Climate Change

I’m sorry to report that the backers of renewable energy tax credit legislation today failed to get enough votes to get a vote on the legislation itself, H.R. 6049, the Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008.  This is getting tired.  I reported yesterday on the continued blossoming of activity in renewables.  However, things are going to slow down if the production tax credits and other vehicles are not renewed.  See this today from the AP and my post on this from May 24. 

Offshore in Britain – The UK’s Crown Estate is looking to create up to 25 GW of offshore wind in the next dozen years. Okay. What is the Crown Estate? It is the British monarchy’s real property and enterprises, and it is managed separately from government properties. Here’s the story from CarbonFree. The Crown Estate will help its partners get the sites identified and approved, but the developers “will remain wholly responsible for construction and operation of windfarm sites.” Also, here is the story from the Crown Estate itself.

Marine Power – A story from Reuters tells us that serious marine power is about to explode into greater use. They note that the “ethical” bank Triodos thinks that “wave and tidal power lags maturer wind power schemes by just five years and will catch up rapidly.” Pourquoi pas?!

Envisioning the Future for US Wind – I noted here an important new report from the DOE last month saying that the US could move from its current wind generating capacity of 16.8 gigawatts to 304 GW in 2030, accounting for 20% of US electrical capacity. This was a big part of the buzz at the recent American Wind Energy Association’s “Windpower 2008” conference on the technical, political and financial issues facing the US wind industry. There were over 13,000 attendees and 776 exhibitors in Houston for this. Here is an interesting, fact-filled podcast: a selection of interviews by RenewableEnergyWorld.com from the conference. See RenewableEnergyWorld.com for a host of terrific stories on wind and other renewables. If you go to the bottom of the page, there are eight links to “Renewable Energy Technology Basics.”

Energy Efficiency and Renewables in Asia – The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has made a commitment to financing $1 billion a year for clean energy. See this from AFP via the WBCSD. See also the ADB recent “Asia Clean Energy Forum (ACEF) 2008” in which more than 500 experts met in Manila last week.

Thermoelectric Generators – Finally, here’s another interesting story from CarbonFree about thermoelectric generators that convert the heat from car exhaust fumes into electricity. I mentioned cogeneration at my recent post on the carbon finance conference I attended, and had some useful comment in response. This technology is cogeneration for your car. Again, pourquoi pas?! One of the researchers estimates that the TEGs would “…cut gas consumption by between five and seven percent.” (See also my rave review from April of the Nova special, Car of the Future.)

As expected, the climate change bill died in the Senate because of an inability to invoke cloture.  See this from the AP.  You didn’t have to be a seer to predict this.  See my item on this under “Melange” from May 3 below.

Don’t worry, though.  We’ll get this done in 2009.  Early.

BofA Leader Wants Government to Help – Ken Lewis, the CEO of the Bank of America, ranked 12 in the Fortune 500 and with about $1.3 trillion in assets, had a terrific op-ed in the “FT” today.  In it he notes the critical importance of government’s role in “…working to build a new economic future based on clean, renewable energy.”  He says “…our partners in public policy need to do more to help create a market environment in which sustainable energy alternatives are economically competitive.”  He specifically calls on Congress to renew and extend the renewable energy and efficiency tax credits.  (See this from the blog.)  He also calls for a cap-and-trade bill.  Why renewables?  Lewis’s answer:  “energy security, resource conservation, reduction of pollution and protection of natural habitats.”  Works for me!

Bank of America is also building the BofA Tower in midtown Manhattan.  It is seeking the top US Green Building Council LEED certification, Platinum, as “one of the world’s most environmentally responsible high-rise office buildings.”

In April, BofA signed the Carbon Principles, “to evaluate and address carbon risks in the financing of electric power projects.”  In February, I noted that three of the world’s biggest investment banks, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, and Citi, had, in creating the Carbon Principles, made an implicit admission of the riskiness of putting money into coal-fired plants.

Green Roofs – This story from Reuters’ “Planet Ark” service caught my eye this morning:  Mexico City Plants Lawns On Roofs To Fight Warming.  Public buildings will have roofs planted and incentives will be given for privately owned buildings to do the same.  It’s all part of Mayor Marcelo Ebrard’s five-year, $5.5 billion program to reduce GHG.  I had a student do a great paper last fall on green roofs.  There are any number of compelling reasons to go this way.  See the exceedingly informative Greenroofs.com, “the international greenroof industry’s resource and online information portal.”  This is a hot idea for a cooler planet.

You can also go to their “TV station” to see some great videos, like this one from Chicago.

Flash from the Past – Here’s another video, not-a-little startling when you consider when it was made – 1958.  When I was a kid, there were a great series of educational movies from Bell Labs.  The man who took you through all sorts of various wonderful subjects was Dr. Frank Baxter.  I particularly remember the one on blood and the circulatory system, “Hemo the Magnificent.”  What I didn’t know then was that Dr. Baxter was an English Professor, not a scientist or an actor, and that some of these movies were done by the legendary Hollywood director, Frank Capra.

