I spoke about climate policy and politics on a half hour radio segment that aired March 27th on KPFA radio in the Bay Area. I joined Clear Air Watch's Frank O'Donnell to discuss the hard realities of climate politics and outline a policy strategy to make clean energy cheap that can overcome these realities. 
The big news on the mountaintop removal front just keeps coming (see recent posts here and here): today, our friends at Appalachian Voices report that two U.S. senators from coal-producing states introduced bipartisan legislation yesterday to protect Appalachian streams, mountains and communities from the devastating impacts of mountaintop removal coal mining.
"It is not necessary to destroy our mountaintops in order to have enough coal," said Senator Alexander. "Millions of tourists spend tens of millions of dollars in Tennessee every year to enjoy the natural beauty of our mountains-a beauty that, for me, and I believe for most Tennesseans, makes us proud to live [there]."Mountaintop removal coal mining is an extreme form of surface mining where explosives are used to blast up to 1000 feet of mountaintop in order to reach thin seams of coal. The remaining rubble, or overburden-which contains toxic heavy metals-is dumped into adjacent valleys, contaminating headwater streams where drinking water supplies originate for millions of Americans. More than 1200 miles of streams and over 500 mountains in the central and southern Appalachians have been devastated due to mountaintop removal."My goal is to put a stop to one of the most destructive mining practices that has already destroyed some of America's most beautiful and ecologically significant regions," said Senator Cardin, Chairman of the Water and Wildlife Subcommittee of the Committee on Environment and Public Works. "This legislation will put a stop to the smothering of our nation's streams and water systems and will restore the Clean Water Act to its original intent."
Like the Clean Water Protection Act, pending in the U.S. House, the Appalachian Restoration Act would overturn the Bush administration’s changes to the CWA fill rule. But, this bill is much more narrow — it would not affect slurry impoundments, for example.
After yesterday's emotional roller-coaster ride on mountaintop removal, fueled by some bad reporting from the AP and two dueling and somewhat contradictory press releases from the EPA, we're happy to run this post from Appalachian Voices' Matt Wasson (originally posted at HuffingtonPost) taking a closer look at what's at stake in the fight over mountaintop removal. Jobs, ecosystems and communities are all on the line, so delve deep with Wasson's posts here...If you're a reader of the Huffington Post Green Page then you are almost certainly aware that the Obama Administration signaled a major shift yesterday in how mountaintop removal coal mining will be regulated. In brief, Obama's head of the EPA, announced a decision to delay and review permits for two mountaintop removal mining operations, an action that calls into question more than 100 additional valley fill permits now pending that threaten to bury hundreds more miles of headwater streams and destroy dozens more Appalachian Mountains.
In making this decision, President Obama also took another step in fulfilling his campaign promise to bring science back to it's rightful place in guiding the decisions of federal agencies. Over the course of eight years, the Bush Administration ignored the advice and analysis of the best scientists and systematically re-wrote the rules to allow companies to dump mine waste indiscriminately into streams. They also sought to allow higher levels of arsenic, selenium and other toxic metals from mine runoff in drinking water.
Realizing that Bush's policies were wrong from the start, the coal industry and supporters in Congress quickly and conveniently rolled over and died.
Not.
Actually, the blow-back was immediate and fierce from the mining industry.
Here's the response of the National Mining Association:
This action, which applies to all mining-related 404 permits in the region, puts thousands of mining jobs and coal production in Appalachia at risk. While on the one hand the administration is spending billions in stimulus jobs, it is taking away the highest paying jobs in the region by delaying needed permit approvals. This is not good for jobs or for energy security.
All of this pressure appeared to elicit an immediate backpedaling by the EPA, which issued a statement last night that seemed to contradict the early media reports. Moreover, West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin quickly took to grandstanding and went straight to Washington today to talk with Administration officials about impacts on West Virginia's economy.
All of these conflicting reports have left opponents of mountaintop removal with a little whiplash, but they should not be distressed. There is no question that the EPA's move signaled a seismic shift from the Bush Administration's lax enforcement of environmental laws, and the back-pedaling doesn't change the fact that EPA is going to bring actual science back into the permitting process.
