of putting carbon into the atmosphere through a variety of hidden charges."