Cross posted on Climate Central.
Welcome to Climate Central's weekly science round up. Among last week’s noteworthy research papers were an investigation of over-estimating improved energy efficiency, a look at how the allergy season is growing longer, and a study of the history—and future—of drought in the American southwest. Also published last week were a pair of studies on heavy rain (over North America and Hawaii) and a review of California's changing temperature trends.
These studies, and a number of others, published between February 22nd and 28th are summarized here:
Paper Title: Modifying the rebound: It depends! Explaining mobility behavior on the basis of the German socio-economic panel
Journal: Energy Policy
Authors: Wenzel Matiaskea, Roland Mengesb, and Martin Spiessc
The Gist: This paper investigates the “rebound effect" — the idea that if consumers replace old products with more energy efficient ones, they won’t save as much energy as expected because they will actually use some of their extra savings to buy more energy. For instance, the rebound effect says if lighting is more efficient (and thus cheaper) consumers might end up using more lighting in their homes. People would probably still use less electricity than they did originally, but they wouldn’t have “saved” as much energy as anticipated by simple calculations. This new study concludes that in Germany (where the research was done), consumers who purchase more efficient cars drive more miles, but only up to a point. In this case, the rebound effect is strongest for users switching from low-efficiency cars to medium-efficiency cars, but it disappears with cars that get about 30 miles to the gallon. More generally, the “rebound effect” has recently been discussed by The New Yorker, The Breakthrough Institute, and Rocky Mountain Institute.
Paper Title: Climate change and evolutionary adaptation
Journal: Nature
Authors: Ary A. Hoffmann and Carla M. Sgro
The Gist: Some plant and animal species — especially those with short life spans and large populations — will adapt to climate change through natural selection and evolution. In fact, some species, such as mosquitoes, which have short life spans and can thus adapt quickly, have already “evolved” due to climate change. Scientists have shown that warmer temperatures have caused the genetics of some mosquito populations to change. This particular study suggests improved ways to model how different species will adapt to global warming, taking into account their ability to evolve relatively quickly.
Paper Title: Extended megadroughts in the southwestern United States during Pleistocene interglacials
Journal: Nature
Authors: Peter J. Fawcett and 18 others
The Gist: By studying sediments in New Mexico, these researchers estimated precipitation and temperature in the region for the period between about 370,000 and 550,000 years ago. Why is does this past climate matter? The researchers found that during the warmest times of that period — which might have been slightly warmer than today — the region experienced extreme drought. Most climate models predict that the U.S. southwest will experience severe drought as the planet warms. This new study shows this type of “permanent dust bowl” could develop in the future because it happened in the past. The New York Times offered a nice summary of this research earlier in the week. And in the journal PNAS this week, another study examined how a drier Southwest could increase wind erosion as the vegetation changes in response to drought.
Paper Title: The identification of distinct patterns in California temperature trends
Journal: Climatic Change
Authors: Eugene C. Cordero. Wittaya Kessomkiat, John Abatzoglou, Steven A. Mauge
The Gist: Analyzing 80 years worth of climate data in California, this study finds some interesting results: the average daily low temperature warmed more than twice as much as the average daily high (a warming of 1.36°C versus 0.56°C over 80 years). The researchers did not study why these trends have evolved differently over time but they say the discrepancy is a sign that there are probably many different factors influencing how temperatures are changing in the region.
Paper Title: Influence of hurricane-related activity on North American extreme precipitation
Journal: Geophysical Research Letters
Author: Mathew Barlow
The Gist: Last week we reported on a series of papers that provide evidence climate change has probably already increased the amount of rain falling in big storms. This week, a new paper looks at heavy rainstorms specifically in North America, finding that for locations along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, hurricanes account for a disproportionate number of the storms with heavy rainfall. How hurricanes respond to climate change — which is still uncertain — will determine the future of heavy rainstorms in these areas and this topic is now being heavily researched.
Paper Title: Projection of changes in the frequency of heavy rain events over Hawaii based on leading Pacific climate modes
Journal: Journal of Geophysical Research
Authors: O. Elison Timm, H. F. Diaz, T. W. Giambelluca, M. Takahashi
The Gist: Climate change is expected to increase heavy rainfall, on average, across the globe. But will every place experience stronger storms? Because there are so many factors that influence regional rainfall, including temperature, humidity and larger climate oscillations like El Niño, more localized studies can offer more insight to this question. This study examines projections for rainfall in Hawaii and finds that climate models don’t show a major change in number of days with heavy rain. This estimate, though, is highly uncertain because currently climate models don’t agree on how rainfall will change in that region.
