Merry Christmas Eve, dear readers, and welcome back to kenbaxter.com! I am Ken Baxter and today is Tuesday, December 24th, 2013 and Las Vegas has a great Christmas vibe. This year as our families and friends gather around the Christmas tree this holiday, I’d like to remind you that we must remember to stay green! Lots of paper goods and plastic utensils go straight to the garbage due to the ease with which a simple toss in the trash can save an hour washing dishes after a hearty Christmas dinner! Yes, I know that the stress and lack of time to finish all our last minute preparations for the holidays can sometimes get to all of us, but in the end, by spending just a few extra minutes to rinse those plastic Solo cups and putting them in the recycling bin, we can save thousands of cubic tons of recyclable materials from taking up space in a landfill. Let’s not forgot to educate, share, and help each other become better people by setting the standards that we should all remember to follow so we can all help reduce our wear and tear on Planet Earth. Instead of tossing out those plastic forks, wash and reuse them at your next party or at the very least, rinse and recycle so they can become something new in 2014!
Speaking of being green, I recently went for a visit to the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System which is currently under construction in the California Mojave Desert. Just forty miles southwest of Las Vegas, this solar thermal power project is expected to generate enough electricity to power more than 140,000 homes and will nearly double the amount of commercial solar thermal electricity produced in the United States today! Bechtel and Solar Partners (a partnership of BrightSource Energy, NRG, and Google) has teamed up to build this, the world’s largest, solar thermal facility. It is quite amazing to see these solar fields in person and the grand scale of the three plants working together to produce all that electricity is a tremendous feat in engineering, manufacturing, and solar power production for the USA!
Did you know that the construction of this massive project has employed about 1400 skilled tradesmen and women from the San Bernardino building trades? What a wonderful achievement for manufacturing in our great nation! The three separate plants built by these fine men and women will have a combined capacity of 392 megawatts of electricity and will displace about 450,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year – that’s like taking 70,000 cards off the road!
The Ivanpah Renewable Energy Project is still under construction but as of August 2013, it is estimated to be about ninety-two percent complete. You can view an awesome 360 degree virtual tour at http://www.ivanpahsolar.com/virtualtour/ – it is really a sight to behold! Using the virtual tour map, visitors can explore eight landmarks at Ivanpah, including each of the project’s three towers and the solar field among other important landmarks. “Projects like Ivanpah–and the companies that build them–are critical to establishing America’s leadership in large‑scale clean energy technology, which should help to position our economy as globally competitive over the next several decades,” says Tom Doyle, president of NRG Solar. “We think solar will play an instrumental role in the future of energy, and after taking a virtual tour of Ivanpah, we hope you better understand our perspective.”
We at Green Global and Made in America are so excited to see such an accomplishment for renewable energy and such an amazing feat of manufacturing for the Southwest and for America…right in our own backyard! Special thanks to Mitch Samuelian for our private tour of the Ivanpah facilities. Keep checking back at my website, https://kenbaxter2.wpenginepowered.com/, and at our non-profit foundation sites – http://www.mianv.org/, http://www.greenglobal.org/, and http://www.klbff.org/ for more information about the latest news in manufacturing, green initiatives, and other relevant local, national, and global events.
We are on a mission to save our planet and you should be too! This Christmas remember to reduce, reuse, and recycle and keep your footprint on our most valuable resource, Planet Earth, to a minimum. Please enjoy this Christmas with your loved ones and have a safe, happy, and healthy holiday and don’t forget to acknowledge and remember our troops stationed all over the world that fight for our freedoms and liberties in the USA!
Oh, and one last thing, if you haven’t finished your Christmas shopping yet, buy American and support our economy! With just a 5% increase in domestic spending, we can help create over 2 million new American jobs!
Thanks again for visiting my blog – Ken Baxter Las Vegas
