The Rev. Reegis Richard was wandering through a field, hungrily eyeing a dilapidated former school and dreaming of the possibilities, when a Haynesville producer climbed over a fence out of curiosity. Five minutes later, a camera crew was set up, says documentary director Gregory Kallenberg.

It was the sort of serendipitous moment that has guided his documentary, which explores how a massive shale natural gas find in Louisiana is both fueling the dreams of Louisiana’s downtrodden and crushing them, while providing a potential solution to our nation’s energy thirst.

Richard sees the bucketloads of cash the find is bringing to the area as the fulfillment of a personal prophecy to save his dirt-poor African-American neighbors. “He truly believes God gave him these riches,” Kallenberg says. “He wants to give back to a congregation that literally has nothing. He ends up being this incredibly inspirational character. His passion I hope comes through on the camera.”

It does, as the preacher uses the sudden riches to bring the school back to life on screen. Kallenberg interweaves Richard’s story along with those of Mike Smith, a good old boy who finds himself a sudden multimillionaire from the shale his 300 acres of land contains, and – perhaps the doc’s most gripping character – Kassi Fitzgerald, a single mother who turns into a driven community activist to make sure both her economically depressed neighbors and the environment are treated fairly.

Kallenberg, who cut his teeth as an Austin American-Statesman technology reporter as the tech boom was blossoming in the late Nineties and later jumped into that boom full force at Austin’s NotHarvard.com, approached the film originally with a clear eye for the personal narrative, a storytelling philosophy that took root further in his days as a University of Texas film student. He originally followed 11 people affected by the Haynesville find. “As with most documentaries like this, some stories fizzled, and once some saw how obtrusive a camera can be, some people opted out,” he says. “I was left with about seven really compelling ‘personal’ narratives.” The final three stories made the cut “because they are such strong characters, and they embodied all sides of what was happening during this crazy time in Louisiana.”

Kallenberg had moved to Shreveport in 2007 and was in search of a next project. Haynesville fell in his lap while he was enjoying the legendary strawberry pie in Strawn’s Eat Shop. “I was sitting in this cafe, and these farmers out of central casting come stumbling in like they just left the creek at Sutter’s Mill,” he says. “I think it was the fervor as they discussed this secret gas well that put me into eavesdropping mode.” The northeast Louisiana discovery was not yet in the news, so Kallenberg, camera in hand, jumped in at an opportune time to tell the story. “It turned out this thing was real,” he says. “It blew up on me.”

The final film is one Kallenberg sees as significant in a much larger sense. “This issue of energy has become so prevalent,” he says. “It’s complicated. I really think the film transcends being just about these people but also how we are going to handle our energy future. My personal belief is there’s a lot of energy under the feet of Louisiana. We’ve got to work with the industry, and we have to dictate how it’s going to be extracted in a fair way, an environmentally safe way.”

That battle is portrayed in the film by single mother Fitzgerald, who never completed high school. She throws herself into tireless research and grassroots footwork once she realizes the oil companies are paying different amounts to different neighbors for gas rights, primarily based on the person’s economic situation. “She tries to overcome her lack of education by pure gumption,” Kallenberg says. “She comes really close to winning against greater odds. She ends up suing Exxon and wins the ability to move from federal court to parish court. Nobody told her that Exxon’s a big fucking conglomerate.”

Kallenberg makes an interesting choice with the oil industry’s side of the tale. “When it came to presenting the larger energy story, I wanted to be very careful and present it the right way,” he says.”I wanted it to be a compelling argument, and I wanted it presented by people outside of the oil industry. As a result, the bigger views on energy are delivered by academics like Tad Patzek, pundits like Austinite Robert Bryce, and world-renowned environmentalist Bill McKibben.”

The doc’s goal is more about engaging discussion about our energy future than pushing any one agenda – though Kallenberg is clear in his distaste for coal as an energy source. Haynesville screened at December’s Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, an event that hit home for him the importance of this chance project. “There were hardcore energy lobbyists on one side and hardcore environmentalists on the other,” he says. “It was heartening to see both sides look at the screen and nod at it. Haynesville really shows the issue from all levels. There is an intimate, tertiary exploration of the issue as these people on the ground grapple with consequences of the find. But Haynesvile also zooms out to a macro level, where you get to see what this energy could mean in getting us to a clean, renewable-based energy future. At the end, I really wanted to leave my audience in a place where they could start a conversation … and what they envision as an energy future.”

