Climate Change

Green Building – I’ve written about the fascinating subject of Green Building a number of times here, including this special article I did for the FPA website.  The “Financial Times” had a useful update the other day, Greener bricks on the old block, focused on the retrofitting of existing buildings.  JPMorgan Chase, for instance, one of the largest financial services firms in the world, is renovating its 1.3 million square foot headquarters on Park Ave., an arduous task.  (They are also building a new building in the World Trade Center that will seek Platinum LEED certification.)  I also wrote about the Clinton Climate Initiative’s $5 billion program to retrofit buildings worldwide at More Climate Summit in May.

Smart Grids – Here’s an informative article from Forbes - Juicing the System which maintains, among other things, that “As the industry shifts from large central plants to a diverse collection of windmills and biogas generators, managing the complex balance of supply and demand will require fat communications pipes and complex calculations.”  If distributed generation is to be, as many of us devoutly hope, the wave of the future, then in order for it to be effective, there are many policy and technology changes that will be necessary.  Title XIII of the new energy bill is devoted to a considerable upgrading of smart grid research and development.  (This title begins at page 777.)  There’s a newsletter devoted to the smart grid concept, a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Electricity Delivery & Energy Reliability which, among other things, was created “… to lead national efforts to modernize the electric grid,” and an industry-government association called GridWise that’s devoted to “… an entirely new way to think about how we generate, distribute and use energy.”  See also this from the BBC on microgrids.

Renewables – What’s going to feed the smart grid?  A lot more Renewable Energy, “the Good Lord willin’ and the crik don’t rise,” as my old mother used to say.  Even in the absence of a Renewable Electricity Standard (or Renewable Portfolio Standard if you prefer) in the new federal energy bill, we are going to continue to see an expansion of these technologies in this brave new world.

By the way, if you want to look back at where we’ve been, try my Year in Review.  Not incidentally, Happy New Year to one and all.

As we come down to decision time for the caucus voters in Iowa (January 3), the primary voters in New Hampshire (January 8), and big contests to follow later in the month in Michigan, South Carolina and Florida, it’s crucial to remember that the next President of the United States is going to have a lot of work to do on climate change.  Come November of 2008 and the election itself, this issue will be top tier. 

As of now, though, it’s not.  Here’s a story from the “Financial Times” today that contends that voters are concerned about climate change but that the presidential candidates are lagging.  Clearly, the Democrats have been playing the issue up much harder than the Republicans, as they know their target caucus and primary voters actually know about and care about the issue.  The Republicans, in my opinion, all want to skirt this because it’s an “Al Gore” issue and he’s the Devil when it comes to their more conservative constituencies.  In fact the specter of Al Gore, and any issue that is identified with him, as climate change so clearly is, serves these candidates better as an object of ridicule.  Or, at best, indifference.  (See also, If You Don’t Like Al Gore, Then … from the spring.) 

I sketched the candidates’ positions way back in April at Presidential Candidates.  The national League of Conservation Voters has launched a focused initiative:  The Heat is On – 2008.  The LCV has also compiled “Presidential Profiles” here.  LCV has a third resource here:  their voter guide.  So these good, nonpartisan folks have got the issue well covered. 

To return to how serious the candidates are taking the issue, “Grist” sponsored a forum in November and only Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Dennis Kucinich showed up.  All the candidates were invited.  You can find video, a transcript, and links to interviews and campaign websites for all the candidates here. 

Other sources on what the candidates are saying include this from the “NY Times,” this from CBS News, and this from the Council on Foreign Relations. 

A story from the “NY Times” – Plan on Airline Emissions Hints at U.S.-Europe Rift – is a window onto an interesting bigger story:  how global warming is impacted by aviation.  I’ve written on one aspect of this recently in a story I did for “Planning” on Sustainability at the Airports.  I also blogged on Green Flying in July, with a great video included from the EU. 

