Maybe Charlotte will become a hub o'green after all?

A Charlotte-based company heavily involved in the "green" industry is expanding operations with a new facility in Concord that will add 209 jobs, industry and government officials announced Wednesday morning.

Celgard, which is developing lithium batteries for electric cars, chose the Cabarrus County site over locations in Georgia and South Carolina, officials said. The company initially said it planned an expansion near Aiken, S.C., but it decided to consider other locations.

Celgard also announced an expansion of its Charlotte site. Total cost of the expansion is estimated at $91 million, according to state commerce officials.

The new jobs will pay an average of $56,960, not including benefits, according to state officials. That is well over the averages of $32,396 for jobs in Cabarrus County and $48,776 in Mecklenburg County.

Read the rest of this Charlotte Observer article, by Steve Lyttle, here.

Here's one pimped out electric race car (that's right — I said RACE car). It's called the "White Zombie" and its owner says, "It feels good knowing I'm not running on foreign oil." Damn skippy. Watch it take on a Corvette and a BMW M3 — and kick their asses. Then, stay tuned for the electric motorcycle that goes from zero to 60 mph in two seconds. TWO. "It's the batteries, stupid."

Usually, during recessions like this one, the number of small business rises. For some reason, however, the number of small businesses in Charlotte didn't even hold steady last year -- it dropped.

Charlotte has fallen precipitously in a national ranking of best places to start a business, according to a Portfolio.com/bizjournals study.

The Queen City dropped to No. 31 from No. 2 in 2009.

Rankings were based on criteria that included growth in population, employment and small businesses. According to the research, the number of small businesses in Charlotte declined to 27.07 per 1,000 residents in 2007 from 27.15 per 1,000 in 2006.

While that isn’t a large drop, 80 of the 100 metropolitan areas in the study either saw an increase or didn’t decline as much.

Read the rest of this Charlotte Business Journal article here.

Despite the fact that a conservative Republican won a long-held Democratic Senate seat in Massachusetts in a special election last night, eliminating the Democrats' cherished 60th vote, the North Carolina Republican party is gearing up to fight health care reform in Raleigh, should the legislation actually make it through Congress.

Of course, they say, this isn't about politics, it's about freedom -- for giant corporations. It's certainly not about the citizens of our state having the freedom to choose from a variety of affordable health care plans. No, you'll either pay top dollar for shitty coverage or you'll suffer the fiscal consequences should you dare to get sick or injured in an accident.

Remember what happened when bankers were allowed to run amuck? Of course you do ... we're still paying for their greed.

North Carolina Republicans say they'll take their fight over the federal health care overhaul to the Legislative Building if the Democratic plan passes on Capitol Hill.

House and Senate GOP leaders said Tuesday at a news conference they would file legislation when the General Assembly returns in May letting North Carolina residents "opt out" of requirements that they get health insurance or face cash penalties.

"Republicans will not stand idly by and watch as citizens' rights to make their own health care decisions are taken from them by the federal government," Senate Minority Leader Phil Berger said. "The people of North Carolina are overwhelmingly opposed to this blatant abuse of power."

Read the rest of this Raleigh News and Observer article here.

Hey Republicans? Where's your solution to health care reform?

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is about to force the tobacco industry to fess up and spill their ingredient list for all to see.

The Food and Drug Administration is working to lift the smokescreen clouding the ingredients used in cigarettes and other tobacco products.

In June, tobacco companies must tell the FDA their formulas for the first time, just as drugmakers have for decades. Manufacturers also will have to turn over any studies they've done on the effects of the ingredients.

It's an early step for an agency just starting to flex muscles granted by a new law that took effect last June that gives it broad power to regulate tobacco far beyond the warnings now on packs, short of banning it outright.

Companies have long acknowledged using cocoa, coffee, menthol and other additives to make tobacco taste better. The new information will help the FDA determine which ingredients might also make tobacco more harmful or addictive. It will also use the data to develop standards for tobacco products and could ban some ingredients or combinations.