One of the most valuable aspects of all of this is that we now have a very complete picture of the coal industry's justification for why Obama should allow the destruction of the nation's oldest and most biologically diverse mountains, and the pollution of the headwaters of many eastern rivers to continue under the Bush Administration's rules. Here's their reasoning:
14,000 mining jobs are at risk.
The savvy Huffington Post reader will probably be thinking: "14,000 jobs? Didn't the auto industry just layoff 100,000 employees? You're telling me that we are turning the oldest mountains in America into a parking lot for the sake of 14,000 jobs?"
On the surface, this would certainly be a justifiable reaction. The numbers are miniscule compared to the total number of jobs in the region and the numbers we've been hearing about mass layoffs across the country over the past 6 months. According to a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
Employers took 2,769 mass layoff actions in February that resulted in the separation of 295,477 workers, seasonally adjusted, as measured by new filings for unemployment insurance benefits.
But this misses a number of important points. In defense of the mining industry, 14,000 fairly high paying jobs mean a lot in this region, which is among the poorest in the country and already suffers rampant unemployment.
But the most important point is that no jobs are being lost right away as a result of the EPA's decision. Anyone who says otherwise is posturing or bluffing.
All the EPA's announcement means is that they will temporarily maintain the status quo that has been in place since March of 2007 when a federal district court judge suspended the permitting of most valley fills until the lax Bush Administration enforcement and evaluation standards were improved. There is not a single mine that will be shut down as a result of the EPA's decision.
Presumably, mountaintop removal enthusiasts are really more concerned that new mountaintop removal mines will not come online as older mines reach the limits of their economically productive capacity and shut down. That is certainly what the author of this post would like to see happen, which may or may not make it a legitimate concern from the coal industry perspective, but it certainly changes the discussion dramatically in terms of impacts on the local economy.
To be precise, if the EPA cracks down on mountaintop removal permitting what we're talking about is phasing out some proportion of 14,000 strip mining jobs in Appalachia over the next decade. But is this a significant number? Significant enough to justify what Vanity Fair has called "the greatest act of physical destruction this country has ever wreaked upon itself?"
As an exercise - the EPA is not clear on how far they will go in reining in mountaintop removal - let's look at what might happen if the EPA completely eliminated all forms of surface mining, including mountaintop removal, in Appalachia over the next decade. I have created a number of PDF summaries of studies and reports on this subject that can be downloaded individually for those who want more detail, but here's a quick synopsis.
1. The only study that directly addresses the question of how restricting valley fill permits would affect the economy was conducted by a well-respected coal industry consulting group called Hill & Associates (H&A) in 2001. According to the study, restricting valley fills to watersheds no larger than 35 acres in size (basically cutting the amount of mountaintop removal mining in half) would decrease overall coal production by about 15% in Central Appalachia. This reflects a 65% decrease in mountaintop removal with a 10% compensatory increase in underground mining.
The employment impact of this change would be 1,345 jobs. Here's a graph showing the difference between a baseline projection and a projection based on restricting valley fills to less than 35 acres (again, meaning mountaintop removal coal production would be reduced by about 65%):
Another important point made by the H&A study is that even if no restrictions on permitting were put in place, both production and employment were projected to decline by 20-25% anyway because the most of the high-quality, easy to get coal is already mined out. Here's a quote from the study:
"... the general downward trend of total tonnage from the study region under all cases is a result we see across many modeling projects.. [it]is exacerbated toward the end of the 10-year study period by the fact that significant blocks of higher-quality Central Appalachian reserves are starting to be exhausted. The better-quality coals in this region are slowly but surely being mined out."
A final fascinating aspect of this study was that it also looked at how restricting mountaintop removal would affect the electric rates of consumers that rely on this coal for electricity. The impact would be somewhat less than 1% on electric bills.
Let me repeat: reducing mountaintop removal by 65% would lead to a wholesale electric rate increase of less than 1% in states relying on this coal and an increase in residential electric rates even smaller than that.
Here is my summary of the H&A study
And here is the original study
2. According to several coal industry insider publications, the decline in coal demand resulting from the recession is likely to lead to many more underground mines being idled. According to the February 16th edition of the Coal & Energy Price Report:
Given the weak economy and downward pressure on coal prices, in general, the table suddenly has tilted in such a way that more underground mines will be in danger of falling off the cliff. Deep mine operators who have been reluctant to idle mines in the face of a potential forced shut- down of surface jobs might re-think their hesitation.
