Climate Change

The House of Representatives has passed another version of the energy tax package that failed to make it into the energy law passed in December or into the economic stimulus package that became law earlier this month.  (See this and this from June on the Senate’s failure on the tax portion and also see  “Economic Stimulus” under The Business of Renewables below.)  What the legislation, HR 5351, would do, essentially, is rescind $18 billion in tax breaks that the oil and gas industry are presently enjoying and use that money to underwrite advances in energy efficiency and renewables, including extending tax credits to the renewable industry.  This article from CNNMoney.com, House Votes To Repeal Oil Tax Breaks, Finance Renewables, is one of the few of hundreds that characterizes the legislation correctly.  Most of the articles describes “tax hikes” or “new taxes” when, in fact, we are talking about the rescission of tax breaks from which the oil and gas industry are deriving considerable benefit at the same time they are experiencing record profits.  Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel said yesterday in the floor debate:  “The American people do not deserve to pay the oil companies twice: once at the pump and once again on tax day.  There are record prices at the pump, and now we have record taxpayer subsidies for the big oil companies. As my mother used to say, ‘such a deal.’”  Taxpayer subsidy.  Good expression. 

Will the Senate pass the same legislation?  I’m not that great at predicting, but I would guess no.  If they do, President Bush will undoubtedly veto it.  There aren’t enough votes to override.  (And yes, it makes me angry.)

Sorry, dear readers, about not being on the blogwaves in the past few days.  I plead the press of work and beg your kind indulgence.  Here are a couple of quick hitters for now.  I do hope to have some heftier posts for you soon.

Biofuels and Food – Here’s a leader (Britspeak for editorial) from yesterday’s “Financial Times” that is hard-hitting and unequivocal:  In the face of world food shortages and rapidly escalating prices, “…producers should stop wasting food by subsidising biofuels…”  See Biofuels will not feed the hungry.  See also my post below, Are Biofuels A Bummer?, from February 15.

Tech Miracles? – See these two items for fun, and perhaps profit:  a compressed-air-powered car and nanotechnology that can provide personal hydrogen electrolyzers for all your needs.  First, Tata Motors looks at air-powered vehicle “that would use air as fuel and emit no pollutants in city driving.”  Works for me.  How about this then from “EETimes”?  Nanoparticles could make hydrogen cheaper than gasoline.  QuantumSphere’s “nanoparticle coatings could make hydrogen easy to produce at home from distilled water, and ultimately bring the cost of hydrogen fuel cells in line with that of fossil fuels.”  See their succinct, convincing video.

Less Than Meets the Eye – This “Time/CNN” article, U.S. Remains Cool to Warming Pact, sums up the much-ballyhooed announcement the other day by a White House official that:  “The U.S. is prepared to enter into binding international obligations to reduce greenhouse gases as part of a global agreement in which all major economies similarly undertake binding international obligations.”  But as UNFCC executive secretary, Yvo de Boer, explains here (courtesy of AP), “If it’s a quid pro quo, then it’s a nonstarter.”  Let’s also wait to see what the present administration says or does further on the cap-and-trade legislation that is wending its way through Congress. 

I wrote about one of the several climate change six-hundred pound gorillas at King Coal in November.  There was a hard-hitting piece in yesterday’s “Progress Report” called Bad News For Big Coal.  (Fair warning:   “Progress Report” is a newsletter of the avowedly partisan Center for American Progress, which I’ve noted before, along with the fact that I find their work to be thorough and well-documented.)  The article talks about the fact that the federal government recently withdrew from the flagship CCS development, FutureGen. 

It also talks about the counterattack launched by Sunflower Electric in Kansas against that state’s huge decision in October to deny permits for two 700 MW coal plants.  Go here for my post on that, including Health and Environment Secretary Roderick Bremby’s extremely lucid video announcing the decision.  He said then “I believe it would be irresponsible to ignore emerging information about the contribution of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to climate change and the potential harm to our environment and health if we do nothing.” 