Paper Title: Recent warming by latitude associated with increased length of ragweed pollen season in central North America
Journal: PNAS
Authors: Lewis Ziskaa and 19 others
The Gist: Global warming is lengthening the ragweed pollen season, and this trend is especially evident in northern areas. Within the northern U.S. (northward of Oregon, South Dakota and Vermont, for example) the pollen season has increased between 13 and 27 days since 1995. Last week, Climate Central provided a more in depth summary of this article. 
Paper Title: Climate change risks for African agriculture
Journal: PNAS
Authors: Christoph Müllera, Wolfgang Cramera, William L. Harea, and Hermann Lotze-Campena
The Gist: This paper surveys recent studies of how climate change could affect agriculture in Africa and finds there is wide disagreement. Some research says crop yields will generally increase across the African continent but others say yields will decrease. The range is broad because not only are modelers trying to predict how greenhouse gases will warm the planet and how plants will respond, but they are also trying to predict how farmers and markets will respond. Combining these natural environmental factors with socioeconomic influences is still particularly difficult task. Nonetheless, this new review paper concludes that Africa’s agriculture faces significant risk from warming temperatures.
Paper Title: Greenhouse Gas Emission Reductions from Domestic Anaerobic Digesters Linked with Sustainable Sanitation in Rural China
Journal: Environmental Science & Technology
Authors: Radhika Dhingra, Erick R. Christensen, Yang Liu, Bo Zhong, Chang-Fu Wu, Michael G. Yost, and Justin V. Remais
The Gist: Last year China set a goal of powering 27 million homes with biogas — gas from fermented human and animal waste (yes, that can include animal feces). The biogas is produced by putting waste in airtight containers where anaerobic microbes turn it into methane gas. The methane can then be burned for heat, allowing people to heat their homes without using fossil fuels. Methane, however, is also a potent greenhouse gas; if large quantities of the gas escape into the atmosphere before being burned, it could potentially cause more warming than the carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels. This study analyzed methane leaks at the gas production sites and people’s houses and determined that even somewhat leaky systems emitted much less gas to the atmosphere than houses that used coal or natural gas.
That’s all for this week. If you have a question about one of these papers, feel free to ask in the comments below.
Friday, March 04, 2011
Climate Science Roundup
Wednesday, March 02, 2011
Climate Challenge Hinges on Fueling China with Clean and Cheap Energy
This column originally published at the Breakthrough Institute blog
I've said it before and I'll say it again: when it comes to the global climate challenge, as goes China, so goes the world.
Driving that aphorism home, co2scorecard.org, a not-for-profit project that closely tracks global greenhouse gas emissions, now reports that China's CO2 emissions increased by 906 million tons in 2009 -- the second largest annual increase for any country in recorded history. China's soaring emissions were enough to completely offset the drop in emissions wrought by the economic havoc plaguing much of the Western world (see graphic below).
China's unprecedented surge in CO2
Over the last decade, China's annual emissions of climate destabilizing CO2 jumped by 5 billion tons per year. According to Shakeb Afsah, President and CEO of co2scorecard.org, that's "the highest [increase in annual CO2 output] for a single country in recorded history, representing an average annual emissions increase of almost 12%--more than four times the rate observed [for China] the previous decade."
To put this unprecedented 5 billion ton increase in annual CO2 emissions in context, Mr Afsah and colleague Kendyl Salcito note that during the 14-year long post-war boom period of 1959-1973, during which U.S. CO2 emissions rose each year, America's annual output of CO2 jumped by only 2 billion tons.
This new analysis comes on the heels of the latest International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook, which projects China's soaring demand will single-handedly account for 36% of all global energy demand growth over the next 25 years. According to the global energy watchdog group, China's energy use will rise 75% between 2008 and 2035, raising the nation's share of global energy use to 22 percent, up from 17 percent today.
Sliding backwards?
Despite a much-publicized national climate policy centrally focused on driving down the CO2 intensity of the Chinese economy through greater industrial and power plant efficiency, the amount of carbon emitted per unit of economic output in China slid backwards during four of the last ten years. In 2009, after four years of steady progress, the carbon intensity of China's economy took a big step backwards, regressing to 1999 levels, according to co2scorecard.org (see graphic below)
That factoid means there's more going on here than just simple economic growth driving emissions growth. China's macroeconomic policies are actually driving the carbon intensity of the nation's economy backwards, working at cross-purposes with the central government's avowed climate strategy.
The analysts at co2scorecard.org point the finger at China's promotion of an export-oriented manufacturing economy, including the nation's increasingly controversial currency policies.