Given that underground mines employ 1.5 times as many miners per ton produced as surface mines do, this almost certainly means that EPA's action will actually protect jobs in the short term. But other industry reports show why relying on more mining jobs is a poor response to the economic crisis anyway. Here's a quote from the March 23rd edition of the U.S. Coal Review:
Most large producers have already announced sizeable trimming efforts, and reductions by smaller operators, while more difficult to estimate, are no doubt taking place. But in the current market environment in which demand is seriously slumping, the cutbacks are expected to continue in fairly big numbers.
Here is a link to some more excerpts of recent coal industry news
3. According to a 2005 report from the Appalachian Regional Commission, employment in the mining industry is one of the best predictors of poverty and other elements of "economic distress" in Central Appalachia. Here's an excerpt from the study:
"Of all the regions in this analysis, Central Appalachia has been one of the poorest performers in relation to the ARC's economic distress measure over time. Furthermore, and unlike all other regions in the U.S., current and persistent economic distress within the Central Appalachian Region has been associated with employment in the mining industry, particularly coal mining."
But people in Appalachia have long known that it's more than just "coal mining" that's the problem and that mountaintop removal specifically destroys far more jobs than it creates. If mountaintop removal created prosperity it should have done so decades ago. Instead, the counties where mountaintop removal occurs are among the poorest in the nation, with high unemployment rates and rapidly dwindling populations. The stark reality is that few industries want to follow mountaintop removal. After all, what entrepreneur wants to open a new business in a community where massive blasts are cracking the foundations of people's homes, where hundred-year floods are an annual affair, and where the tap water looks like tomato soup and smells like rotten eggs?
This map, produced by Appalachian Voices, shows the dramatic correlation between mountaintop removal and poverty rates in Central Appalachia:
This ARC study also offered an excellent roadmap for Central Appalachian coal counties looking to improve their economic conditions:
"The counties that have emerged from distress in the region have consistently had fewer jobs in mining and a greater number of jobs in manufacturing when compared to the counties that have remained persistently distressed."The study also said:
"...regional economic development is most likely to take place when national policies create the conditions to support it. As such, addressing persistent distress would seem to require a renewed national commitment, similar to the one that inspired the establishment of the ARC and the regional development policies of the 1960s."
Sounds like President Obama is already on the right track with his green jobs and economic stimulus plans (unlike the coal state politicians that have a remarkably single-minded focus on an industry that supplies less than 2% of the jobs, but a much higher proportion of campaign contributions).
Here is a link to some more excerpts from the 2005 ARC report
That sums up the first part of the argument why President Obama should ignore the sky-is-falling predictions, disingenuous arguments and plain, old-fashioned rigged numbers that the coal industry and their supporters are throwing at him. The subject of a later post will be all of the opportunities there are and initiatives already underway in Central Appalachia to create new green jobs and diversify the economy beyond such a heavy reliance on coal.
As a preview, here's a link to another recent study by the Appalachian Regional Commission that came out just a few weeks ago. According to the story by Ken Ward at the Charleston Gazette:
An estimated 15,000 jobs per year for the next five years could be created, for a total of 60,000 new jobs, the study said. Annual energy bill savings would be almost $800 million, with that amount rising to more than $27 billion per year by 2030, the study concluded.
Now there's some job numbers that might really start getting out of the economic doldrums.
More tomorrow...
Originally posted at the Breakthrough Institute"[I]nnovators like you are creating the jobs that will foster our recovery -- and creating the technologies that will power our long-term prosperity.President Obama now appears poised to make unprecedented and much-needed investments in energy R&D on the scale of $15 billion annually, exactly what is necessary to truly spark the kind of revolution in clean energy technology needed to overcome the climate and energy challenge.
So I thank you for your work. It's said that necessity is the mother of invention. At this moment of necessity, we need you. We need some inventiveness. Your country needs you to create new jobs and lead new industries. Your country needs you to mount a historic effort to end once and for all our dependence on foreign oil.
And in this difficult endeavor -- in this pursuit on which I believe our future depends -- your country will support you. Your President will support you."