Sunflower Electric and the nation’s biggest coal company, Peabody, have launched “Kansans for Affordable Energy,” an exceedingly thinly disguised public relations campaign in the guise of a citizen’s initiative.  This brings to mind a bald-faced ploy in the 1980’s against federal acid rain legislation:  “Citizens for Sensible Control of Acid Rain” (CSCAR).  Peabody then was among the coal companies and utilities behind this “citizens’” group.  See this excellent item, among several, from the excellent “DeSmogBlog,” on the brawl in Kansas.

If you like, you can see this TV ad from Sunflower.  No mention of coal, but pictures of windmills; says it was recommended for approval, but, in fact, the permit was denied.  Warm and fuzzy, just like coal-fired power plants. 

Download link 

For a decidedly more vicious tack, check this out, from a series of their newspaper ads:

The Kansas legislature is being bribed and bludgeoned into attempting to reverse the state’s denial of the permits, but Sebelius has already said she’ll veto any such legislation.  For a good look at what the folks at Sunflower and Peabody would really like to say, see this video spoof from the “Wichita Eagle.”

Even more significantly, getting back to the big picture on coal, three of the world’s biggest investment banks, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, and Citi, have, by signing the Carbon Principles, admitted the riskiness of putting money into coal-fired plants.  For more, see Know Your Power.

Tropical Forest Loss – Following on my last post (see below) about the destruction of hugely productive carbon sinks for conversion to cropland for the production of biofuel feedstocks, it is relevant to see the testimony from three very worthy leaders in the fight against rainforest loss.  The House of Representatives’ Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming held a hearing last week, Fire and Rain: How Destruction of Tropical Forests is Fueling Climate Change, in which Thomas Lovejoy (Heinz Center), Stuart Eizenstat (Sustainable Forestry Management), and Stephanie Meeks (Nature Conservancy) all gave expert testimony. 

Nuclear Waste – I wrote about Nukes last month and thought you should see this article, As Nuclear Waste Languishes, Expense to U.S. Rises, by the excellent “NY Times” reporter Matt Wald.  Wald has been on the nuclear power beat, among others, for many years, and always has an important story to tell.  Yucca Mountain, the government’s proposed repository for the long-term storage of radioactive waste, is decades behind schedule.  (See the DOE’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management [OCRWM] for more on Yucca Mountain.)  Aside from the dangers of storing waste in temporary storage at 122 sites in 39 states, there’s the cost owing to the fact that the federal government has to pay the utilities for its not receiving the waste long-term as it had promised to do years ago. 

Carbon Dioxide to Gasoline – Scientists Would Turn Greenhouse Gas Into Gasoline is the headline for this “NY Times” article about how two Los Alamos alchemists, I mean scientists, would make gold from lead, I mean gas from carbon dioxide.  “The idea is simple,” we are told.  “Air would be blown over a liquid solution of potassium carbonate, which would absorb the carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide would then be extracted and subjected to chemical reactions that would turn it into fuel: methanol, gasoline or jet fuel.”  The energy demand for this process, perhaps not surprisingly, would be enormous.  There is an interesting post and some useful comments at “Dot Earth,” the fine blog by “NY Times” reporter Andrew Revkin.  One of the comments seems on the mark:  “We would get a lot more bang from just using the electricity their system requires to directly power vehicles than using that electricity to make a liquid fuel.”  And we could do it without coal or nuclear power plants.  I’ve heard Jim Gordon, Cape Wind’s developer, say that, on a good day, not only would the wind farms produce enough electricity for all of Cape Cod’s and the Islands’ needs, but that there would be excess to power electric vehicles.  I have been dreaming about precisely this since the first Earth Day.

Smart Grid – “The Toronto Star” had a thoughtful column on this yesterday.  (I wrote about smart grids here in December.)  With the burgeoning of wind and solar projects in Ontario, there’s a move to get the grid there, as well as in North America and the rest of the world for that matter, more responsive to renewable energy projects.  As the article notes, “Managing the power coming from a dozen or so massive plants is relatively easy compared to a ‘distributed generation’ model that essentially involves thousands of mini power plants contributing electricity to the grid at different times of the day.”  As one consultant is quoted:  “Any kind of distributed energy needs some kind of connectivity and two-way communications.”  (For more on DG, see this from the DOE.)