Since joining the World Trade Organization in 2001, China has built up a manufacturing juggernaut that has taken over global supply chains for some of the world's most energy intensive industrial processes, including cement, steel, glass and chemicals production, turning predominately to carbon-intensive coal to fuel this economic engine. That was a recipe for both soaring economic output and carbon emissions alike.
The recent impact of the global recession has only exacerbated China's outsized role in global emissions. According to co2scorecard.com:
Through the global recession, China's depressed exchange rate protected its energy intensive industries, serving as a subsidy for export-oriented manufacturing industries (Wolf 2009). Other countries that would have grown their industrial sectors couldn't compete against China's deflated prices. So China has ended up with a lion's share of industrial production within its economic pie, subjecting itself to a sub-optimally large share of CO2 emissions and other industrial pollution.
China's carbon commitments: ambitious or lackadaisical?
To meet a targeted 40-45% reduction in carbon intensity by 2020, announced in November 2009 as China's pledge at global climate negotiations in Copenhagen that year, China's central government has recently forced the closure of inefficient factories and power plants, enforced planned blackouts, and launched other seemingly heavy handed steps to reduce the energy intensity of the national economy.
Despite these high-profile measures, analysts including Breakthrough Senior Fellow Roger Pielke Jr., have repeatedly warned that China's seemingly ambitious climate target really just amounts to continuing on a course of business-as-usual -- which would mean another decade of unprecedented emissions growth.
Messieurs Afsah and Salcito note that this latest evidence adds credence to such concerns. "Though impressive on paper," China's carbon intensity pledge "represents the status quo," the duo writes.
Between 2005 and 2008 China's average annual CO2 intensity reduction rate was 4.35%, according to co2scorecard.org's analysis. Simply continuing that BAU rate would see China's emissions shrink 45% in around 13 years - by 2018, or two years ahead of their pledged goal.
"Maintaining the 4.35% reduction rate would not require any additional effort on China's part," Afsah and Salcito write. But hitting their goal in 2020 instead of 2018 would mean China could even slack off a bit, requiring just a 3.9% annual reduction.
"China is not just setting itself up for a business-as-usual carbon intensity reduction plan; it has committed to a lazier plan, allowing its emissions to continue increasing for an extended period of time," write Afsah and Salcito (see graphic above).
A recipe for rebound?
Worse yet, China's primary focus on improving industrial energy efficiency as the key to meeting carbon intensity goals is almost perfectly designed to trigger rebounds in energy demand that erode or even negate climate gains from such measures.
As noted in Breakthrough Institute's February report, "Energy Emergence: Rebound and Backfire as Emergent Phenomena," energy efficiency measures lower the effective price of the services derived from fuel consumption -- heating, cooling, transportation, industrial processes, etc. -- thus triggering a rebound in demand for those services (see a FAQ on rebound effects here).
These "rebound effects" are likely to be particularly pronounced in both industrial sectors and in developing nations, like China, where demand for goods and services, including energy services, is far more elastic (responsive to changes in price), and where industrial productivity improvements are key drivers of economic growth. For every step forward taken through efficiency, rebounds in energy demand take China -- and the world -- one or more steps backwards away from climate mitigation goals.
Thus, increased efficiency, particularly in China's industrial sectors, will drive greater economic growth and energy use. The net effect: total CO2 emissions are likely to keep soaring, even as China meets its lackadaisical carbon intensity goals.
Breaking China's carbon dependence
Is there any way then to really break the link between China's soaring economic output and soaring emissions?
Pursuing China's current path of unambitious carbon intensity goals -- principally met with industrial efficiency efforts likely to trigger serious rebounds in energy demand -- looks like a recipe for continued disaster.
And while co2scorecard.org's Afsah and Salcito note that a halt to China's currency depreciation efforts and other economic policies designed to spur an exports and industrial manufacturing-fueled growth strategy would cool both emissions and economic growth rates, this analyst considers it unlikely that China will assent to policies that drive down carbon by simply slowing economic growth.
That leaves only one other real option then: de-link economic growth from carbon emissions by fueling China -- and the world -- with clean, affordable, and massively scalable energy technologies.
Unfortunately, the menu of technologies that meet all three of those criteria -- clean (e.g. zero or very low-carbon), cheap (e.g. relatively affordable compared to conventional fossil fuels), and massively scalable -- is still quite limited. Cleaner energy alternatives must continue to improve in price, performance, or both, to meet a 'China-sized' appetite for energy.
China, America, Europe and the rest of the world must rapidly accelerate the pace of improvement in a whole suite of clean energy technologies, from nuclear and solar alike to plug-in hybrid vehicles, energy storage, and advanced biofuels. And a whole set of next-generation energy technologies must cross the Valley of Death from laboratory to commercialization in the coming decades
On this point, a cadre of energy experts including analysts at the IEA, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, dozens of Nobel Laureates, high-profile American business leaders, and leading think tanks, are all united: we must make clean energy cheap, and fast.