After visiting various research buildings, he gave a pep talk on the energy revolution he said was vital if the United States and the world are to avoid conflicts over limited supplies of oil and eventual disruptive impacts from human-caused global warming.Revkin reports that Dr. Chu concluded his remarks by (again) echoing our call for a National Energy Education Act to train a new generation of talented scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs:
Over and over, in examples from the first transcontinental telephone call to the transistor to methods for synthesizing ammonia (and thus nitrogen fertilizer), Dr. Chu pointed out how great technological advances benefiting society grew out of fundamental breakthroughs in basic science.
Now, [Dr. Chu] said, the country's challenge is to grow a generation of energy innovators, a challenge made harder because innovation has never been much of a priority within the energy industry.To ensure we have the intellectual and human capital needed to tackle the grand energy innovation challenge, it seems Secretary Chu is in 100% agreement that it's high time for a major public investment in energy education.
[Update and correction posted, 3/25/09:The Environmental Protection Agency is putting on hold hundreds of mountaintop coal-mining permits until it can evaluate the projects' impacts on streams and wetlands.This brief but much needed respite gives time for activists and affected communities to redouble efforts to press for a permanent end to mountaintop removal. Passage of the Clean Water Protection Act in Congress or administrative action by President Obama and the EPA could severely curtail or even permanently end this destructive practice.The decision was announced Tuesday by EPA administrator Lisa Jackson. It targets a controversial practice by coal mining companies that dump waste from mountaintop mining into streams and wetlands.
It could delay more than a hundred permits being sought by companies wanting to begin blasting mountaintops to access coal.
The EPA also denied two permits the Army Corps of Engineers was planning to issue that would allow companies to fill thousands of feet of streams with mining waste in West Virginia and Kentucky.
The agency says the projects could damage aquatic resources.
In the first of what will be regular monthly posts written exclusively for the Energy Collective, I explore the need for a new strategy to make clean energy cheap. I am now a featured blogger and editorial board member at the Energy Collective and will be joining the discussion there regularly. Power. Policy. Climate. The Conversation happens at the Energy Collective.Renewing America’s economy, responding to the threat of global climate change, and finally securing the nation’s energy independence all compel the transformation of United States energy system. Accomplishing this transformation requires the rapid development and deployment of a suite of clean, affordable, and scalable energy technologies.
In short, we must make clean energy cheap, a strategy that represents a significant departure from traditional approaches to climate policy...
For the full post, head to the Energy Collective here.
[Updated: 3/20/09 at 2:20 pm PST, see below]"The longstanding disgrace of mountaintop mining is now squarely in President Obama’s hands."
Indeed it is. And it's high time for President Obama, who said during the campaign that he "did not support" the dastardly practice, to direct his administration to take action and end Appalachia's agony. Read on for the full editorial...EditorialBravo to the New York Times ed board. You can take action to urge President Obama to put an end to mountaintop removal here.
Appalachia’s Agony
Published March 16, 2009
The longstanding disgrace of mountaintop mining is now squarely in President Obama’s hands.
A recent court decision has given the green light to as many as 90 mountaintop mining projects in Appalachia’s coal-rich hills, which in turn could destroy more than 200 miles of valleys and streams on top of the 1,200 miles that have already been obliterated. The right course for the administration is clear: stop the projects until the underlying regulations are revised so as to end the practice altogether.
Mountaintop mining is just what the name suggests. Enormous machines — bulldozers and draglines — scrape away mountain ridges to expose the coal seams below. The coal is then trucked away, and the leftover rock and dirt are dumped into adjacent valleys and streams.
Both John McCain and Barack Obama vowed to end the practice during the 2008 campaign — even though no recent administration, Democratic or Republican, has been willing to take on Robert Byrd, West Virginia’s senior senator, or the coal companies, which insist without proof that there is no other cost-effective way to dispose of the waste.
There is a long and tortured legal history surrounding mountaintop mining, but the essential question is this: Is dumping mine waste into streams a violation of the federal Clean Water Act?
On its face the answer is yes, but various regulatory maneuvers have allowed this practice to proceed. The worst of these was a 2002 rule by the Bush administration that in effect removed mining waste from the list of the law’s prohibited pollutants. The rule has made it easy for the Army Corps of Engineers to issue mining permits and hard for the courts to deny them.