I’ve written about biofuels a number of times.  You can check out the various posts under the category Biofuels and Agriculture.

Now two recent important studies, published in “Science,” are saying that biofuels are causing quite a bit more harm than good.  The A.P.’s H. Josef Hebert wrote this article (appearing in “USA Today”) on one of the studies.  “The researchers said that farmers under economic pressure to produce biofuels will increasingly ‘plow up more forest or grasslands,’ releasing much of the carbon formerly stored in plants and soils through decomposition or fires. Globally, more grasslands and forests will be converted to growing the crops to replace the loss of grains when U.S. farmers convert land to biofuels, the study said.”  The German Marshall Fund, one of the sponsors of the research, led by Tim Searchinger, one of their fellows and a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, has a link devoted to this research.  Searchinger says in a policy brief that “…switching from gasoline to corn ethanol doubles greenhouse gas emissions for every mile driven.”

The other study, “Land Clearing and the Biofuel Carbon Debt,” from The Nature Conservancy and the University of Minnesota, has similar and complementary conclusions.  It asserts, among other things, that “Converting rainforests, peatlands, savannas, or grasslands to produce biofuels in Brazil, Southeast Asia, and the United States creates a ‘biofuel carbon debt’ by releasing 17 to 420 times more carbon dioxide than the fossil fuels they replace.”  The Nature Conservancy has a lot of excellent material on this study here, including an interview with the lead scientist for the report, Joe Fargione, the report itself, and an arresting slide show depicting some stark scenes of lands burned out for biofuel crop cultivation.  Fargione tells us that “Most people don’t realize that globally there is almost three times as much carbon in the plants and soils as there is in the air. Our natural ecosystems provide an incredibly valuable service of carbon storage and climate stabilization if they are left intact.”  (A critical new initiative that came from the Bali talks in December was a new emphasis on protecting and enhancing forests.)

Christopher Flavin, president of the venerable Worldwatch Institute, had this take on the reports and work his institute has done:   Time to Move to a Second Generation of Biofuels.  WI and The Sierra Club issued a report last fall, Destination Iowa - Getting To A Sustainable Biofuels Future, in which they recommended a number of policy directions including (a) accelerating development of cellulosic biofuel technologies and the infrastructure to harvest, transport, and process the new crops, (b) supporting farmers who want to invest in sustainable fuel crops such as perennial grasses or fast-growing trees, and (c) reducing tax subsidies for food-based biofuels and increase subsidies for fuels with a low-carbon footprint, such as waste and cellulose-derived biofuels.  WI had another highly useful commentary in January in which they said, among other things, that “The benefits of biofuels can be many: reducing dependence on oil, keeping money and jobs in the local economy, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants, to name a few. But not all biofuels are created equal, and their benefits in fact vary wildly depending on the feedstock, how it is grown and harvested, where it is grown, and how it is processed.”

An AFP story from January, courtesy of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s newsfeed, reports Internal EU report casts doubts on its biofuel strategy.  The article says that the Joint Research Centre, the European Commission’s in-house scientific body, “criticises an EU plan to boost the use of biofuels in transport, concluding that their costs outweigh the benefits.”

There’s a mountain of damning evidence piling up here.  Will policymakers heed it?  That’s always the $64,000 question on matters of energy, the environment and particularly climate change.  The “Washington Post” had a terrific article last week on these two analyses in which the reporter, Juliet Eilperin, notes that they “…could force policymakers in the United States and Europe to reevaluate incentives they have adopted to spur production of ethanol-based fuels.”  She references a letter sent by ten senior scientists working on climate change to President Bush and congressional leaders urging them to reconsider the present path in light of the new studies.  “There is an urgent need for policy that ensures biofuels are not produced on productive forest, grassland or cropland,” the scientists wrote. 

“Half the cuts in greenhouse gas emissions needed to make the world safe can be achieved at a net profit to the global economy, a study has found.”  That’s how this article from today’s “Financial Times” leads.  (The threshold for “safe” is the 550 ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that the IPCC posits is the limit.  That’s about double the amount we had prior to the Industrial Revolution.)  Ceres, a coalition of institutional investors, commissioned the report by the McKinsey Global Institute.   Ceres’s president is quoted in the article:  “Efficiency is the fastest, cheapest way to reduce greenhouse gases and could bring large profits to the global economy.”  This graphic from the Swedish energy group, Vattenfall, underscores her contention.