China is already on a roaring path towards single-handedly swamping any hopes of climate stability, and success is far from assured.
The only thing that is certain is that the clock is ticking, and there's no time to waste in developing clean, cheap, scalable energy technologies to fuel both China and the world. The entire climate challenge hinges on our ability to do just that.
As the writer and environmental activist Bill McKibben is fond of saying, "You can't negotiate with the planet."
Bill's right of course. But as TIME magazine environmental correspondent Bryan Walsh observes, "it turns out you can't negotiate with the human desire for growth and development either--not in any political system on this planet. We need policies that provide us with the energy for both--or we may end up with neither."
Jesse Jenkins is the Director of Energy and Climate Policy at the Breakthrough Institute Read more!
Friday, February 04, 2011
Webinar: China and Energy - Innovation, Competitiveness, and Meeting Soaring Demand
On Monday, I appeared on an hour-long webinar hosted by theEnergyCollective.com on China and Energy, diving into questions of energy innovation, competitiveness, and the challenge of meeting China's soaring demand.
Carolyn Bartholomew, a commissioner on the US-China Economic Security and Review Commission joined myself and moderator Marc Gunther to dive into the issues at stake.
We discussed how China can be both the world leader in clean and dirty energy, simultaneously leading the world in the production of clean energy technologies and global contributions to climate-destabilizing carbon dioxide and coal consumption; the economic stakes of the global clean energy race and China's rising prowess in clean tech innovation and production; and the huge scale of energy demand in the rapidly developing nation.
You can give a listen here.
See also: "Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant" report on global clean tech competitiveness
A Clean Energy Competitiveness Strategy for America
Full Breakthrough Institute archives on Clean Energy Competitiveness Read more!
Tuesday, January 04, 2011
What A Difference a Few Years Makes: GOPers Flee from Greener Past
Here's an intriguing story to kick off the new year with a little retrospection...
Flash back to 2008, and nearly all of the top GOP contenders for a 2012 presidential run were taking global warming pretty seriously and offering real, if measured, endorsements of Congressional or state action to curb pollution and GHGs.
On the campaign stump, in books, speeches and nationally-televised commercials, aspiring GOP White House candidates such as Tim Pawlenty, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney have warned in recent years about the threats from climate change and pledged to limit greenhouse gases. Some have even committed the ultimate sin, endorsing the controversial cap-and-trade concept that was eventually branded “cap and tax.”Back in 2008, Newt Gingrich took to a couch next to the Right's current-day arch-nemesis, Nancy Pelosi, to endorse Congressional climate action in an ad sponsored by Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection.
And as Politico notes, even Sarah Palin has flip flopped on the issue:
Just days after McCain picked her as his running mate, Palin told ABC News she believes human activities "certainly can be contributing to the issue of global warming, climate change" and that "we’ve got to do something about it, and we have to make sure that we’re doing all we can to cut down on pollution."Politico's Darren Samuelsohn calls it the McCain effect, with John McCain's prominent endorsement of cap and trade legislation making it safe for GOPers to talk about climate.
"I think McCain is moving in a responsible direction," then-House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) told E&E News in May 2008. "Clearly the issue of climate change is on the minds of a lot of people. Humans clearly contribute to this. It just really depends on what kind of a cap-and-trade system, what kind of safety valves are in there."
Flash forward just a few years and each of these prominent GOPers are likely running for an excuse, a mea culpa, or another way to distance themselves from green records that are now liabilities with a Republican base strongly influenced by the Tea Party movement.
So what happened? Was it simply the polarizing direction of the cap and trade debate? The shift in the economic winds? The rise of the Tea Party? The inherent politics of a proposal centered on making our current base of energy sources more expensive, rather than making the cleaner alternatives cheaper?
Whatever the constellation of causes, the change is quite stark. Looking ahead to 2011 and beyond, can we build a new and enduring consensus around an innovation-centered approach to energy reform, building a clean economy, and responsibly reducing pollution? And can we make it sustained enough to avoid the factors that turned the endorsements of prominent GOP leaders into liabilities just a few years later?
We welcome thoughts from our readers... Read more!
Monday, December 06, 2010
Energy Innovation 2010: Rethinking Energy Innovation
Leading think tanks sponsor day-long conference rethinking energy innovation in the United States: getting to scale, making clean energy cheap, securing American leadership.