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We’d all like to see a world powered mostly by renewables. But is it possible? With the right planning, we can develop a lot of intermittent renewables without storage. At some point, however, we’ll need both short-term and long-term storage technologies to help stabilize the grid.

Storage is often seen as the “Holy Grail” of technologies for integrating wind and solar. In this podcast, we’ll have a roundtable discussion on storage and look at emerging applications, market opportunities and ask whether these technologies are ready for large-scale applications.

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The rumor this month was that such arguments had swayed the White House and that President Obama would back policy aimed at discouraging coal and encouraging natural gas at a speech he delivered to the Business Roundtable on Wednesday. The rumors didn’t bear out. That’s too bad. With climate-change legislation still stalled in Congress, nudging gas forward is something that the government can do quickly and relatively cheaply to meet its medium-term emissions goals if current trends persist.

To be sure, America doesn’t want to depend too much on one commodity. Drastically ramping up the amount of natural gas burned to generate electricity would require infrastructure investments in certain regions as well as retrofits of certain plants or the construction of entirely new ones.

But existing gas-fired plants are running at only about 25 percent capacity, in part because many are switched on only when demand spikes. The Congressional Research Service reports that doubling the use of existing plants could replace about a third of coal-fired power, getting America a third of the way to its goal for 2020. For reasons of infrastructure, that might be too optimistic a scenario. But BP — which has a stake in natural gas — estimates that retiring the 80 dirtiest coal plants and replacing them with gas-fired power would get America 10 percent of the way to its 2020 emissions target and increase domestic gas consumption by only 5 percent.

Even if you don’t trust BP’s numbers, a range of attractive policy options is available, starting with tax incentives to decommission old coal plants. Natural gas is so competitive, it might not take much more than that. However, policymakers might also consider coupling that with some carrot to switch to gas. States that demand that utilities derive a certain portion of their electricity from clean sources could also allow natural gas to count in such requirements, discounting for the carbon emissions it does produce. Federal legislators contemplating a similar, national standard might also consider this.

In the long term, natural gas is only a bridge fuel as America weans itself off carbon, since it still produces plenty of emissions. With a rising carbon price, natural gas will become too expensive to burn. But it can provide the country some time to bring to market the cleaner technologies on which America eventually must run.

It was the deciphering of the message that was so important.  The documentary “Haynesville: The Relentless Hunt for Energy Future” had been chosen for the world-renowned SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas.  Added to that, the film had earned a coveted “Spotlight Premiere” slot and would show at the historic Paramount Theater.

“I couldn’t believe it when Janet told me the news,” said Gregory Kallenberg, director of the film.  “Showing at SXSW was our highest goal.  After getting off of the phone, I actually think I had to sit down and process what had just happened.”

SXSW Film is globally known for being a top-tiered film festival and, with Sundance, the best festival in the country for documentaries.  This year, with less than 68 slots, SXSW broke a record by receiving over 750 documentary films.  Only 13 of the 68 are Spotlight Premieres.

“It’s an amazing honor, and just the way we wanted to premiere the film,” says Kallenberg.  “We feel like ‘Haynesville’ is an important film that needs to seen by the entire country, and we’re hoping that this prestigious showing helps position the film so that it can be seen by a wider audience.”

“Haynesville” plays on Tuesday, March 16 at 11am at the Paramount Theater.  Tickets will be available at the box office prior to the screening for $10.  SXSW badge holders can attend the screening as part of the conference.

ABOUT THE FILM: “Haynesville” is a film documenting the historic discovery of the nation’s largest natural gas field and its effect on three people’s lives.  The film also explores the potential impact of the Haynesville’s vast reserves of natural gas on a clean energy future.  The film has been honored by being an official selection at the Climate Summit in Copehagen and earned a Green Award nomination at the Sheffield International Doc/Fest in England.

ABOUT SXSW FILM: The SXSW® Film Conference and Festival is a uniquely creative environment featuring the dynamic convergence of talent, smart audiences and industry heavyweights. A hotbed of discovery and interactivity, the event offers lucrative networking opportunities and immersion into the art and business of the rapidly evolving world of independent film.

