Climate Change

Energy and Commerce Committee – We all seem agreed that substantive federal legislation addressing climate change will emerge from the 111th Congress.  It seems entirely likely that the new Congress will have a measurably higher Democratic component than now, in both houses.  (See this from PollingReport.com and this from the “NY Times” which reports that “… the political handicapper Charlie Cook envisions Democratic gains of up to 20 House seats and 7 Senate seats, close to the 60-vote threshold in the Senate needed to break filibusters by the minority.”) 

What also seems likely, to me anyway, is that the main vehicle for climate change legislation is going to come from the House of Representatives.  The puissant John Dingell, Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, has long since set his staff and the subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality to flesh out concepts for legislation.  The committee has issued a series of thoughtful, cogent “Climate Change Legislation Design White Papers.”  These are worth reading as we gather momentum toward a real US cap-and-trade regime, along with a raft of other possible measures such as some form of carbon tax, and heightened “… efficiency and or other performance standards, incentives for the purchase of advanced technology, and funding for research, development, and deployment of advanced technology.” 

Boone Pickens Meets Al Gore – You would have to be pretty foolish to ignore input from a successful energy billionaire.  Boone Pickens made his in oil.  Now he’s got a Plan.  It’s called, appropriately enough, the Pickens Plan.  He wants to expand windpower, take natural gas out of electricity production and devote it to surface transportation, and reduce US oil imports by $300 billion a year in the bargain.  He’s got a folksy slide show right at the top of the website.  Check it out.  See also Green In Greentech For Pickens from “Forbes.” 

Canada – I haven’t said an awful lot here about our brothers and sisters to the north.  I noted in March, though, that a strict interpretation of the EISA might bar the importation of fuels made from Canadian tar sands.  (See under Oil Sands here.)  In a story from last month from the Canwest News Service, Scientists make climate plea to Harper, we are told that “More than 100 leading climate scientists have launched a new offensive challenging the federal government’s climate change plan …”   For more on this story and the letter itself, see Scientists appeal for ‘urgency and determination’ on climate issues from the CBC.

One of the driving forces behind the letter and a powerful force among Canadian scientists for an aggressive approach to confronting global warming is Gordon McBean – a sort of Canadian Jim Hansen.  McBean is the policy chair for the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction and took part in a conference last month, North America 2030 - An Environmental Outlook, along with a host of other academics studying the environment, including Thomas Homer-Dixon.  Homer-Dixon does fascinating work on the confluence of environmental stresses and conflict.

In any event, the scientists’ letter to the Canadian political leadership was an important call for Canada to come up to speed on confronting the climate change crisis. 

Good Information Resource – You might want to bookmark this site:  Environmental Expert.  There are thousands of potentially useful links, articles, companies, etc. to explore.

I didn’t want to leave the impression from my last post that I am wholly cynical about progress on confronting the climate change crisis.  On the contrary, I am entirely bullish.  I think my posts over time here have very often been about some of the truly extraordinary breakthroughs – politically, socially, and economically – that are transforming the landscape. 

I give all due credit to the efforts of the UK and Germany, for instance.  See recent posts below.  I also have to say that the EU is right in there pitching.  It’s just that the performance of my own country’s government has been so abysmal.  It’s not just the Bush-Cheney Administration that’s been at fault either.  I quoted Bill McKibben in my very first post almost a year and a half ago, from the NY Review of Books:  “After twenty years of inactivity— a remarkably successful bipartisan effort to accomplish nothing—the first few weeks of the new Congress have witnessed a flurry of activity.”  The 110th Congress has indeed been more active.  The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 is a good indicator of that.  But the present administration, which has been a nightmare on climate change (among other things) will give way, on January 20, 2009, to a new one, and there will be considerable progress made next year by the White House and Congress. 

The G8 is just one vehicle and, if history is any judge, a not particularly efficient one.  To put too many eggs in this sort of basket is to court disappointment.  The WWF released its G8 Climate Scorecards 2008 last week in advance of the summit.  See this story from “ClimateBiz.”  The US, according to the scorecard, has done the least on climate change, the UK, France and Germany the most.  “The WWF study also looks at the climate and energy policies of five emerging economies:  China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa.”  These five leading emerging economies, by the way, rejected the 50% GHG cut that the G8 announced.  See this from the “FT.”  These hugely important countries “… issued a statement saying that rich countries needed to slash carbon emission levels by 80-95 per cent from 1990 levels.”  The UK agreed.  Here’s the statement and some further commentary from the excellent Gristmill.