After two years of often-tumultuous debate in Congress, the national debate over energy and climate change policy has now been altered: cap and trade policy efforts have run aground in Congress, perhaps fatally, and Republicans are ascendant, reshaping the national political landscape. Meanwhile, with economic recovery the top priority for the public and policymakers alike, America’s clean tech competitors are surging ahead, raising the stakes for energy policy.
Against this backdrop, support is growing on both right and left for new national investments in energy innovation that can help address some of the most urgent imperatives of our time – renewing the economy, improving energy security and public health, and overcoming key environmental challenges.
A growing chorus of voices thus counsels a renewed national commitment to develop breakthrough energy technologies – and to the reform of America’s energy innovation system itself.
In recent months, energy experts have advised policymakers to: take a page from the nation’s long history of successful military research and procurement; build on the success of agricultural research stations and the National Institutes of Health by establishing new innovation institutes and clusters nationwide; promote the right mix of both competition and collaboration to spur innovation and productive knowledge spillover; reform energy subsidies to reward innovation; and restructure business taxes to promote investment in the building blocks of an innovation economy.
On December 15th, a group of America’s leading policy think tanks will host a day-long conference in Washington D.C. to rethink energy innovation.
Energy Innovation 2010, held at the National Press Club, will bring together leading experts from government, think tanks, academia, and business to ask hard questions about how energy innovation efforts can be brought to scale, how the innovation system must be restructured and reformed, and how to renew the kind of active partnerships between the public and private sectors that were responsible for so much of America’s prior technological innovation and economic strength.
The free, day-long conference is sponsored by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation and the Breakthrough Institute, with the American Enterprise Institute, Third Way, Clean Air Task Force, Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes, Securing America’s Future Energy, and the Brookings Institution. The conference organizers are pleased to welcome TheEnergyCollective.com and Yale Environment 360 as media sponsors for the event.
Registration for Energy Innovation 2010 is free, but required in advance as space is limited, so register now.
Head here to find more information, see the full conference agenda and register today.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
The Oregon Governor’s Race: Laying Groundwork for Progress on Clean Energy
In one of the tightest governor’s race in the country, two very different candidates for the highest state-level elected office in Oregon. One, Democrat John Kitzhaber, is a former Oregon governor who wants to build up the state’s green economy, protect public health and wildlife habitat, and continue Oregon’s leadership role in the fight against global warming. Meanwhile Republican Chris Dudley—a basketball player with no political experience—opposes regulating carbon, is open to offshore oil drilling along Oregon’s coasts, and isn’t sure whether global warming is caused by human activity. The choice for Oregon couldn’t be starker.
A few months ago during primary season, I wrote about some of the major energy and environmental challenges Oregon’s next governor will have to take on. Since that time the candidate widely regarded as most progressive on environmental issues, former Secretary of State Bill Bradbury, has been eliminated from the race. Bradbury lost the Democratic primary to John Kitzhaber, and I won’t pretend that wasn’t a disappointment to me personally. But here’s why I’m still excited to cast my ballot in a couple weeks:
John Kitzhaber, who’s been endorsed by the Sierra Club and the Oregon League of Conservation Voters, is a very green candidate. It just happens that in the primary, he was up against someone with even better energy and climate plans. Kitzhaber’s green credentials were outshone by Bradbury’s in the primary—but running against almost anyone else (or in anyplace other than Oregon), Kitzhaber would have been the clear environmental choice. This is certainly the case now that it’s come down to a race between Kitzhaber and Dudley.
Chris Dudley has gotten as far as he has in the governor’s race mainly by outspending Kitzhaber. When an early poll showed Dudley doing better than expected in the polls, big business poured money into his campaign. Dudley apparently feels secure enough with his monetary advantage that he agreed to only one in-person gubernatorial debate, showing he’s more interested in being seen as a smiling five-second presence on TV than in actually digging into issues and concerns Oregonians care about.
Dudley has repeatedly failed to respond to media inquiries about his environmental views, but what has emerged is extremely worrying. So far we know Dudley wants to weaken clean water rules, increase logging in Oregon’s forests, and backtrack on the state’s ambitious climate and clean energy goals. When asked during the one-and-only debate with Kitzhaber if he believes humans are over-heating the planet, Dudley said he wasn’t sure.
A win for Chris Dudley would be a disaster for environmental progress in Oregon. A win for John Kitzhaber means Oregon will be able to continue its leadership role on climate and clean energy issues. The latest polls show Dudley and Kitzhaber virtually tied in the governor’s race, so youth voters could make all the difference in deciding the outcome. Now is a historic moment for youth voters in Oregon: this year we’ll be the ones deciding one of the most important environmental elections in the country. Be sure to turn your ballot in when it comes in the mail.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Does November GOP Win Spell the End for Clean Energy Progress? Maybe Not
By Jesse Jenkins, originally at the Breakthrough Institute
According to most electoral prognosticators, Republicans are poised to win major victories in the upcoming November midterm elections, with control of both the House and Senate within their reach. That should spell the end for climate and clean energy legislation, according to many observers, at least for the next Congressional cycle.
