Talent Agents, WGA Achieve Progress in Second Round of Talks
February 19, 2019 9:22PM PT
Hollywood talent agents and the Writers Guild of America have achieved some progress at their second negotiating session over agency regulations, according to sources close to the talks.
The two sides met Tuesday, two weeks after their first meeting resulted in both sides criticizing each other, followed by the WGA holding a trio of spirited membership meetings on the issue. Neither side issued a statement after Tuesday’s talks but sources told Variety that the session had dealt with substantive issues. No date has been set yet for a third session, however.
The meeting took place seven weeks before the current franchise agreement expires. During the past year, the WGA has been pressuring Hollywood’s agencies to revamp the rules for agents due to affiliates of Hollywood’s two largest agencies — WME and CAA — moving aggressively into production, creating the potential for conflicts of interest that arise when the same company represents the creative talent on one side of the table and is the employer on the other.
The key WGA proposals would effectively end all packaging deals, in which agencies receive both upfront and backend fees, and bar agencies from any financial interest in any entity or individual “engaged in the production or distribution of motion pictures.”
Several presenters at the Writers Guild Awards show on Sunday at the Beverly Hilton expressed support for the writers in their negotiations with the Association of Talent Agencies. The WGA notified the ATA last April that it wanted to re-negotiate the 42-year-old agreement.
What’s unclear is whether members would be forced to drop their agents if the agencies are no longer covered by the WGA-ATA agreement, which will expire on April 6 if a new deal isn’t worked out.
Leave a Reply Want to read more articles like this one? Subscribe to Variety Today. JavaScript is required to load the comments.GeoGenCo's Zero Water Geothermal Technology Helps Imperial Irrigation District Achieve Green Energy Goals
EL CENTRO, Calif., Feb. 20, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- GeoGenCo, LLC has completed their semi-final designs for their next generation True Geothermal 20-megawatt (MW) power plant in Imperial Valley, CA. GeoGenCo has a 15 MW Power Purchase Agreement with Imperial Irrigation District (IID) and expects to be providing power by June of 2020.
Jim McIntosh (Mac), GeoGenCo's CEO and COO states, "The project is identified as True Geothermal because all current geothermal projects require substantial amounts of water or steam as part of their power generation process. and are therefore, more appropriately known as hydro-geothermal since water is a mandatory part of the geothermal process (either in the form of brine or steam) for both the extraction of heat and for the disposal of the residual brine."
True Geothermal does not utilize any water in their power generation process. Rather than extracting the geothermal fluids, a high-performance heat exchanger is inserted into an existing (but non-performing) geothermal well where only heat is extracted from the geothermal formation, not from water, brine or steam. While a permit application for approximately six acre-feet of water has been filed, about one third of this water will be utilized for dust control and the other two thirds reserved for emergency fire-fighting purposes. Zero water will be utilized for the power generation process.
A geothermal plant can require an average of 800 to 1,000 acre-feet of water per MW per year. A 50 MW geothermal power plant could therefore require between 40,000 and 50,000 acre-feet of water per year. This translates to between 13 and 16 billion gallons of water, which could otherwise be utilized for other purposes such as agricultural. This a remarkable improvement for US states including California, where reliable 24/7 energy such as geothermal is needed to meet their Renewable Portfolio Standards goals. True Geothermal will directly coincide with California's law requiring 50 percent of the state's power to come from alternative energy such as geothermal energy by 2050.
GeoGenCo's VP of Engineering Dr. Theodore (Ted) Sumrall points out, "GeoGenCo's non-water utilizing Geothermal Power Generation technology can also take advantage of previously drilled geothermal wells that are considered 'non-producing' due to factors such as insufficient heat, lack of brine or steam flow, or insufficient geo-pressure. This is not only a major cost savings, but also a major risk reduction benefit to the process."
While hydro geothermal power has the smallest land use footprint of any renewable power (an average of 4.5 Acres/MW or less than 10% of solar power), True Geothermal has less than half the footprint of hydro geothermal. This is a true carbon neutral production cycle power generation system which is extremely innovative and will solve a host of problems traditionally associated with traditional hydro geothermal power generation and result in geothermal becoming much more widely used than in the past.
CONTACT:
Jim McIntosh 209733@email4pr.com 916-802-0874
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SOURCE GeoGenCo
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