Don’t worry overmuch, folks.  We’re making progress, even if many of the oft-benighted “leaders” of the big industrial economies don’t quite yet get it.  As the editor of “ClimateBiz” said on this:  “As G8 political leaders meeting in Japan struggle for consensus on post-Kyoto pathways to effective global climate policy, the pace of innovation in business and national/local government programs remains brisk.”  Here’s a good example:  Jobs in Renewable Energy Expanding from the Worldwatch Institute.  “Currently about 2.3 million people worldwide work either directly in renewables or indirectly in supplier industries.  Given incomplete data, this is in all likelihood a conservative figure.”  The article predicts a continuing swell of new jobs.  

I’m not going to lie to you and say that I’ve followed these meetings with particular interest.  There’s nothing binding about what the G8 leaders decide.  So, they’ve come up with a commitment, of sorts, to cut GHG by 50% by 2050.  They don’t tell you what the baseline is though.  How seriously am I supposed to take this?

The President of the US, the leading economy in the world, is said to have come a long way since he broke his 2000 campaign pledge to enter the US into the international treaty on global warming known as the Kyoto Protocol.  Well, he’s about as lame a duck as you can be.  (Except that he can still roil world markets with saber-rattling at Iran.  And they’re rattling back.  There’s a surprise.)  Everybody in the US who is at all knowledgeable about climate change is perfectly aware that nothing that happens in the waning months of the present administration is really going to advance either a national movement to cap-and-trade or the outlines of an international agreement to be finalized in Copenhagen in December of 2009.  That’s all for the next President, be he named Obama or McCain, to do.  The present administration is in fact fighting a serious rearguard action, complete with helping to block the extension of the production tax credits for renewable energy past their Jan. 1, 2009 expiration.

If you’re really interested, though, you can see any number of the zillion news stories on the G8 climate change pronunciamentos.  If you really want to get into some of the nitty gritty, such as it is, I highly recommend Andrew Revkin’s annotated analysis of the announcement from Japan.  Revkin’s comprehensive reportage for the “NY Times” and superb blog, Dot Earth, show that he’s not only brilliant and deeply steeped in his subject, but he’s danged hard working too. 

Meanwhile, Dick Cheney was said to have censored the input of a high-ranking US scientist on the health effects of climate change.  (Another zillion stories.)   

Captain Renault: I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!

As this blog and everybody else and her cousin have been saying for some time now, we can do so much, and faster and cheaper, by optimizing our energy use.  The granddaddy of much of this eminently sensible, sober and smart thinking is Amory Lovins.  I have directed you to his good works and the work of his Rocky Mountain Institute any number of times.  Now here’s an in-depth interview with him from the folks at McKinsey.  (Free registration required.)  Here’s a quote:  “Environmental strategy is … about redesigning your company’s processes and products so that regulation is relevant only to your competitor, not yourself.  The real leaders are going to be smart companies that see the competitive advantage in leading energy transformation in their sectors.”

In New York City, Mike Bloomberg has launched an ambitious ten-year, $2.3 billion program to slash GHG from municipal operations.  I wrote about a major international initiative to boost efficiency in cities here over a year ago and I also wrote about the Big Apple’s really big  “PLANYC” at Mike Bloomberg’s Earth Day.  In the City’s press release from yesterday, Hizzoner said:  “Our long-term plan will cut City government’s annual output of greenhouse gases by nearly 1.7 million metric tons, which also will greatly improve air quality, and take a 220-megawatt bite out of peak demand for electricity.”

Meanwhile, in a national effort, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the American Public Power Association have announced a joint initiative designed “to help American households and businesses take advantage of all cost-effective opportunities to improve the efficiency of electricity use.”  The APPA has 1,300 member utilities.  See the press release and this brief article from GreenBiz.

Finally, we looked at China a few posts back.  (We’ll continue, obviously, to look at China quite a bit, including in the context of today’s G8 announcement.  I’ll discuss that tomorrow.)  China has launched a massive energy efficiency drive which, hopefully, will curtail the explosive growth in power use - and GHG emissions - that threaten to wipe out any and all potential gains that the developed world might make in addressing global warming.  See Can energy efficiency fuel an industrial evolution?  from Greenwire, via the WBCSD.  The gist of the story is that China has a new law that is fostering energy conservation and that old factories are being shut down and critical new devices for infrastructure, like industrial heat-recovery boilers, are being put into place at an increasing rate.  NRDC is on the job in China too.  Read the story.  There’s nothing more crucial for the poor old planet than that China get real traction on getting its GHG down, in a big way, and soon!

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To help in looking at the big picture, as we will be tomorrow in discussing the G8, here’s a guest column from last week’s “FT” special report on energy:  Lord Browne, former head of British Petroleum, has a series of thoroughly reasonable things to recommend for us all on how to pursue the quest for climate sanity.  See his guest column:  Consensus on climate change goals.  He quotes one of the most sensible of all Twentieth Century public figures, the economist and intellectual giant, John Maynard Keynes, speaking at the end of the critical Bretton Woods Conference:  “We have shown that a concourse of nations is actually able to work together at a constructive task in amity and unbroken concord.”   Hear, hear.

Sorry, folks, for not writing sooner, but we were away for a long July Fourth weekend.  Here are some interesting bits now, though.  I’ll have more tomorrow. 

Denmark – My favorite journalist, Elizabeth Kolbert, has another minor masterpiece, at the “New Yorker” this week, The Island in the Wind.  She’s writing about a nearly zero-carbon enclave of 4,300 people in a Danish farming community.  Using windpower for electricity and biomass for district heating, she uses this microcosm to show what’s possible in the world.  Fantastic story.

Switzerland – In the same article, we learn about a serious Swiss initiative to make 2,000 watts of energy consumption the standard for post-industrial societies.  It’s a fascinating story.  At the post below on India, I quoted Indian PM Manmohan Singh to the effect that it’s necessary to achieve “convergence” in energy use.  The Swiss may well be showing us how.  See also this on the 2,000 Watt project from the superb website, “World Changing.”

Germany – Finally, here’s a great story from Renewable Energy World on geothermal power.  (I wrote about geothermal, particularly a critical MIT study, here a while back.)  The Germans are hoping to further their extraordinary progress on renewables by opening up the geothermal industry. 

China – You will have noted that the PRC surpassed the USA this past year in total carbon dioxide emissions.  I referenced this here a couple of weeks ago and referred to the “NY Times” article that fleshed out the whys and the wherefores.

Much of the Chinese inventory of emissions, not surprisingly, is a consequence of products that they’re manufacturing for export.  One way of looking at it is from the consumer’s side:  A new report says that Britain’s carbon emissions rose by 18% from 1992 to 2004 if you consider “embedded emissions” from imports.  This article from Reuters today talks about the study and refers to another statistic:  “…up to one-quarter of China’s carbon emissions were due directly to its export trade to Europe and the United States after they effectively sent their smokestack industries there in the 1990s.”  That’s the other point of view here – the producer’s. 

So when the US finally puts a price on carbon next year – the Good Lord willin’ and the crik don’t rise – and the EU tightens up its regulations, then industrialists and others will really start to evidence concern about the big NIC’s (newly industrializing countries), India and China chief among them, getting off without GHG limits.  One way to address this is to impose tariffs on the high-carbon imports.  I referred to this idea at Economic Levers for GHG Reductions and cited some recent articles that lay out the scheme.  European Commission President José Manuel Barroso and French President Nicolas Sarkozy are among advocates of a “green tariff” system.

Clearly then, China needs to be at the table on climate change.  For all the considerable, wholly justified alarm about China’s exploding GHG emissions, they also seem to be concerned as well.  China calls for help on climate change, from Reuters, says that President Hu Jintao recently “…urged organizations and companies to optimize energy use, recycle resources, increase forest coverage, explore water resources scientifically and strengthen international cooperation” in a quest to reduce risk from climate change.  China, like India, has taken part in recent G8-related talks and will attend the climate talks at the G8 Summit next week.  (See previous post.)  See also the climate change coverage from Xinhua, the Chinese news agency, including Hu’s speech.

Meanwhile, the AFP reports here “UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told China on Tuesday to accept its global responsibilities on climate change, as he began a three-day visit to the world’s most populous nation.”  The SG also met today with the Global Compact China Network and said:  “By investing and planning today for a future that protects our planet, Chinese business has an opportunity to be a true front-runner. I’m sure Chinese businesses will not wait for the long and complex intergovernmental agreements to be finalized, but rather engage pro-actively in China and elsewhere in the world to pave the way for a low-carbon path to prosperity.”  (See the speech.) 

So, how’re the Chinese doing?  On some renewable fronts, pretty well it seems.  PlanetArk’s article from a few months back, Sun Rises Slowly on China’s Solar Energy Sector, reports “A bevy of US-listed Chinese firms such as SunTech Power and foreign players such as Applied Materials Inc are starting to expand capacity in China, ploughing billions of dollars into factories across the country to capitalise on Beijing’s intention to generate a tenth of its power from renewables by 2010.”  A more recent Reuters article, China wind power capacity growing, says “China’s installed wind power generating capacity is expected to top 10 gigawatts (GW) by the end of this year and to exceed 20 GW in two years, far above government targets…”  Similarly, the “FT” in a special report on energy out the other day, had one analyst saying “…that worldwide production capacity for components will increase from about 3 gigawatts last year to 15GW to 20GW of production in 2010, largely thanks to a massive expansion of capacity in China.”  The “FT” also reports “The outlook for wind also looks rosy in China and India, which are both adding turbines at a rapid rate…”

The Chinese still get 70% of their electricity from coal.  Can they really get some traction on their addiction to a massively environmentally destructive practice like burning coal?  It’s not only the GHG problem, it’s also the soot and other pollutants like sulfur dioxide and mercury.  (See Black Carbon and Solar Cookers from April.)  It’s also the auto industry.  It’s also heavily polluting industries like cement making that are breaking the climate change bank.  Can they stay focused and keep energy efficiency and renewables in play?  Let’s also see what, if anything, comes out of the G8 summit.  It’s all part of the intricately spun web of international climate change politics that is being spun from Kyoto to Bali to Washington to Beijing to Brussels to Hokkaido and to Copenhagen in December of 2009.  

India – The second-most populous country in the world is rapidly industrializing.  That means its GHG output has been rising inexorably, as more heavy industry serves the country’s burgeoning economy, and roads fill with cars.

India is intricately and inextricably involved with the ongoing UNFCCC negotiations leading to a post-Kyoto international agreement.  It has also been working with the G8 and other parties on energy, the environment, and climate change.  There was the G20 Conference on Global Warming and Clean Energy in Tokyo in March, the environment ministers’ meeting in Kobe in May, the energy ministers’ meeting in June, and the forthcoming G8 Summit in Hokkaido will address climate change with India very much at the table.

Dr. Manmohan Singh, India’s Prime Minister, yesterday unveiled his country’s National Action Plan on Climate Change.  In this article from the BBC, Singh is quoted as putting solar at the center of their scheme.  See also this summary from “The Guardian.”  There will be eight “National Missions” that will be the key components of the plan:  on Solar Energy, Enhanced Energy Efficiency, Sustainable Habitat, Conserving Water, Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem, and on creating a “Green India,” plus one on Sustainable Agriculture and a last on establishing a Strategic Knowledge Platform for Climate Change.

In his speech, Singh was poetic at times.  “This is a world which we hold in trust, a world which has created and nurtured life for countless generations.”  (This evokes the National Association of Evangelicals’ “Creation Care” project that I’ve mentioned a couple of times, including here.)  He also said:  “India has a civilizational legacy which treats Nature as a source of nurture and not as a dark force to be conquered and harnessed to human endeavour. There is a high value placed in our culture to the concept of living in harmony with Nature, recognizing the delicate threads of common destiny that hold our universe together.”  Works for me!

Singh didn’t pull any punches either on where we find ourselves at present.  “There is a real possibility of catastrophic disruption of the fragile life-sustaining ecological system that holds this world together. Science is now unequivocal on this assessment.”  He further said that it’s time to move to renewables.  “Over a period of time, we must pioneer a graduated shift from economic activity based on fossil fuels to one based on non-fossil fuels and from reliance on non-renewable and depleting sources of energy to renewable sources of energy.” 

Finally, he talked about the inequities in consumption rates in the world.  “Long term convergence of per capita emissions is, therefore, the only equitable basis for a global compact on climate change.”  (See Galloping Consumption from March at the blog.) 

To paraphrase Shelley, if India comes, can China be far behind?  (See this space soon.)

We looked the other day at some key initiatives from some of the states of the USA.  There’s recent news of not-inconsiderable import from some of the bigger nations. 

UK – Prime Minister Gordon Brown unveiled a plan last week for renewables that would commit £100 billion over the next dozen years.  It’s a comprehensive plan, looking at quite a bit of windpower for one thing:   an estimated 4,000 new wind turbines onshore and 3,000 offshore.  I mentioned one critical offshore initiative in Britain here recently.  The UK plan also is going to promote distributed energy (what we call distributed generation) and microgrids.  This is already a British success story.  (See “Smart Grids” here from last year.)  They’re looking at tidal and wave power as well.  Brown notes that the Severn Barrage alone could provide 5% of Britain’s electricity.  According to this BBC article, “Moves to speed up the connection of renewable energy projects to the national grid are also expected to be announced to help clear a huge backlog of proposed developments.”

For a succinct video clip of the PM talking about this, go here.  Brown, for my money, is well grounded and focused, and I think this ambitious plan is going to get done.  For the whole speech, go here.  You can also read the transcript here.

According to Brown, “It will mean by 2020 renewables accounting for over 30% of electricity supply, 14% of heat supply, up to 10% of transport fuels. It will save an additional 20 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, it will reduce our gas imports by up to 16%.”  Brown also believes in the economics of renewables, as does Business Secretary John Hutton who said:  “We will also maximise the economic benefit for the UK by creating a new generation of green collar jobs and making the most of our strengths as one of the world’s largest manufacturing economies; a world class centre of energy expertise and a leading location for inward investment.”  (See also The Business of Renewables from February.)

Britain is the nation that spearheaded the Industrial Revolution.  You may remember that the atmosphere had a mere 278 ppm of carbon dioxide before then.  We’re on a fast track to double that and wreak extraordinary havoc if we don’t move away from business as usual.  Britain seems to be well committed to a course other than BAU.

Next up, India.