But what if it doesn't? Over at SolveClimate, Elizabeth McGowan takes a fresh look at what a GOP win in November could mean for clean energy progress, noting that split control in Washington could actually improve chances for bipartisan energy legislation.
New dynamics in a Washington under divided rule
With one party in control of the White House and both legislative branches, it's far too easy for priority issues to become politically polarized -- so the argument goes. The majority party lacks significant incentive to reach out to the minority party from the beginning to craft solidly bipartisan bills. Meanwhile the minority party can simply become 'the Party of No,' attempting to block any of the majority party's legislative priorities while riding electoral angst at a "broken Washington" back into power in the next Congressional cycle.
With the White House in the hands of one party and the House, Senate, or both under the other party's control, the dynamic can be quite different, according to Capitol Hill observers.
McGowan quotes Paul Bledsoe, a strategist at the Bipartisan Policy Center's National Commission of Energy Policy with a long resume of inside-the-beltway experience:When one party has a supermajority, Bledsoe pointed out, those in charge tend to write legislation without consulting the minority. That can make it virtually impossible to "sell" complex and significant mechanisms such as cap and trade--which now appears to be dead on arrival.
Moving beyond cap and trade could yield bipartisan clean energy progress
Even Republicans who once supported cap and trade approach as valid now dismiss it as an unacceptable tax.
"Traditionally, energy is not a partisan but a geographically focused issue," Bledsoe said, adding that the 2005 and 2007 energy bills passed with bipartisan support, the former in a Republican Senate and the latter in a Democratic Senate. ...
"A strange dynamic can develop when the balance of power is narrower," he said, adding that polarization along party lines can dissipate. "I think senators will feel a greater sense of urgency to initiate legislation together. I see senators of goodwill coming together to create bipartisan approaches."
According to Josh Freed, director of the clean energy program at the moderate Democratic DC think tank Third Way, a bipartisan clean energy strategy -- one that moves beyond the failed cap and trade debate toward a renewed public-private partnership aimed at developing and marketing improved clean energy technologies -- is ripe for passage in a Washington under split rule.
Freed spoke with SolveClimate's McGowan, saying:Some sort of climate and energy legislation will eventually emerge but first, the public and private sectors need to cooperate to invent, demonstrate, deploy and market the green batteries, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, advanced nuclear power, renewables and other technologies that are actually competitive with fossil fuels.
Building a new bipartisan consensus for clean energy progress may take some time, but according to Freed, the effort can begin in the next Congress and external pressures may keep the heat on Congress to act sooner rather than later:
"As a country, we seem to have lost our way on that model," Freed said, adding that it propelled the success of the airline industry, the Internet and the biotechnology sector. "How do we go about turning that around?"
Congress needs to champion this push with thoughtful, comprehensive and bipartisan legislation, Freed explained, but the American public, business leaders, universities, entrepreneurs, large companies and the financial sector have to act in tandem. "This is going to take longer than a campaign. It's much like the health care debate in 1993," Freed said, adding that the need for reform was obvious but the mechanism being deployed all those years ago collapsed under its own weight. "It took 17 years to rebuild that coalition. With energy, we don't have the time to wait 17 years but we need to learn those lessons."
Beware the Tea Party
Politicians and everybody else involved have to realize that America is playing catch-up because its dawdling has ceded much of the clean technology market to China, South Korea, Spain, Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany.
"This has to be an issue that resonates in Minnesota, Tennessee and Ohio as much as it does in Oregon, Washington and Connecticut," Freed said.
While there are many strong motivations for bipartisan legislation to clean up, secure, and modernize the U.S. energy system while developing competitive U.S. clean energy industries, progress may ultimately depend on what kind of Republican party takes office in November.
According to Jim DiPeso, vice president of the Michigan-based non-profit Republicans for Environmental Protection, the radicalizing influence of the surging Tea Party movement may torpedo chances for clean energy legislation in the coming Congress. As DiPeso tells SolveClimate:"All bets are off because those [Tea Party] newcomers will have different ideas about what priorities should be tackled. ... Then, you're looking at gridlock."
His wish is that President Obama, [House Minority Leader John] Boehner and [Senate Minority Leader Mitch] McConnell will be "smart" enough to mollify dissenters and follow President Clinton's lead of the mid-1990s by collaborating on a centrist agenda. ...