So, get this:  It’s 1958 and this sequence, part of a film on weather, “The Unchained Goddess,” nails global warming on the head.  Not incidentally, I saw this at the indispensable DeSmogBlog.

Senate on Climate Change – In the US, the Senate began debate yesterday on legislation to address climate change. The “SF Chronicle” reports here that the opponents and proponents were so eager to start bare knuckling over the bill that they voted 74-14 to proceed to debate. The bill “…would require about 2,100 major U.S. emitters - mostly coal-fired power plants, oil refineries and chemical plants - to pay for the right to emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Proceeds from selling or trading those permits could total over $6 trillion over the next 40 years, and would be reinvested in renewable energy and rebates to consumers.” Here’s a graphic from the “NY Times” illustrating the geography of carbon emissions in the US.

S.3036 has been the focus of much debate already, both on the Hill and off. Here’s one analysis of some of the policy and politics from the Center for American Progress. Another CAP, the US Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), a grouping of industry and environmental groups, agrees on six principles, but differs internally on critical issues such as to what extent permits will be given away or auctioned to industries.

As I’ve noted recently, we’re not going to have a climate change law in the US this year. The debates on this legislation now are important, though, for staking out various positions, and putting the issue out before the public.

Solar Power Economics – The “FT” had a nice story the other day on the Silver lining in solar power storm clouds. (Remember, you may have to register, but it’s free and otherwise painless.) The line that caught my eye was that, according to one industry analyst, “…the global capacity for production of photovoltaic equipment - the biggest section of solar power technology which converts sunlight directly into electricity - is set to increase ‘dramatically,’ from 3 gigawatts last year to 15 to 20 gigawatts of production in 2010. Much of the growth is coming from China.” 2010 is right around the corner!

Take note also that “Abu Dhabi’s Masdar Initiative intends to spend more than $2 billion to build a thin-film solar manufacturing subsidiary,” according to the Dow Jones news service here. (I wrote about the Masdar project here last month.)

Two Important Conferences – The first of these is the meeting in Bonn that began yesterday. “More than 2,400 participants, including government delegates from 172 countries and representatives from business and industry, environmental organizations and research institutions are attending the two-week meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC),” reads this release. The AP reports “The Bonn talks are to go into the details of an agreement to be concluded in December 2009 and signed in Copenhagen, Denmark. The talks are based on an accord reached in Bali last December when the United States, India and China indicated they would take part in a post-2012 arrangement,” said the AP here. You can follow all the proceedings at the UNFCCC website and at the International Institute of Sustainable Development (IISD) here. (I highlighted the IISD’s “knowledge management project,” Climate-L.org, on May 29 below.)

The other conference is the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) that began today in Rome. Billed as the “World Food Security Summit,” there were more than 40 world leaders gathered at the emergency meeting and UNSG Ban Ki-Moon told them hunger breeds “social disintegration, ill health and economic decline,” according to the “LA Times” here. See also this release from the FAO with details of their Director-General Jacques Diouf’s impassioned speech. Diouf said “The structural solution to the problem of food security in the world lies in increasing production and productivity in the low-income, food-deficit countries.” (I referenced the new, comprehensive report, “OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2008-2017,” in the context of the food-biofuel controversy on May 30 below.) In the context of issues that we’re looking at here, Diouf also said: “Nobody understands how a carbon market of 64 billion dollars can be created in the developed countries to offset global warming but that no funds can be found to prevent the annual deforestation of 13 million hectares, especially in the developing countries whose tropical forest ecosystems act as carbon sinks for some 190 gigatonnes,” and “Nobody understands how 11 to 12 billion dollars in subsidies in 2006 and protective tariff policies have had the effect of diverting 100 million tonnes of cereals from human consumption, mostly to satisfy a thirst for fuel for vehicles.”

The somewhat ubiquitous IISD is also in Rome. See their coverage here. Their coverage, by the way, can be found not only in English, but in French, Spanish and Arabic as well.

REDD – I referenced the movement for “reducing emissions from deforestation and ecosystem degradation” in my last post below. Here’s a little more insight from “The Economist” going back to March. They mention projects that are trying to prevent rainforest destruction through various approaches to “voluntary” credits.

The smart money, though, is on a post-Kyoto, UN-administered system that will grant offset credits for forest projects. I wrote in my review of an important new book, Earth: The Sequel, “A post-Kyoto international regime that set a reasonable price on carbon ($30 a ton) would allow Brazil alone to realize $168 billion profit from protecting its rainforests while preventing emissions of six billion tons of carbon dioxide, according to the Woods Hole Research Center. (Pop quiz: After the US and China, which two countries are the biggest contributors to global warming? Brazil and Indonesia - because of rainforest destruction.)”