You can access the full report online from the MGI - Curbing Global Energy Demand Growth: The Energy Productivity Opportunity.  You’ll find not only the report there, but a slideshow as well and a pretty good video from a recent event in which New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, former US Secretary of Energy and recent presidential aspirant, is the keynote speaker and Diana Farrell, director of the MGI, presents the findings from their report.  There’s a good panel of experts discussing this after Farrell’s presentation.

The report asserts that “targeted policies can overcome the policy distortions and market imperfections that are currently acting as barriers to capturing higher levels of energy productivity.”  They go on to say “The obstacles that thwart improvements in energy productivity include information gaps, market-distorting subsidies, an inadequate financing infrastructure, and misaligned incentives. To overcome such barriers, policy makers must terminate distorted policies, make the price and use of energy more transparent, create new market-clearing and financing mechanisms, and selectively implement demand-side energy policies (such as new building codes and appliance standards) while also encouraging demand-side innovation by companies.”  In the category of “market-distorting subsidies” they might include the billions in dollars in tax breaks currently be enjoyed by the oil and gas industry and the eye-popping subsidies being given to ethanol production. 

This is hugely useful information and policy makers everywhere should embrace it.  The new energy law from Congress does incorporate a good number of important initiatives that the MGI report endorses.  Mile to go, though, miles to go ……

New Fund – Agence France-Presse reports G7 calls for investment to fight climate change.  “The United States, Japan and Britain have proposed setting up a multilateral fund involving the World Bank that would administer global aid and investment to help nations fight slash greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming.”  This follows on the announcement in January that I reported on here in which Japanese PM Fukuda made a $10 billion commitment and said:  “A carbon-free society can no longer be a mere fantasy.”  His finance minister and those from the U.K. and the U.S. had an op-ed in the “Financial Times” last week in which they called for “a fund to ensure the widespread adoption of clean technologies in the developing world.”  An eminently practical view is guiding this initiative.  “If energy consumption continues along the current path in developing countries,” the ministers wrote, “future development will have a greater impact on our climate. We have no choice but to help developing countries reduce the carbon footprint of development and make their economies climate change resilient.” 

Renewable Energy Tax Credits – I wrote on February 7 below about the failure of the Senate to include a vital tax credit program in the economic stimulus bill.  Well it appears that this issue is far from dead on The Hill.  In this story from Reuters, I, for one, am delighted to learn that Nancy Pelosi and other House Democratic leaders want to revive the legislation that would extend the existing credits past the end of this year and, at the same time, rescind the billions of dollars that the oil industry is receiving now, in an era of unprecedented profits for them. The “NY Times” unequivocally endorsed the idea of renewing the credits in this editorial from this past Sunday.  See No Surprises (Unfortunately) – Part Deux from December for more on the tax issue.

Congressional Investigation – Meanwhile, in another part of the House, and further to the story of the investigation I mentioned here early in January, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman has issued subpoenas.  The “L.A. Times” reports here that Waxman “…wants the EPA to hand over documents related to its rejection of California’s request to impose stricter emission standards.”  Henry Waxman is a bulldog, make no mistake.  He’s also a hugely smart member of Congress and doesn’t go off half cocked.  Oh yeah, and he’s a passionate environmentalist. 

Water in the West – This is a subject of intense and enduring interest.  There is a magisterial treatment of this in the book, Cadillac Desert, from 1986.  A new analysis of data from researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography “shows that climate change from human activity is already disrupting water supplies in the western United States.”  Reuters has their coverage here. 

“National Geographic” has a great story, Drying of the West, in their most recent issue.  There are some arresting issues being discussed here such as the prolonged drought the West has been suffering, the extraordinary diminution of water levels from key sources like the Colorado River and the shrinking snowpack, the devastation from fire and insects preying on drought-weakened forests, as well as the continuing explosion of development and the waste of water. (See my recent post on Arizona.)  Being “National Geographic,” there are also stunning pictures.   