CONTACT:

Gregory Kallenberg

512-751-9000

gregory@haynesvillemovie.com

More information and the film trailer: www.HaynesvilleMovie.com

Facebook group: www.Facebook.com/HaynesvilleMovie

More information on SXSW Film: sxsw.com/film/screenings

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LISTEN TO STORY:

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PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT:

STEVE INSKEEP, host:

A lot of big energy companies, like ExxonMobil, are betting that natural gas will provide a lot more of the country’s electricity in the future. It’s become more affordable as more companies extract gas from enormous shale rock formations – from New York to Texas. And electricity from natural gas produces about half the global warming pollution that coal does.

Some national environmental groups have started pushing natural gas as a climate fix. But as NPR’s Elizabeth Shogren reports, it’s sparking friction with some of their local members.

ELIZABETH SHOGREN: The Sierra Club’s internal dispute over natural gas flared up recently, at Cornell University.

(Soundbite of machinery)

SHOGREN: During a ribbon-cutting ceremony and tour of a plant that will help Cornell switch from coal to natural gas.

Unidentified Man: We’re going to walk into the heating plant…

SHOGREN: Sierra Club’s Bruce Nilles came all the way from Washington cheer Cornell on. He heads the group’s fight against coal and he’s gung-ho about natural gas as a remedy to climate change.

Mr. BRUCE NILLES (Sierra Club): Natural gas is going to play a critical role in our energy mix for the next two to three, if not four, decades.

SHOGREN: Nilles believes part of the solution lies right under Cornell University and much of western New York, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia – the giant Marcellus shale gas field.

Mr. NILLES: We are for development but it’s got to be done right and allow us to get off of coal in the next two decades.

Ms. KATE BARTHOLOMEW (Chair, Sierra Club, New York Finger Lakes Region): That’s all well and good, but also one of the Sierra Club’s priorities is about clean water.

SHOGREN: Kate Bartholomew is the volunteer chair of Sierra Club’s local chapter in New York’s Finger Lakes region. She’s a high school biology teacher, and she’s worried that this area’s fabulous lakes and drinking wells will be poisoned by chemical-laced water pumped under ground by drilling companies. She says she confronted Nilles about this during a breakfast before the tour.

Ms. BARTHOLOMEW: Bruce and I had a little bit of a tense moment.

SHOGREN: The Sierra Club’s whole New York State chapter is fighting to keep Marcellus gas underground in direct opposition to the national group’s policy. Bartholomew says the state activists were spurred into action when they saw pictures of shale gas developments elsewhere in the country.

Read entire transcript.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s two top Democrats asked eight oil-field service firms last week for details about chemicals they use during hydraulic fracturing, a decades-old drilling technique that blasts sand, chemicals and water into a wellbore to break apart compact rock and release hydrocarbons. The lawmakers also publicized for the first time details of a similar investigation that revealed that two drillers used diesel in their fracturing fluids in violation of a voluntary agreement with U.S. EPA.

“They’re certainly putting a new torpedo in the water,” said Jason Hutt, a partner at the Washington office of Bracewell & Giuliani. “There’s going to be a burden to respond to all this.”

“But frankly,” he added, “I think they’re fear-mongering.”

Moves by Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who chairs the Energy and Environment Subcommittee, come after months of congressional debate about the drilling technique, which has helped open access to massive domestic natural gas plays and also has raised concerns among environmentalists and some lawmakers about the technique’s environmental impacts and whether it is adequately regulated by individual states.

Waxman and Markey launched their inquiry just days after EPA’s top drinking water official said he had not seen documented evidence of contamination caused by fracturing and that state regulators were doing a good job overseeing the process.

“The week started out pretty good for us,” said Chris Tucker, a spokesman for the industry-backed group Energy in Depth. “Anytime the top drinking water official acknowledges the tremendous track record of state regulators, that’s a nice feather in your cap.”

Industry advocates say Waxman and Markey tried to spoil their good week and tilt the debate toward environmentalists.

“The debate was not trending in the direction opponents of fracturing wanted it to go,” Hutt said. “They had this one at the ready … and it let them steal the debate back a little bit.”