A bipartisan group of 119 members of the House recently reintroduced legislation that would redefine mining waste as a pollutant. In so doing, Congress would reassert the original intent of the Clean Water Act and end the practice of dumping waste in valleys and streams. Until that bill becomes law — if, indeed, it ever does — a great deal more damage could occur in Appalachia. Two companies that have been awaiting the court’s go-ahead have now said that they will resume mining operations.
The Obama White House can prevent that damage. Under the law, the Corps of Engineers can suspend the mining permits in the public interest. This in turn would give the administration time to review the rules and issue new ones that would be more protective of the environment. But the Corps of Engineers, always reluctant to reverse itself and historically friendly to industry, will not act without orders from on high.
Mr. Obama promised to find better ways of mining coal “than simply blowing the tops off mountains.” The time to do so is now.
President Barack Obama’s top aides will be making a decision “very soon” about what they will do about mountaintop removal, according to congressional testimony today from Nancy Sutley, chairwoman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
Sutley told lawmakers her staff have been meeting with EPA, the Corps of Engineers, the Department of Justice and the Office of Surface Mining, discussing the issue, reviewing the February decision by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and examining a flood of pending permits at the corps office in Huntington.
“We’re trying to get a handle on what’s out there and what we may be able to do about it,” Sutley told the House Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Agencies.
Originally posted at the Breakthrough Institute
Originally posted at the Breakthrough InstituteThe battle offers a window into the complexity of making climate laws in a coal-fired country.
Federal opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull is leading the charge on behalf of his center-right Liberal party, stepping up attacks on a scheme he once favored. He wants to delay ETS until at least 2012, and pile on extra industry hand outs. And he's employing a familiar weapon to win over Australians, the threat of job loss.
It's a particularly cynical ploy on Turnbull's part in a drowning economy. Said Turnbull to Rudd this week:
"Why are you putting people out of work?"
There is no evidence that the ETS will "put people out of work," even in mining towns. But the story caught fire in the Australian media.
And now it's clear that a majority of senators will vote against the ruling government's ETS, complicating all prospects for legislation that has yet to be introduced into Parliament.
Rudd's in trouble. His center-left Labor party doesn't have a majority in the upper-house Senate. If the opposition blocks the bill, then he will need the support of Australia's swing-vote Greens.
But the Greens now say they won't endorse the ETS, unless it is substantially "greened up."
Specifically, they want the industry-friendly legislation to auction 100 percent of the emission permits -- a vital aspect of any effective cap and trade scheme -- rather than giving polluters a free ride, as the bill now does. They also want a strong reduction goal of 40 percent by 2020, not the current 5 percent target, or up to 15 percent in the event of a new global climate pact.
Writing today for the New York Times, Matthew Wald looks at the increased prospects for new coal plants that capture and store their CO2, due to investments in CCS demonstration plants included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Writing about Duke Energy's plans to build a new coal gasification plant that would demo carbon capture and storage (or CCS) technology in Edwardsport, Indiana, Wald writes:"Duke Energy has high hopes for this two-acre plot: If all goes right, and there is a happy convergence of technology, money and federal energy policy, the construction project could become the first environment-friendly coal-fired power plant in the nation."Mnnnggggg! Sorry, wrong answer!
[Image: Scenes from a mountaintop removal coal mining site. Does this look clean to you, Mr. Wald?]
[Image: The Marsh Fork Elementary School in Raleigh County, West Virginia sits just below a major coal slurry impoundment like the one that burst in Kingston, Tennessee. Over one billion gallons of toxic coal sludge sit behind an earthen dam just 400 feet from the elementary school. Is this insane or what?]
Here's some news to brighten your Friday! Proposed new coal plants have been dropping like flies over the past month, and yet another one bites the dust today, this time in Nevada. Citing strong local opposition and increased certainty that global warming pollution from coal plants will be regulated, energy developer, LS Power announced they will be "indefinitely postponing" plans to build the controversial 1,600 MW coal-fired White Pine Energy Center near Ely, NV.Another Nevada coal plant project bites the dustIn a related story, utility regulators in Louisiana ordered the utility Entergy to reconsider plans to build two coal and petroleum coke burning unites at a power plant near New Orleans. SolveClimate has the full story...