Warming Oceans – Researchers in London have quantified the relationship of sea-surface warming and hurricane activity.  This press release reports on the research, telling us “…that a 0.5°C increase in sea surface temperature can be associated with a ~40 per cent increase in hurricane activity.”

Meanwhile, however, there was a lot of play recently on a paper that said that warming oceans might mean fewer hurricanes hitting the U.S.  This blog item from “Nature” sums up the research and gives some insights from others.

I wrote in Hurricane Season last August about a number of angles and some good resources for a further look at this critical subject.

There’s another story out about the relationship of ocean warming to the food chain.  See this from the website of  the National Geographic Society.  A recent study “…shows that as temperatures warm, the growth of single-celled ocean plants called phytoplankton slows at Earth’s mid and low latitudes. The plants’ growth increases when the climate cools.”  You can find an abstract of the study itself at “Nature.”

Economic Stimulus – In the U.S. Senate yesterday, they tried to get a vote on the economic stimulus package.  See this from the A.P.  The measure couldn’t get the votes necessary for cloture – the magic 60 necessary for a bill to be fully considered on the Senate floor.

What’s this got to do with climate change you ask?  Good question.  One of the missing components from the energy legislation signed into law in December was the extension of tax credits beyond 2008 for the renewable energy industries.  The Senate Finance Committee heeded the call and included a renewal in the economic stimulus package that was sent to the full Senate.  The American Wind Energy Association has been trumpeting the need for this and has voiced its concern for 75,000 U.S. jobs that would be at risk “…solely as a result of the decline in wind energy investment.”  They further calculate that tens of thousands of additional jobs will be threatened because of similar slowdowns in other renewable energy industries.  See their statement from January 30 lauding the action of the Finance Committee and their release from February 4 of a report calculating the potential for loss of  “116,000 U.S. jobs and nearly $19 billion in U.S. investment” in just one year if the tax credits are not renewed.  I’d say this fits in with the economic stimulus package, wouldn’t you?

But, surprise, surprise, the Senate Republican leadership pulled out all the stops and killed the package.  To be fair, the target was not the tax credit extension per se, but based on past experience such as keeping the Renewable Portfolio Standard out of the energy bill as well as keeping the rescission of tax breaks for the oil & gas industry and renewable tax credits out, I’d say the Republican leadership was perfectly happy to have the tax credits go down with the ship.  (For further background, see Senate Energy Update and any number of other posts from December on the legislation.) 

Green Energy Industry – The “NY Times” had a good story recently on how the industry’s doing in California.  The short answer:  very well, thank you.  The boom is  “…the product of billions of dollars in investment and mountains of enthusiasm.”  I’ve written about this boom any number of times here, including how venture capital is seeking projects all over the place.  One of the students in my climate change class was opining that there are no good environmental stories.  I told her and will continue to tell you that there are hundreds of good stories, with more every day. 

Trillions for Renewables! – Trillion has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?  An article in the “S.F. Chronicle” – Trillions likely to boost clean energy technology - Rising fuel costs, global warming spur investment – is about a new report from Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a consultancy headed by Daniel Yergin, a longtime energy expert who has done some very solid work over the years.  Yergin, quoted in the article, says:  “We are seeing a major shift in public opinion.  This is providing a vital impetus that is moving clean technology across the great divide of cost, proven results, scale and maturity that has separated it from markets served by mainstream technologies.”  There is, according to CERA, a worldwide “bubbling” of clean energy activity.  CERA’s press release on the study, “Crossing the Divide: The Future of Clean Energy,” quotes Robert LaCount, head of CERA’s Climate Change and Clean Energy Group.  “The rapidly advancing new paradigms of climate change, energy security, and policy implementation and cooperation among the United States, the European Union, China and others will produce a broad range of opportunities, risks and pitfalls as the modern energy industry increasingly moves to adopt clean technologies that will be part of the alternative, low-carbon pathway to the energy future.” 

Pinch me.  Am I dreaming?

And one has to wonder how soon will the people so desperately trying in Congress and elsewhere to block this kind of progress be swept away by history?  Not soon enough for me.