The oil and gas industry has used hydraulic fracturing for years to stimulate production from aging wells, and more recently, it has used the technique to tap unconventional sources of oil and natural gas, like coalbed methane and shale gas.

Concerns about the impact of hydraulic fracturing in coal seams on underground drinking water supplies led to a series of lawsuits in the late 1990s and early 2000s that prompted EPA to regulate the drilling practice under the Safe Drinking Water Act and study its environmental impact.

The EPA study, released in 2004, found that hydraulic fracturing posed “little or no threat” to drinking water.

Environmentalists contended that the study was scientifically unsound, but Congress endorsed it and used it to override the earlier decision to regulate hydraulic fracturing under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Lawmakers specifically exempted the practice from federal regulation in a broad 2005 energy law.

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One doesn’t need an economist or a Federal Reserve study to know what to do. Simple logic would dictate that America must reduce foreign oil imports and adopt a strategic long-term comprehensive energy policy.

Meantime, global warming grabs the headlines and the talk is all about solar and wind energy. While I certainly support wind and solar energy, they produce electricity, not gasoline. Since 70% of American oil consumption is used in the transportation sector, solar and wind energy won’t reduce American dependence on foreign oil unless electric cars (EVs) are deployed. However, fully electric cars have their own set of problems:

Ø Range – the U.S. is a very large country.

Ø Power – batteries will run down quickly in mountainous terrain or for consumers pulling boats, trailers, and other recreational vehicles.

Ø Expense – fully electric cars will be very expensive and the middle class has already been whacked – who can afford a new fully electric car?

Ø Battery dependence – many of the elements used to build electric batteries, like lithium, are not found in large quantities in the U.S. We may find ourselves trading our foreign oil dependence for foreign battery dependence.

Ø Availability – where are they?

It is clear we’ll need all alternatives to the solar/wind/electric car architecture if we want to significantly reduce our foreign oil imports over the next 5-10 years.

So, if it’s going to take many years to build out solar, wind, and nuclear power infrastructures – what’s the plan to reduce foreign oil imports? According to President Obama and U.S. Energy Secretary Chu – the answer is “clean coal” and electric vehicles. Many others (including your correspondent) believe natural gas is a superior solution. So it’s game on. Should it be natural gas or coal? This is the big and important battle being fought today. So, who is winning and why?

If you’re a coal producer or a coal based electric utility executive, you’ve got to be feeling pretty good these days. You’ve been effectively subsidized since the Carter administration and as a result you’re sitting on mountains of cash and enjoy broad and deep political cover. President Obama and U.S. Energy Secretary Chu believe (or at least support…there is a difference…) the myth of oxymoronic “clean coal”. Despite the coal fly-ash release at the TVA plant in Kingston, TN (probably the worst environmental disaster in the history of the continental United States) most people have been conned into believing if we simply sequester coal’s CO2 emissions in the Earth wah-la! – we have “clean coal”.

Of course this is ridiculous because the inconvenient truth about coal is the toxic heavy metal particulates which must be dealt with after combustion. One “solution” is to simply release this toxic sludge into the Tennessee River and destroy it for generations to come. Apparently this is OK, because the country doesn’t seem to be worried about it (or acid rain, or mercury in their water, or the smog over Knoxville, etc. etc). In addition to these advantages, coal executives must also be content with the mountain of legislation that has been passed over the years at the EPA and elsewhere that effectively keep natural gas vehicles and natural gas conversion kits either unavailable or very expensive.

Read entire article.

Portraying nuclear energy as a key part of cutting carbon emissions at the same time as creating new, high-tech jobs, the president appealed for bi-partisan support to build more reactors. The push for nuclear power is part of the Obama administration’s efforts to pass climate change legislation.

“On an issue that affects our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, we can’t continue to be mired in the same old stale debates between left and right, between environmentalists and entrepreneurs,” Mr Obama said at job training centre in Maryland.

“See, our competitors are racing to create jobs and command growing energy industries. And nuclear energy is no exception,” he said, pointing to investments in Japan, France, China and South Korea.

Mr Obama’s administration on Tuesday announced it would give $8.3bn in loan guarantees to help Southern Co build two reactors at a plant in Burke, Georgia.

Southern was among four companies named last year as being considered to share $18.5bn in federal loan guarantees to build new nuclear power facilities.