[DiPeso] and [Bipartisan Policy Center's] Bledsoe echo one another with their comments about why partisan bickering and backing on the climate front can be so detrimental.
"It's a huge mistake for climate activists to become partisan," Bledsoe emphasized. ...
"You can blame both sides for the polarization but it doesn't matter who is to blame. We need to fix it and that's the only way forward."
Tuesday, August 03, 2010
Dealing with the Electoral (Un)Importance of Climate Change
By Leigh Ewbank. Originally published by On Line Opinion.
Julia Gillard's announcement last Friday marked a new low point for Australian climate change policy. If reelected, a Labor government will fill the void created by its decision to defer the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) a collection of low-impact policy measures: miniscule investments in renewable energy; an ill-conceived "cash for clunkers" program; and the much criticised plan for a "citizens' assembly" to establish "community consensus" on climate change. Such measures do not reflect the urgency and scale of the climate change challenge.
In the wake of Gillard's announcement, several climate advocates made the case that community consensus on climate change already exists. Be that as it may, community consensus doesn't tell us whether climate change is a priority issue for Australians. Polling released last week revealed a disturbing truth for Australia's climate change advocates. Contrary to the rhetoric of many, addressing climate change ranks well down the list of the most important issues for voters in the 2010 federal election.
Polling data (PDF 1.51MB) produced by Essential Research shows that "addressing climate change" is a priority issue for just 12 per cent of voters - ranking ninth out of 15 possible issues. This number is dramatically less than the level of support received by the top three priority issues: economic management (63 per cent); health care (55 per cent); and protecting jobs and industries (24 per cent).
This is a shocking outcome. The most important long-term issue facing Australia is not receiving the priority it deserves. With all the money, time and resources invested in climate change advocacy, these results challenge the efficacy of the dominant climate policy proposals and the ways in which the phenomenon is communicated.
Pricing carbon through an emissions-trading scheme is the most important climate policy for many national climate groups. The Australian Conservation Foundation and Climate Institute, among others, have led the charge calling for an emissions trading scheme (ETS) and have undertaken a concerted effort to frame climate change as a pollution problem. Unfortunately, neither the ETS nor pollution framing are election-friendly ideas.
The Labor party will try to keep their proposed emissions-trading scheme off the table during the campaign. The reasons for this are simple. First, the ETS does not appeal to the top concerns of the electorate. Second, and more importantly, an election promise to expedite the implementation of such a scheme would allow opposition leader Tony Abbott to invoke his "great big tax" message.
Cautious Labor strategists won't give Abbott ammunition for a scare campaign on the economic impacts of carbon pricing. Framing the CPRS as a "great big tax" that is bad for our economy and bad for jobs allows the Coalition to appeal to the electorate's concerns while drawing on their strength on economic management to attack Labor's credentials on jobs and industry. Aware of these risks, Gillard will ignore criticism from climate campaigners and stick to her commitment to delay the CPRS and build a "consensus" on the matter.
The limitations of emissions trading are compounded by a problematic communication strategy. Framing climate change as a pollution problem is unlikely to be an effective way of communicating the phenomenon to voters. This is simply because carbon emissions are qualitatively different to the way we experience pollution, which is direct and visible, compared to the indirect and systemic long term impacts of a changing climate. This pollution-centric messaging is of limited value in the context of an election. Admittedly I'm a young writer who hasn't experienced many national elections, but I can't think of an example where pollution was a top concern for the electorate (please let me know if there is a recent example in Australia).
We clearly need an alternative to this flawed approach to climate policy and communication. Instead of waiting for climate change and pollution to become a more significant concern, we must develop ways to fuse the electorate's priorities with the imperative of addressing climate change.
I have argued that a nation-building project for climate change with the scale and vision of the Snowy Mountains Scheme is capable of winning the hearts and minds of Australians. This alternative approach will address climate change while appealing to the concerns of the electorate.
Direct public investments in infrastructure projects will build the foundation of a clean energy economy in Australia. New grid infrastructure can open up renewable energy resources for entrepreneurs and regions for economic development. The construction of large-scale renewable energy projects like concentrated solar thermal power plants can demonstrate the feasibility of the technology and help build new industries. Leadership on renewable energy will help the nation capture a slice of the rapidly expanding global market for renewable energy technology. This will provide valuable export opportunities for Australia, particularly as demand for our coal decreases as the world stops using fossil fuels over the next several decades.
This investment-centred and jobs-friendly strategy would allow Labor to build on its strengths. Director of polling firm EMC Peter Lewis argues that much of Labor's first term success was based on its ability to protect jobs with its stimulus package, and identifies the National Broadband Network as another initiative with excellent job creation and industry building potential. Both the stimulus and NBN meet the electorate's demand for secure Australian jobs and industries. This should be the model for climate policy in the short to medium term, with renewable energy investments matching those allocated for the NBN at a minimum.