"Tobacco products today are really the only human-consumed product that we don't know what's in them," Lawrence R. Deyton, the director of the Food and Drug Administration's new Center for Tobacco Products and a physician, told The Associated Press in a recent interview.

While the FDA must keep much of the data confidential under trade-secret laws, it will publish a list of harmful and potentially harmful ingredients by June 2011. Under the law, it must be listed by quantity in each brand.

Read the rest of this Associated Press/ NorthJersey.com article here.

Of course, we have a pretty good idea what some of the ingredients are in cigarettes ... and it's nothing anyone should ingest:

CNNMoney.com has a story about the 'greenest' cars of 2010. That's fantastic, but what they fail to mention is the list only includes the greenest cars available in the United States. They also don't include diesel-fueled cars, which are often more fuel efficient than the gasoline-fueled engines under our hoods. Of course, that could be due to the fact that diesel is more heavily taxed, pumped with expensive additives and not as readily available as gasoline. So much for breaking our addiction to foreign oil.

CNNMoney's top 10 list of the greenest gasoline-fueled cars sold in the United States is also light on American-made options. The list includes the Honda Civic GX, Toyota Prius, Honda Civic Hybrid, Smart ForTwo, Honda Insight, Ford Fusion/ Mercury Milan, Toyota Yaris, Nissan Altima Hybrid, Mini Cooper, Chevrolet Cobalt XFE, Hyundai Accent Blue and the Honda Fit.

Prices range from $9,970, for the Hyundai, to $28,180 for the Ford/ Mercury. The cars average 38.42 miles per gallon on the highway and 33.3 miles per gallon in the city, with the Toyota Prius besting the rest in the fuel efficiency category with 48 miles per gallon on the highway and 51 miles per gallon in the city.

Meanwhile, my husband and I just reserved a BMW 118D for our upcoming European vacation. Never heard of it? That's because this best-selling green car, a.k.a. winner of the World Green Carin 2008, isn't available in our country. That's a shame because it gets an average of 60 miles per gallon.

Wake up American auto-makers.

Fortunately, it looks as if Duke Energy's Charlotte headquarters won't be affected by the company's recently announced plan to save money via layoffs. (Of course, the masters of spin are calling their employee reduction efforts "buyouts," not "layoffs.")

In fact, it sounds as if the company's headquarters are being fortified — which is good news for the Q.C.

Read more from The Charlotte Business Journal:

Duke Energy Corp. will offer voluntary buyouts to employees and reorganize its corporate staff to save up to $200 million per year in personnel, travel, real estate expenses, among other costs.

Duke says no layoffs are planned if the Charlotte-based company fails to reach its savings target. And there are no specific goals for the number of departures.

Spokesman Tom Williams says employees were informed of the buyouts and reorganization late Monday afternoon.

The buyouts will be offered to most nonunion employees. Those who accept them will begin leaving by the end of March, Williams says.

Some corporate jobs will be moved here from Cincinnati and Plainfield, Ind. But Duke does not expect a major increase in its Charlotte employment from those relocations.

Read the rest of this article here.

In related news, Goodwill gets a grant to train job seekers for "green-industry" related jobs.

Have a splash of irony: Here are a few job hunting tips from a CPCC job fair in 2008:

It's my experience that some people don't know what the word "muckraking" means, so let me explain. You see, in a time when celebrity journalism sells papers and drives Web page views faster than the scoop from City Hall, it's easy to assume "muckraking" is something negative — but it's not. It's actually a critical task that's in danger of going the way of the dinosaurs.

According to Dictionary.com, muckraking means: "to search for and expose real or alleged corruption, scandal, or the like, esp. in politics."

While any citizen can uncover the stories investigative journalists (aka muckrakers) dig up, most don't, won't or can't. It takes time to sort through the files at City Hall, to endure the public meetings, to make the phone calls to witnesses in-the-know and to write an understandable story for mass consumption. Every step in the process takes time and, as we all know, time is money.