I sat in on the last day of this event in New York City on Friday, hearing two fascinating panels discuss “Corporate Strategies For Carbon Reduction” (in the context of federal cap-and-trade legislation) and Clean Tech’s role in getting GHG’s down.  The main sponsors of the summit were EcoSecurities, one of the world’s largest developers and suppliers of emission reductions, and Baker & McKenzie, a law firm with a well-developed practice in renewable and carbon offset projects.  The event was run by Infocast.  They’re covering an awful lot of ground these days on energy, the carbon markets, renewables, and other things. 

The focus of the first panel was how industry sectors are going to respond to federal climate change legislation.  The panelists represented the power production, transmission and distribution industry; the natural gas production and distribution industry; and insurance.  There has been a lot of analysis done in these industries, as you would expect, on the implications of a cap-and-trade regime in the US.  (See my notes on May 29 on the vehicle that’s going to be discussed this week in the Senate, “Cap-and-Trade Bonanza” from May 16 below, and also Good Grief, More Carbon Markets from a year ago.)

The director of AIG’s Office of Environment and Climate Change, Alice LeBlanc, was supportive of the idea of including reforestation and agriculture initiatives as eligible offsets in a US law, these areas accounting for nearly 40% of GHG emissions.  Bruce Braine, the Vice President for Strategic Policy Analysis of American Electric Power, talked about carbon capture and storage.  AEP is, by Braine’s own admission, the largest coal-fired producer of electricity and carbon dioxide emitter in the US – so CCS would be high on their agenda.  See Braine’s powerpoint on this from last fall at a UN meeting.  Nate Hanson, Florida Power & Light’s VP in charge of renewables, noted that there is no real CCS system available now and so public service commissions are looking askance at new coal-fired projects.  FPL has, not incidentally, the largest portfolio of renewables in the US power sector.  (Go here for information on their environmental and sustainability programs.)  CCS – or more precisely the lack thereof – was the subject of the “NY Times” lead article I cited in my previous post below. 

The discussion of the climate change bill in the Senate by the panel revealed what seemed to me to be an alarming disconnect on the Hill between what the bill offers now and both what the international community has already created via the Kyoto Protocol and what’s being negotiated now for a post-Kyoto regime.  I noted the other day that nobody realistically thinks legislation is going to be passed by this Congress, and that they’re gearing up for a bill in 2009, but I was a bit shocked to see the lack of conformity to where the international community has already been and where we’re going.  Witness LeBlanc’s comment, for example, on the need to incorporate principles being ironed out on REDD – “Reducing emissions from deforestation and ecosystem degradation.”  The critical UN meetings in Bali in December accepted the principle and there continues to be a lot of activity.  Let’s hope the next Congress and the next President figure out the considerable bang for the buck in this.  They need, clearly, to think about all the international ins and outs of climate change. 

During the break, I asked EcoSecurities’ US director, Eron Bloomgarden, about this.  He said that there were Congressional staffers who’d gone to Bali and they are aware of the international initiatives.  He also flagged the Presidential Climate Action Project to me.  The PCAP, modestly, “… has developed a bold, comprehensive and non-partisan plan for presidential leadership rooted in climate science and designed to ignite innovation at every level of the American economy.”  In talking to LeBlanc privately, she noted that the international community is itself very closely watching what’s happening now on the Hill.

The other panel I heard had some fascinating insights on clean tech.  (See Green Tech, Low Tech, Clean Tech, New Tech and any number of posts on Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency.)   One of the panelists was Frank Alix, the CEO of Powerspan, a company that has advanced pollution control technologies for power plants.  They’re developing a carbon dioxide control technology, not surprisingly.  Mitch Tyson is the CEO of Advanced Electron Beams.  AEB deploys its clean energy technology across a wide range of industrial applications, including pollution control.  Tyson is also involved in a number of regional initiatives including the New England Clean Energy Council and the Massachusetts High Technology Council.  He’s extremely knowledgeable, as you’d imagine, about his industry, and passionate.  So is Al Forte, Director of Carbon Practice for Nexant, a high-tech provider to the energy and petrochemical industries.     

Forte talked about what he characterized as the best Renewable Portfolio Standard program in the country – Connecticut’s.  It very effectively fosters renewables and energy efficiency, including the issuing of energy efficiency credits for eligible projects.  See the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund and the Connecticut Energy Efficiency Fund.  In the same vein, Tyson talked about the Cambridge Energy Alliance.  These folks are also fostering a considerable effort on reducing energy use.  This is all on the general theme of demand-side management.  Tyson pointed out that Massachusetts is moving to “decoupling” in which utilities are given incentives to promote energy efficiency.  I pointed out that New York State used to have it and it lapsed.

Another nugget:  Forte at one point said that there’s 800 GW of generating capacity in the US and it’s operating at an average of 28% efficiency.  He more or less characterized this as criminal and wondered why there isn’t more use of cogeneration.   

For more, see Energy Efficiency and Energy Efficiency for Fun and Profit, items I’ve had here recently on this subject.