By Stephanie Tavares, In Business reporter
Fri, Mar 13, 2009 (2 a.m.)
LS Power has announced it is shelving plans to build the controversial White Pine Energy Center near Ely.
The planned 1,600-megawatt coal-fired power plant received initial permits from the Bureau of Land Management three months ago.
But the project has faced setbacks as business partners jumped ship, the BLM permits were appealed to the Interior Department’s Board of Land Appeals, public opposition mounted in two states and expected federal carbon-capture legislation threatened to drive skyward the price of generating electricity from coal.
LS Power said in a statement it would shift its focus to completing the Southwest Intertie Project, a planned 500-kilovolt transmission line that will extend 500 miles from southern Idaho through eastern Nevada to the Las Vegas area.
The project would allow developers to move forward with planned renewable energy resources in several rural areas, move electricity between Nevada’s two grids and fill a troublesome gap in the intermountain area’s electric transmission grid.
The company expects to begin construction on the transmission line this summer.
“As demand for renewable energy increases we are focusing more and more of our internal resources on providing transmission solutions for both renewable project developers and load serving entities,” LS Power President Paul Thessen said in a statement.
The announcement that the coal plant would not be built in the immediate future was hailed by environmentalists, conservationists and renewable energy advocates, including Sen. Harry Reid.
“I’m glad to see LS Power has seen the light and is now focusing its resources on creating clean energy economic opportunities, rather than the old combustion technologies of yesterday,” Reid said in a statement that praised the transmission line. “Nevada has an incredible opportunity to grow thousands of new jobs through increasing renewable power production from our solar, wind and geothermal resources and by encouraging strategic investments in improving transmission to get that power to the people.”
The announcement came just days before two Public Utilities Commission hearings on whether the coal plant is needed.
The company notified the PUC on March 5 it was suspending its application for a permit with the commission until it can obtain the necessary air permit from the Nevada Environmental Protection Division.
Nevada law requires that before facilities of this type can be built, the PUC must determine there is a need for the plant, all regulatory approvals have been granted and the need for the plant balances any adverse environmental effects.
Although the plant has strong support in the Ely area, it is opposed by environmentalists, health activists and clean air advocates across the West as well as supporters of National Parks and renewable energy.
The company said in previous interviews that it anticipated a long and tough legal battle with groups opposing the plant.
Dynegy, a company that partnered with LS Power under the moniker White Pine Energy Associates to build the plant, announced in January it was abandoning all coal plant development because of the lack of public support and regulatory uncertainty.
The White Pine Energy Center is one of dozens of coal plants across the country to be postponed indefinitely or canceled outright in recent years.
It is the second planned Nevada coal plant in as many months to fall victim to political and economic uncertainty.
NV Energy announced last month it would not pursue the planned Ely Energy Center until emission controlling carbon capture technology could be deployed at a reasonable price.
The third coal plant, planned near Mesquite, is still under environmental review by the BLM. It is widely opposed by residents.
Meanwhile, federal permit activity for all three coal plants continues, according to BLM Nevada spokesman Chris Hanefeld.
LS Power and the BLM are still preparing to defend the BLM’s permission to build the White Pine Energy Center.
The decision was appealed last month by a consortium of environmental, health and parks groups wishing to get the project canceled.
If construction on the White Pine Energy Center doesn’t begin within five years, the company would need to apply for a BLM extension of the permit or abandon plans to build the coal plant.
NV Energy’s Ely Energy Center has an active BLM file, which is expected to be amended soon as the utility seeks to split the postponed coal plant from plans to build a large cross-state transmission line connecting the state’s electrical grids.
"[Walsh:] The conventional wisdom is that, with everything else on the government's plate, we're unlikely to see carbon cap and trade legislation passed in Congress before the Copenhagen summit at the end of the year. How important is it that something is in place by then?This I would say is good news. The UN's climate point person is essentially telling Obama that victory doesn't necessarily equal passing cap and trade before Copenhagen. De Boer seems to be trying to (subtly but critically) redefine expectations and reset the goal posts for Obama, giving him room to maneuver.