The White House said the Burke project would entail about 3,500 onsite construction jobs and 800 permanent operations jobs. Power generated at the facility would serve about 1.4m people in 550,000 homes, it said.

As his administration struggles with a stubbornly high unemployment rate and endeavours to keep climate change on the political front-burner, Mr Obama has suggested he can kill two birds with one stone by investing in clean energy sources.

After championing nuclear energy in his State of the Union address last month, Mr Obama included in his 2011 budget request a total of $54bn in loan guarantees — tripling the size of the existing guarantee programme — to encourage the construction of as many as 10 nuclear power plants.

There are now 104 nuclear power plants supplying 20 per cent of the US’s energy, but no nuclear projects have been started since 1977.

Mr Obama said that nuclear energy was nevertheless the US’s largest source of fuel that produced no carbon emissions.

“To meet our growing energy needs and prevent the worst consequences of climate change, we’ll need to increase our supply of nuclear power. It’s that simple,” he said. “This one plant, for example, will cut carbon pollution by 16m tonnes each year when compared to a similar coal plant. That’s like taking 3.5m cars off the road.”

Read entire article.

The San Francisco building code will soon be revised to require that new structures be wired for car chargers. Across the street from City Hall, some drivers are already plugging converted hybrids into a row of charging stations.

In nearby Silicon Valley, companies are ordering workplace charging stations in the belief that their employees will be first in line when electric cars begin arriving in showrooms. And at the headquarters of Pacific Gas and Electric, utility executives are preparing “heat maps” of neighborhoods that they fear may overload the power grid in their exuberance for electric cars.

“There is a huge momentum here,” said Andrew Tang, an executive at P.G.& E.

As automakers prepare to introduce the first mass-market electric cars late this year, it is increasingly evident that the cars will get their most serious tryout in just a handful of places. In cities like San Francisco, Portland, Ore., and San Diego, a combination of green consciousness and enthusiasm for new technology seems to be stirring public interest in the cars.

The first wave of electric car buying is expected to begin around December, when Nissan introduces the Leaf, a five-passenger electric car that will have a range of 100 miles on a fully charged battery and be priced for middle-class families.

Several thousand Leafs made in Japan will be delivered to metropolitan areas in California, Arizona, Washington state, Oregon and Tennessee. Around the same time, General Motors will introduce the Chevrolet Volt, a vehicle able to go 40 miles on electricity before its small gasoline engine kicks in.

“This is the game-changer for our industry,” said Carlos Ghosn, Nissan’s president and chief executive. He predicted that 10 percent of the cars sold would be electric vehicles by 2020.

Utilities are gearing up to cooperate with the automakers, a first for the two industries, and governments on the West Coast are focusing intently on the coming issues. Price and tax incentives need to be worked out. Locations must be found for charging stations. And local electrical grids may need reinforcement.

The California Public Utilities Commission, whose headquarters are in San Francisco, has brought together utilities, automakers and charging station companies in an urgent effort to write the new rules of the road.

Much of the attention on electric cars has been on the vehicles’ design, cost and performance. But success or failure could turn on more mundane matters, like the time it takes car buyers to navigate a municipal bureaucracy to have charging stations installed in their homes.

When the president of the California Public Utilities Commission, Michael R. Peevey, leased an electric Mini Cooper, he said, it took six weeks of visits by installers and inspectors before he could plug in his new car at home.

“It was really drawn out and frustrating and certainly is not workable on a mass basis,” Mr. Peevey said.

Such issues are being hashed out here first. The San Francisco area is home not only to a population of early technology adopters but to companies like Coulomb Technologies and Better Place that are developing the networks and software to allow utilities to manage how cars are charged.

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Facebook just announced that it’s going to build its first data center in Oregon. And while Google and Microsoft precede them in the state, they take advantage of cheaper and cleaner hydro power, while it looks like Facebook will be using mostly coal power from Idaho.

Yes, every time you update your Facebook status a baby polar bear dies.

OK, maybe it’s not quite that extreme, but Facebook’s decision to go with coal power is drawing some fire. Why aren’t they using hydro? Not that hydro is without environmental consequences, but when it comes to carbon emissions and public health, nothing’s worse than coal.

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