Here’s a sense of the overall contribution of aviation on carbon dioxide emissions, as of 2002.

The EU came out with a draft policy about a year ago to regulate emissions from aircraft flying into or out of their countries’ airports.  You can refer to this memo for an explanation of the ins and outs of the policy.  Included here is also the answer to the essential question:  “How do aircraft affect the global climate?”  EU Environment Ministers meeting in Brussels last week agreed to the policy of including aircraft in the overall European emissions trading scheme, but with some softening of the draft plan.

The US doesn’t like the idea of requiring limits as the “NY Times” article referenced above indicates.  They don’t like it in anything as we know from the Bush Administration’s continuing opposition to national or international caps on GHG emissions.  (For the latest evidence of this, witness the EPA’s refusal to grant California and other states the right to regulate GHG emissions from cars.  See this from Environment News Service, this from AFP, and this from Time/CNN, an interview with the Governator and the Chair of the California Air Resources Board.)

Some of the environmental community in Europe think that the EU environment ministers have fatally dumbed down the policy.  The European Federation for Transport and Environment (T&E) issued this release:  Aviation emissions plan could derail international climate targets.  T&E have this informative briefing on the subject. 

… as they say in the movie biz.  POTUS has signed the energy bill.  Bush signs bill boosting fuel standards reports the A.P.’s H. Josef Hebert, the writer who’s been on this story all along.  (As have I – see any number of items on the energy bill under Governments and Politics going back to the Spring.)  “Bush said the new requirements will help ‘address our vulnerabilities and dependency’ on foreign oil by reducing demand for gasoline and diversifying the nation’s fuel supply.”  Harry Reid had this to say yesterday when the Senate’s bill from last week passed the House:  “By blocking tax incentives in renewable energy and standards to supply clean, renewable electricity, Republicans missed a chance to grow our new clean energy industries and build new-century jobs.  But we will keep fighting for these and other forward-looking reforms.  This bill is just the first step toward an energy revolution that starts in America and ripples throughout the world.”  (See the whole statement here.)  Nancy Pelosi, one of my new heroes for how much she did to promote a good energy bill, signed it yesterday and had this statement.  She referenced the oil to be saved, the reduction in GHG emissions, the savings for consumers, and the hundreds of thousands of new jobs to be gained. 

This legislation definitely sets a new course for this country.  We have miles to go before we sleep, fershur, but it’s still a great couple of strides in the right direction. 

Andrew Revkin had a sobering article in the “NY Times” on Sunday - As China Goes, So Goes Global Warming.  First of all, with all of the hoopla surrounding the meetings in Bali, Revkin puts it nicely in perspective:  “The Bali achievement? Two more years of talks.”

More to the point, though, is the fact that we really do seem to be in a headlong rush towards the cliff internationally with our GHG emissions.  Revkin writes:  “Richard Richels, an economist at the Electric Power Research Institute, helped produce an ominous forecast: even if the established industrial powers turned off every power plant and car right now, unless there are changes in policy in poorer countries the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could still reach 450 parts per million — a level deemed unacceptably dangerous by many scientists — by 2070. (If no one does anything, that threshold is reached in 2040.)” 

What that means is that if China, India, Brazil and the rest of the very rapidly industrializing world don’t find a better way, then we are in for the direst of futures.  As Ross Perot might say:  “End of story.” 

What’s the answer?  Answers – plural – is more likely.  Leapfrog technologies and technology transfer are two approaches.  I’ve mentioned “leapfrogging” here and here, and Revkin references the importance of R&D and “transferring” new technologies to developing economies:  “That is why several dozen top-flight climate and energy experts sent a letter this month to members of Congress and the presidential candidates seeking a tenfold rise in the federal budget for energy research, now about $3 billion a year.”  (See also Revkin’s terrific blog, DotEarth.)

I’ve also mentioned “price signals” such as the cap-and-trade approach and the carbon tax at numerous points along the way here.  See several posts at Business and Economics.