With corporate newspapers slashing their staffs and print advertisers fleeing for the Internet, many traditional newsrooms are short on people-power and working with ever tighting budgets. That's why nonprofit investigative newsrooms, like ProPublica and the Center for Investigative Journalism are popping up. Those organizations are attempting to fill giant coverage gaps found in most newsrooms today. But in order to survive, they need support.

And, frankly, we need them. Without watchdogs keeping tabs on the big dogs, their packs are apt to run wild ... and right over all of us.

Nonprofit groups that specialize in investigative reporting have had some big scoops, cracking the front page of such newspapers as The Washington Post and forcing officials out of their jobs. Now the question is whether these organizations can stay afloat on donations.

As financially strapped newspapers have scaled back, charitable foundations have poured tens of millions of dollars into nonprofit watchdogs in hopes of keeping politicians and businesses in check. These groups figure to do a bigger share of the investigative legwork in the coming years.

But philanthropy probably can't maintain all of these groups forever. And some are still struggling to come up with a financially sustainable plan - just as old-school media are.

Read the rest of the Associated Press/ Charlotte Observer article here.

Where do investigative journalists get their information? Bob Woodward, from The Washington Post, explains:

If you would like to donate to the American Red Cross' relief efforts, click here.

Bank of America Corp., Lowe's Cos. Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. are contributing funds to earthquake relief efforts in Haiti.

BofA has pledged $1 million, which includes a $500,000 grant to the American Red Cross for the Haitian Relief and Development Fund.

The remaining $500,000 will go towards recovery efforts to restore basic medical services and fund the rebuilding of homes, schools and other structures.

Mooresville-based Lowe's will donate $1 million to support the American Red Cross International Response Fund, which helps the victims of crises around the world, including the recent earthquake in Haiti. All 1,700 Lowe’s stores will serve as donation centers for the American Red Cross.

Meanwhile, Wells Fargo & Co. is donating $100,000 to the American Red Cross' recovery efforts.

Read the rest of this Charlotte Business Journal article here.

Also in the news today: Charlottean describes surreal, 'morbid' scene in Haiti and Local groups plan earthquake relief in Haiti

From our friends at ProPublica:

According to the latest available numbers, the federal government has spent $257 billion of last February’s nearly $800 billion economic stimulus package. The number combines $164 billion in spending and an estimated $93 billion in tax cuts.

The latest numbers, which you can see on our interactive Stimulus Progress Bar, show a continued decrease in the amount of money “in process.” That amount, which is the money that has been committed to specific projects but not yet spent, forms what you might call the stimulus pipeline. It gives an indication of the number of stimulus-funded projects that contractors and other service providers can bid on.

The amount of money in that pipeline, which peaked at $172 billion back in October, has since fallen steadily, reaching $150 billion in today’s numbers. There’s plenty of stimulus money still to spend—$267 billion to be exact, not including remaining tax cuts—it’s just that much of it hasn’t been obligated yet.

For more details, check out our Stimulus Progress Bar, updated weekly.

If you'd like to help ProPublica watchdog the Stimulus, click here.

Should be an interesting meeting since neither side plans to budge.

The N.C. Division of Air Quality will hold a public hearing in Charlotte on Thursday on air-quality permits for Duke Energy’s Cliffside Steam Station.

The hearing will involve the construction and operation permit for the 825-megawatt, coal-fired expansion of the plant under construction at the site. It will also involve renewing the operating permit for the five existing units at Cliffside.

It will be held at 6:30 p.m. in the Government Center on East Fourth Street, room CH14.

The Stop Cliffside Coalition, which opposes the $1.8 billion expansion, will call for denial of the permit. “Coal plants are the largest sources of carbon dioxide emissions and major sources of toxic pollutants that foul our air and water, endangering public health,” it says in a release.

Read the rest of this Charlotte Business Journal article, by John Downey, and learn more about Duke Energy's Cliffside legal troubles here.

In related news: Duke Energy customers set record for winter energy use

And, in the Triad: Some Duke Energy Customers See Bills Double

The Stop Cliffside Coalition in April '09 at a Charlotte protest:

In December 2009, some of the protesters locked themselves to a generator on its way to Cliffside: