Climate Change

What a great yarn!  A smart, successful, committed energy entrepreneur comes along with a solid project to provide enough zero-emission, renewable energy to supply, on a good day, all the stationary power needs of Cape Cod, Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, and, if you had plug-in vehicles, a good bit of the surface transportation needs as well.  Wind turbines are a proven technology and in Europe, offshore wind farms have been flourishing for years.  The project would serve an area that is now subject to considerable air pollution from the ancient power plant that is in place.  A devastating oil spill from a barge headed to that power plant occurred only a few years ago.  The wind farm will eliminate three quarters of a million tons of GHG a year and provide a much-needed and reliable boost to the New England electrical grid.  What’s not to love?!

Well, if you have a multimillion dollar summer home on Nantucket Sound, you might not like that the view is going to be diminished at the horizon.  If you have a yacht, you might not like the idea of sailing in and around the farm.  So, as has been too often the case in determining energy policy in this country, and elsewhere, money talks.  The book, Cape Wind, out a little over a year ago, tells the story of, as the subtitle says, money, celebrity, class, politics, and the battle for our energy future on Nantucket Sound.  It’s not a pretty story.  It’s beautifully told, don’t get me wrong.  It reminds me of Fast Food Nation, a hugely depressing book, but compelling in every way.  However, the Cape Wind story ends better.  There appears to be wind at the end of the tunnel. 

The Cape Wind project continues to wend its way through the courts and the environmental review process.  Fighting opposition that has extremely deep pockets and connections in high places, the project has kept moving forward.  After more than six years of environmental review, the comment period for the draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) ended in April.  The Army Corps of Engineers transferred the lead agency responsibility for the environmental review of the project to the Minerals Management Service of the Department of the Interior a couple of years ago.  See the MMS webpage for Cape Wind here.  It’s got all the documentation.  In November 2004, the involved agencies released, according to the developer, a very positive DEIS reporting numerous project benefits at minimal impact.  Here is the developer’s summary of the findings.  The permit should be issued this year, and they expect turbine manufacturing and construction in 2010. 

The “NY Times” did a story on this in 2003 that is still worth reading – A Mighty Wind.  The story of the reporter’s impact on the chemistry of the debate is recounted in the book.

Cape Wind bills itself as America’s first offshore wind farm.  They were certainly the first to come out with a real proposal but it looks like they’ve got some competition to be the first into the water and onto the grid.  See Bluewater Wind’s proposal for Delaware waters.

My old buddy, Mike Vickerman, gave me the book last summer.  I’m really glad that I finally got around to reading it.  Mike runs a superb organization, RENEW Wisconsin, that has been promoting wind power for years.  Read his insightful and entertaining two-part commentary on the book here and here. 

Wind is here to stay.  For more, see these links:  American Wind Energy Association, Windpower Monthly, Nat’l Wind Technology Center, Danish Wind Turbine Mfr. Association and the U.S. DOE Wind Power Program, and some of my posts, here recently and any number of other times at the blog.

Finally, for fun, go to the Daily Show’s segment from last summer on the Cape Wind controversy.

As I said on Friday, there is so much going on. Here are some more salient items for you.

Jim Rogers – I quoted the Duke Energy CEO here a while back. In the Sunday “NY Times Magazine,” there’s a profile of the head of the nation’s third-largest emitter of carbon dioxide. Why has he been promoting a cap-and-trade law when it will impact his company so enormously? The short answer: “‘If you’re not at the table, you’re going to be on the menu,’” he says in the article. The article is a good survey of where we are on climate change legislation and where the power industry is. (Hint: not yet quite in the same place.)

The big, unanswered question, for me anyway, is why the subject of demand-side management is not front and center. The article touches on this. By DSM, we mean all the ways in which a utility, power regulators, other authorities, and consumers get consumption down. There are ways to reduce consumption by having large users cut down in peak periods. There are the obvious approaches to energy conservation such as mandating higher efficiency and providing audits. Cogeneration and distributed generation – or decentralized energy as the Europeans call it – will both enormously add to the efficiency of power systems and therefore radically reduce consumption.

Rogers says in the article, for instance: “So we have 500,000 solar units on the roofs of our customers. We install them, we maintain them and we dispatch them, just like it was a power plant!” That’s enough to replace a large coal-fired power plant, and it’s one innovative approach.

Beyond that, why shouldn’t power providers get paid for helping to reduce consumption? It’s called decoupling and it’s worked before. We had it in New York State and it lapsed. Duke Energy, and others, are bringing it back. As Rogers says, ““I would rather spend $8 billion implementing efficiency than spend $8 billion on building a nuclear plant.” Hear, hear!

The Economist – In the current issue of the venerable “Economist,” there is a special section on the “Future of Energy.” In the leader (Britspeak for editorial), they say “…in the imaginations of a coterie of physicists, biologists and engineers, an alternative world is taking shape.” They also report that “…plans for the end of the fossil-fuel economy are now being laid.” This is the message of “Earth: The Sequel” which I wrote about in April. There’s a host of good material into which you can sink your teeth at “The Economist” report.

Algae Moves Up – Algae has a lot of possibilities. Aside from its ability to grow very quickly and in a relatively small footprint, thus providing a much-more easily accessible and cost-effective feedstock for ethanol than corn, or even cane sugar, it also consumes enormous amounts of carbon dioxide. Algae production can, in fact, be configured to act as a carbon sink. This is precisely what is being piloted by a utility in Arizona. (I wrote about this, also in “Earth: The Sequel”.)

In this article from Reuters, we learn that an American company, Algenol, is in a deal with a Mexican company, BioFields, to build a large plant in the in the Sonoran Desert. Algenol is aiming to produce one billion gallons, 10% of current US capacity, by 2012.

More Electric Cars! – Further to my recent notes on cars, here’s an item from GreenBiz: GM, GE and Ford Join DOE to Advance PHEVs. It’s only a modest $30 million, but it could signal a real acceleration by American industry in this critical field. See also McCain Proposes $300M for Next-Gen Car Battery from them. (Not incidentally, GreenBiz has a world of great information into which you can delve.)

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.)

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.

Here’s a post I had in February: Coal Takes Some Lumps.  I looked then at the demise of the federal government’s flagship project on coal capture and storage (CCS) and at the concerted, and sometimes vicious, counterattack launched by a utility in Kansas against the denial of its permits for two new plants.

Today’s lead story in the “NY Times,” part of their excellent series “The Energy Challenge,” was Mounting Costs Slow the Push for Clean Coal. The great Matt Wald, who I’ve lauded and cited here many times, reports, in a nutshell: “Coal is abundant and cheap, assuring that it will continue to be used. But the failure to start building, testing, tweaking and perfecting carbon capture and storage means that developing the technology may come too late to make coal compatible with limiting global warming.” 50% of US electricity comes from coal. 80% in China. (Gulp.) See the blog item from Andrew Revkin, also from February, Dot Earth: Is Capturing CO2 a Pipe Dream?

I attended a conference today on carbon investment and finance and heard one speaker who runs a technology firm offering clean coal technology say that the utilities are, for all intents and purposes, in panic mode. (More tomorrow about that, and some other interesting perspectives from the conference.)

A prominent item in the Business section today was on food production competing – and losing – to biofuels. (I’ve written any number of times about that here: see Biofuels and Agriculture.) Food Report Criticizes Biofuel Policies reports on new findings from the OECD and FAO that agricultural commodity prices are staying high and getting more volatile. This release from the OECD says: “Growing demand for biofuel is another factor contributing to higher prices. World fuel ethanol production tripled between 2000 and 2007 and is expected to double again between now and 2017 to reach 127 billion litres a year. Biodiesel production is seen to expand from 11 billion litres a year in 2007 to around 24 billion litres by 2017. The growth in biofuel production adds to demand for grains, oilseeds and sugar, so contributing to higher crop prices.”

Many food policy experts have called for a reversal of the US and EU mandates and subsidies for biofuels. I reported here in March that one of the world’s leading development economists, Jeffrey Sachs, had characterized these policies as “misguided.”

Finally, Andy Revkin, the “NYT” lead reporter on climate change, tells us here that “The Bush administration, bowing to a court order, has released a fresh summary of federal and independent research pointing to large, and mainly harmful, impacts of human-caused global warming in the United States.” You can find the report at the website of the US Climate Change Science Program. John Kerry is quoted in the Times article: “The three-year delay of this report is sadly fitting for an administration that has wasted seven years denying the real threat of global climate change.” Don’t hold back, John. Tell us how you really feel.

Not only is the planet heating up, but, as we’ve seen here, so is the intensity and the seriousness of the debate on how to get GHG’s down.  One persistent theme is the necessity of “setting a price on carbon.”  We’ve heard this from the Stern Review, the IPCC, Lehman Brothers in their reports on the Business of Climate Change, and numerous economists.  The US Senate will shortly begin debate – as early as next week – on a vehicle for a comprehensive federal approach, with a cap-and-trade system at its core.  (See A Summary of the Boxer Substitute Amendment To the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act and this look at the state of legislation in Congress from the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.)  Realistically, nobody expects a bill to be passed by this Congress and signed into law by this President.  However, the lessons we will learn as legislation progresses this year in Congress will serve as the foundation for the law that will emerge from the next Congress and that will be signed by the next President.  Beyond an American cap-and-trade regime, of course, there is the international agreement that will be finalized in December of 2009 in Copenhagen.

So, as the pace quickens over the next few months and into next year, there will be more and more analysis emerging from various worthy think tanks and other keepers of the policy flames.  Here, for instance, is a paper on “Economic Incentives in a New Climate Agreement” from Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.  The paper looks at the “… potential use of market-based or economic-incentive instruments to ensure that polluters face direct cost incentives to mitigate emissions at the lowest possible cost. The first section describes various economic-incentive policy instruments and the second section discusses their potential application in the design of an international climate policy agreement.”  This is the language that the international negotiators on the post-Kyoto agreement are speaking.  (For more on their activities, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change has comprehensive coverage.) The Belfer Center paper is a good, digestible look at some of the basics of where we’re going.

Another approach to curbing GHG, particularly from newly and rapidly industrializing economies such as China’s and India’s, is to use trade instruments.  How do you do that?  One way was detailed by Yale professor Judith Chevalier in an op-ed from the “NY Times” in December:  a tax on carbon consumption.  I wrote about this here and described it thus:  “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.”

“Policy Innovations,” a Carnegie Council online magazine, has this recent take:  Can Green Trade Tariffs Combat Climate Change?  The federal legislation under consideration “…would also levy punitive tariffs on greenhouse-gas-intensive products imported from countries that lack comparable action’ to that of the United States, starting in 2020.  Industrial lobbies and labor unions are pushing hard for these sanctions to take effect more quickly.”  So, this is not just some wonks pushing ideas around in space any longer.  This could become one of the keystones of an American approach to the global crisis.  And not just American.  The Carnegie Council article reports that “European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and industrial chambers of commerce strongly advocate a similar tariff system, leading many analysts to predict that the EU will also adopt some sort of green tariff system in the next few years.” 

I’ll give you one more tactic to consider:  feed-in tariffs.  What are FIT laws?  “They place a legal obligation on utilities to purchase electricity from renewable energy installations. The tariff rate is guaranteed, and in the best examples, for a long period — say 20 years. The tariff rate is scientifically determined for each technology, to ensure profitable operation of the installation.”  (This is from an excellent paper by an analyst from The World Future Council, courtesy of RenewableEnergyWorld.com.)  A new report from the Heinrich Böll Foundation North America, Feed-in Tariffs and Renewable Energy in the USA - a Policy Update, looks at how FIT’s have driven growth in Europe, what the experience has been in the six US states where they’re on the books, and the proposal in Congress for a federal law.

Break out your old economics textbooks.  There’s going to be plenty to look at and analyze.

I looked last month at the car of the future, and particularly a superb show from Nova. Zero emission cars fueled by zero emission power plants give zero emissions. That equation works for me. (See also A Little Automotive Fun - Plus Some Serious Business from a year ago, and other posts under Transportation.)

There’s a lot to say about ZEV - zero emission vehicles. For instance, “The coming large-scale hybridisation and electrification of cars promises to transform how they are made, who profits from them and the way they are sold and driven.” That’s a mouthful. An industry charged up is an excellent, characteristically comprehensive article from the “Financial Times.” Batteries are one critical factor in this and it appears that the lithium-ion battery is the “potentially paradigm-shifting technology” here.

The “FT’s” sister publication, “The Economist,” has a couple of recent stories too on this. In search of the perfect battery talks about the lithium-ion battery at some length, and some other approaches as well.

Some auto companies are hard charging on this. “The Economist” had this story as well recently on Renault-Nissan’s all-electric car initiative. Carlos Ghosn, President and CEO of Nissan Motor Company, plans to launch a battery-powered car in America in 2010 and is spearheading an alliance with Renault to “offer a complete range of electric vehicles in every large car-market” by 2012. They are also working with Project Better Place to put electric vehicles on the road in Israel and Denmark by 2011 and to provide a “network of charging points.” See also this story from Reuters’ “Planet Ark.” What’s the idea? See this short video from Project Better Place. (It’s hokey, but you get the point with it.)

Download

Okay, now you’ve got a ZEV, and a place from which to power it, but where do you get the power? If it’s from coal-fired power plants, who needs it? But in Denmark, they’re looking to use electricity from wind. See this release from DONG Energy, Project Better Place’s partner. In Israel, solar would be a pretty logical choice.

At a conference I attended last year, I heard Cape Wind’s developer, Jim Gordon, say that on a good day his offshore wind farm could not only supply all the stationary power needs of Cape Cod, Nantucket, and Martha’s Vineyard, but the surface transportation needs as well - if plug-in hybrids were being deployed. See also the King Review Of Low-Carbon Cars commissioned by the UK government, “to examine the vehicle and fuel technologies which over the next 25 years could help to decarbonise road transport, particularly cars.”

Meanwhile, if you want to go high end on the car, check out Tesla Motors. These are some sweet wheels, for a hefty price, but it’s all electric.

Tesla is profiled in the fabulous Nova special I mentioned, “Car of the Future.” There is some truly terrific stuff there to read and to view.

I wrote about Energy Efficiency for Fun and Profit back in February. Energy efficiency is where you get the most bang for the buck in reducing GHG. In fact, you save money with efficiency. Dow Chemical, for instance, reduced its energy intensity by 38 per cent between 1990 to 2005. They spent $1 billion and realized $5 billion of savings. The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report says that “Studies suggest that mitigation opportunities with net negative costs have the potential to reduce emissions by around 6 GtCO2-eq/yr in 2030.” “Net negative costs” = money in your pocket. Here’s a graphic from Vattenfall, the Swedish energy company, that illustrates this potential beautifully.

Now a study from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) shows how much energy we’ve been saving in the U.S. since the 1970’s. The report, The Size of the U.S. Energy Efficiency Market: Generating a More Complete Picture, says “Since 1970, energy efficiency has met about three-fourths of the demand for new energy-related services while conventional energy supply has covered only one-fourth of this demand.” There is much more to accomplish, says the report. See also this story from GreenBiz. This overlooked and underappreciated sector of the U.S. economy has generated over a million jobs, according to the report, two-thirds of them in buildings and construction. (See any number of posts here on Green Building.)

“The Economist” wrote about this too recently: The elusive negawatt, asking the pregnant question, “If energy conservation both saves money and is good for the planet, why don’t people do more of it?” It appears, according to the ACEEE and the U.S. Energy Information Administration, that many do. See this chart.

“In wonkish circles,” the article notes, “energy efficiency used to be known as ‘the fifth fuel.’” I think that’s perfectly apt. The article references a recent report from the McKinsey Global Institute on The Case For Investing In Energy Productivity. It maintains that “… annual investments in energy productivity of $170 billion through 2020 could cut global energy demand growth by at least half…” and “would generate energy savings ramping up to $900 billion annually by 2020.” And substantially cut GHG emissions.

See also “The Negawatt Revolution” from Amory Lovins and his Rocky Mountain Institute’s “Approach to Energy.”

I can’t exhort us here to “get on it” as I sometimes like to do, because, according to what we’re seeing, we’re already “on it.” Let’s certainly, by all means then, Stay On It!