Here’s another take on this – and it seems very promising to me, unlettered as I may be as an economist – from Yale professor Judith Chevalier:  a tax on carbon consumption.  So, if you can’t get China or some other recalcitrant to restrain GHG emissions through some international protocol (to which the Bali meetings were supposed to point the way), then take it out of their exchequer by creating barriers to products created in high-GHG economies.  Reward the producers who make products that are more earth friendly.  Given the manufacturing output now, and the fact that some of these economies will be exporting bigger, higher value products, like cars, before long, then this is a serious incentive to lower their GHG output.  An economic policy analyst at one of the leading environmental organizations, Environmental Defense, called this a good idea.  See A Carbon Cap That Starts in Washington.  She references particularly the work of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in this regard.  This is a deep-thinking group of folks working on climate solutions. 

Energy Bill – “You can’t always get what you want,” quoth the Stones.  “But if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you need.”  Well I think the U.S. needs more than what we’ll get out of Washington in the energy bill, but it just might be a good down payment.  See U.S. Senate Approves Scaled Back Energy Bill from the excellent Environment News Service.  “The scaled-back measure passed 86-8 and the House is expected to approve the bill next week. The Bush administration has indicated the president will sign the legislation into law.”

As you know, the bill that came from the House contained the withdrawal of significant tax breaks that the oil and gas industry are presently enjoying, and that this version failed to be brought to a vote, so the federal government’s largesse was retained.  According to the ENS story, “Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu was the lone Democrat to oppose ending debate. Arizona Republican John McCain, who is running for president, was the lone senator not to vote.”  It goes on to report “‘The future just failed by one vote,’ said Senator Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat in the wake of the cloture vote. ‘The past was preserved … the oil companies are now celebrating in their boardrooms. Not only do they have the highest profits in history, they continue to have a death grip on this Senate.’”  But he’s not bitter.  (Nor am I.)  The American Wind Energy Association said in a statement “Today’s vote is out of step with Americans across the political spectrum who overwhelmingly support clean, home-grown renewable energy.” 

Oh well, there is a lot of good stuff in this legislation, known as the  “The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.”  Jeff Bingaman, the chair of the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee, said in a release “…he is pleased that the Senate overwhelmingly adopted an energy bill that, while imperfect, takes major steps toward energy efficiency and shifting toward renewable energy sources.”  The NRDC said “… we are disappointed that the renewable electricity standard was removed from the final bill, since investing in renewable, efficient energy sources is critical to moving America beyond its oil addiction. We look forward to separate passage through Congress in the near future.”

Climate Change Talks – Meanwhile, down in Bali, it seems that the smoke has cleared and there’s an agreement.  There are over 3,000 stories listed for this at Google News!  What we have here is an agreement on a course for further negotiations.  Bali breakthrough launches historic climate talks is the headline from Reuters.  “The deal after two weeks of talks came after the United States dramatically dropped opposition to a proposal by the main developing-nation bloc, the G77, for rich nations to do more to help the developing world fight rising greenhouse emissions,” said Reuters.  “Following grueling all-night talks, the conference of 190 nations finally launched a process to negotiate a new treaty for when the UN Kyoto Protocol’s commitments expire in 2012,” reports the AFP here.  The BBC says “The US has said the climate change negotiating process it agreed to in Bali must ensure developing states take their fair share of emission cuts,” in their article.  Finally, “Time” has a nice summary at Who Won and Lost at Bali. 

The Pew Center on Global Climate Change, a highly effective voice, said a critical next step “…is an unequivocal signal by the United States that it is prepared to negotiate a binding international commitment.  Having joined other governments in launching this new U.N. process, the Bush administration must not use its upcoming meeting of major economies to stall or steer countries away from binding commitments.  With Congress now well on its way to enacting an economy-wide cap-and-trade system, it’s time for the administration to support mandatory emission limits at home as a foundation for a fair, inclusive, and effective global agreement.”  We’ll see.