[De Boer:] I'd agree that legislation is not going to be passed by Copenhagen, but it will be well advanced by then. The international community is keenly interested in seeing what steps America is making at home to get its emissions under control, but it also wants to see what the Administration says it will do. If the Administration in Copenhagen commits to a target that is good enough for the international community, that will work. It's up to the U.S. see how the target will be implemented nationally."
"Is Copenhagen still an "all or nothing" deadline? Or is there still wiggle room if the world fails to agree on a new treaty?When asked if the global economic crisis will present a challenge for international climate efforts, de Boer says "don't think the enthusiasm has been dented. ... But clearly this is a difficult time to mobilize the financial resources for international cooperation, and that poses a challenge."
You have to do it in Copenhagen. There is tremendous political momentum internationally to come to an agreement, and if you let that slip the momentum and enthusiasm will gradually dissipate and things will become more difficult. But having said that, I'm not under the illusion that every final little detail of how the agreement will work in practice will be finalized in Copenhagen. A certain amount of engineering has to be done."
There are those who say that climate change is primarily a question of technology -- that we need to change the way we use energy, and only research and development will do that, not UN mandates. Why is the UNFCCC process important?You're right Mr. do Boer, technology doesn't happen by itself. Nor does it happen without an active, engaged government role, making major public investments to drive innovation and the commercialization and widespread deployment of new technologies.
It's important because you have to drive change. Automakers will only begin to look for low emissions technology if they think the government is likely to regulate toward low emissions technology. There has to be a sense of urgency out there. We still live in a world where the cost of pollution is not yet part of the price, where you can as a factory emit unlimited greenhouse gases, without having to pay for the environmental consequences. Unless we begin to change that, there is no incentive to switch to more renewable energy and energy efficiency. Technology doesn't happen by itself.
That's the question considered in the latest annual report on clean energy sector trends from Joel Makower and his colleagues at CleanEdge. With an unprecedented investment in clean energy in the stimulus bill passed by Congress last month, you'd think things were looking up for the sector. They are, Makower concludes, but when you're climbing out of the general meltdown gripping the U.S. economy, there's a long way to climb. As Makower writes:As Makower writes, despite the challenges gripping the sector, overall trends in three core clean energy sectors - wind, solar and biofuels - look robust:The good news is that clean energy continues on a blistering rate of growth — increasing 53 percent from $75.8 billion in 2007 to $115.9 billion in revenues in 2008, based on our study of three key technologies: solar, wind, and biofuels. And the growth will continue. We forecast that by 2018, these three technologies will have revenues of $325.1 billion.
The bad news: The clean-energy sector faces considerable challenges moving forward. A sinking stock market continues to plague the initial public offering markets, with only a small handful of energy-related IPO listings on U.S. exchanges in 2008. This means that venture capitalists and other investors are faced with a dearth of exit opportunities for their current portfolio companies, making it harder for new companies to garner investments.
Severely tightened credit markets also began to take their toll. In late 2008 and early 2009, the extent of constrained credit became apparent, with a range of clean-energy companies delaying plans, laying off staff, or scuttling projects entirely.
Solar photovoltaics (including modules, system components, and installation) will grow from a $29.6 billion industry in 2008 to $80.6 billion by 2018. Annual installations reached more than 4 GW worldwide in 2008, a fourfold increase from four years earlier, when the solar PV market reached the gigawatt milestone for the first time.
Wind power (new installation capital costs) is projected to expand from $51.4 billion in 2008 to $139.1 billion in 2018. Last year's global wind power installations reached a record 27,000 MW. In the U.S., which accounted for more than 8,000 MW, wind installations represented more than 40 percent of total new electricity generating capacity brought online in 2008 — and moved the U.S. ahead of Germany as the world's leading generator of wind energy.
Biofuels (global production and wholesale pricing of ethanol and biodiesel) reached $34.8 billion in 2008 and are projected to grow to $105.4 billion by 2018. In 2008 the global biofuels market consisted of more than 17 billion gallons of ethanol and 2.5 billion gallons of biodiesel production worldwide. For the first time, ethanol leader Brazil got more than 50 percent of its total national automobile transportation fuels from bioethanol, eclipsing petroleum use for the first time in any major market.