For further information, including video, go to the conference website.  

The Democrats in the Senate have failed again to surmount Republican obstruction on getting even a scaled-down energy package moved along.  Last week, the Democratic leadership was forced to give up the ghost on the Renewable Portfolio Standard.  Today Harry Reid had to give up the package of tax cut rescissions that the oil and gas industry have been enjoying in recent years.  See this from Reuters.  See the vote here.

I’m supposed to be mostly objective, but I’m frankly too depressed now to comment.  I have commented at great length on the failures of Congress and the Bush administration before.  You can refer to any number of recent and not-so-recent posts on the energy legislation.  Where’s the silver lining right now?  The upgraded CAFE standards?  Let’s see what the White House does to undermine those.  (See A Shameful Presidential Threat, an editorial from today’s “NY Times.”) 

Consolation Prize for the Week:  California’s emission-control law upheld on 1st test in U.S. court, from the “S.F. Chronicle.”

It appears as if the entire constellation of those who’ve got a stake in addressing the climate change crisis have descended on Bali over the course of the last ten days.  The conference wraps up tomorrow.   Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the U.S. has reiterated the Bush administration’s adamant opposition to mandatory GHG reductions.  (See No Surprises (Unfortunately) from last week.  The headline today from Reuters was EU accuses U.S. of blocking climate talks.  The White House has called a meeting of 17 of the world’s top emitters, including China, Russia and India, in Hawaii late next month to discuss long-term curbs on greenhouse gases.  This follows on the nearly universally decried meetings the Bush administration hosted in Washington in September.  (See More Climate Change Talks.)  The feeling of one leading delegate in Bali, Humberto Rosa, Portugal’s Secretary of State for Environment, was “If we would have a failure in Bali it would be meaningless to have a major economies’ meeting in the United States.”

Reuters further notes Al Gore lays blame for Bali stalemate on U.S.  Gore said:  “I am going to speak an inconvenient truth.  My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress in Bali.”  Ouch.   You can see a clip from Gore’s speech here.

It’s a further inconvenient truth, I’m afraid, but we’re going to have to wait until January 20, 2009 to have the U.S. government get down to rolling up its sleeves in this.  See my predictions for next year and beyond at the new “Year in Review” page here at the blog.

As of Friday, December 7, a day which will live in infamy because of the Senate Republicans’ unwillingness to overcome the undue influence of the special interests of the electric utility and oil & gas industries (in cahoots with three Democrats), the renewable portfolio standard of 15% and the tax revisions providing $21 billion in revenue to support renewables looked as if they would be stripped from the superb energy package that had come over from the House.  (See No Surprises (Unfortunately) below.)  A frustrated Rep. Rahm Emanuel said last week:  “As an amateur student of constitutional history and as a member of Congress, I have come to the conclusion that the Senate was a historic mistake.”  (I wrote about this at The Hill in July.)   

Now we hear that the Senate is indeed going to strip the 15% RPS but leave the tax provisions substantially intact.  See U.S. Senate Democrats to revive energy bill from the “Detroit Free Press” today.  Ranking Energy and Natural Resources Committee member, Pete Domenici, warns, however, that “It’s a wasted time and effort to pass a bill with $21 billion in taxes.  The president will say ‘I told you not to do it.’”

Here’s a little inside baseball on how the Senate came to abandon the RPS from a veteran energy beat reporter at “U.S. News & World Report.”

As reported in October at The Envelope, Please …, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore shared the Nobel Peace Prize this year with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  They were awarded the prizes today in Oslo.  Go here for the speech given by the Chairman of The Norwegian Nobel Committee, Ole Danbolt Mjøs, and the lectures given by Gore and by R.K. Pachauri, the Chairman of the IPCC.  All three presentations are worth reading.  

See news coverage from “The Washington Post.”  There’s also a good story from NPR which covers the Peace Prize and the talks in Bali.