So why not just present emissions trading as good for economic management, jobs and industries? Attempts to link them are futile. The carbon pricing reform is too complex and indirect for the public to conceptualise as an economic management or jobs/industry-creation program. Such an approach would be akin to arguing that the GST will create jobs and industries a decade ago. While research reports will be published modelling jobs projections and industry growth, only when Australians experience the benefits of decarbonisation will they support carbon-pricing measures.
When the focus of climate policy is on providing the renewable energy infrastructure projects we need, it is easy to demonstrate the job creation and industry development benefits. This direct approach allows the nation to invest in this critical infrastructure now, rather than waiting for the invisible hand of the market to provide it at some point in the future.
A nation-building approach to climate policy will require Australia's most prominent environment groups to adapt their strategies: to cut their losses and shift their immediate focus away from emissions trading. These groups are capable of adopting an approach that yields are far greater chance of success than business as usual.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Time to Bury Cap and Trade and Plan Anew
By Jesse Jenkins and Devon Swezey
Cap and trade is dead. Again. For real this time.
Reports put the time of death at 1 P.M. EST, July 22nd, 2010. That is when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid emerged from a meeting of the Democratic Caucus without enough support for even a severely weakened and scaled-back emissions cap on the utility sector.
With that, recognition has finally set in everywhere: the United States Senate is not going to enact any form of cap and trade. Not this year. And probably not any time in the foreseeable future.
Worse yet, clean energy progress this year has gone down with the long-sinking cap and trade ship.
Democrats in the Senate have now successfuly wasted what little time they had left on the Congressional calendar wrangling over a utility-only cap--already compromised beyond recognition and destined for political failure--instead of working to advance a package of measures that would have started to make real progress on clean energy.
Reid has made it clear he'll bring only an extremely narrow bill to the floor before the August recess, one pairing measures responding to the Gulf oil spill with some incentives for home efficiency retrofits and natural gas vehicles. That's it. After a full two-year Congressional cycle, Democratic super-majorities, and Barack Obama in the White House: home retrofits and natural gas vehicles are all the Senate will deliver. We should let that sink in for a moment...
Blame Game or Moment of Reflection?
After making his decision to drop cap and trade (and any meaningful clean energy measures with it), Reid wasted no time in pinning the blame on those recalcitrant Republicans, declaring in a statement:
"Many of us want...a comprehensive bill that creates jobs, breaks our addiction to oil and curbs pollution. Unfortunately, at this time not one Republican wants to join us in achieving this goal. That isn't just disappointing. It's dangerous."Whether it was Republicans, the filibuster, oil and coal industry lobbyists or President Obama himself, blame has already been cast far and wide.
But if anything is deserving of blame, it is the cap and trade strategy itself.
Cap and trade has now died four times in the last seven years (this time, we can hope, for good). There is little evidence that Senate Democrats had substantially more votes for cap and trade this year than they did in 2003 (when it failed with 43 votes), 2005 (failed again with 38 votes) or 2008, when Reid also pulled the bill before it could go down in embarrassing defeat and insiders put the final tally at only 35-40 votes in support of the bill.
At this dark moment, the important question is whether any greens or Democrats in Congress are willing to seriously re-think a policy framework that was structurally flawed from the beginning and has consistently failed politically.
(Early indications are that they aren't, with Nancy Pelosi saying of the House-passed Waxman-Markey bill, "we're very proud of it and excited to take it to conference.")
The Serial Failure of Cap and Trade
Cap and trade has repeatedly failed because it doesn't address the main barrier to the widespread deployment of clean energy technologies: the technology-based price gap between new clean energy and mature fossil fuels.
Many renewables, like wind and solar power, are expensive, intermittent, and difficult to scale for example, while nuclear power is extremely capital intensive and faces substantial local opposition.
Because of higher costs and technical barriers to widespread clean energy adoption, efforts to move the U.S. energy system away from fossil fuels towards clean energy alternatives inevitably comes with a significant price tag.
The result: every country in the world has been unwilling to raise the price of fossil fuels--either through a carbon tax or a cap and trade system--high enough to close this gap for the majority of clean energy technologies.
The United States is a clear case in point, where the proposed cap and trade bill was riddled with so many loopholes and cost containment mechanisms--most notably the availability of up to 2 billion dubious carbon offsets--that the effective price on carbon was too low to effectively spur clean energy innovation and adoption and the "cap" on carbon was rendered effectively non-binding.
But there's another rub. For all the talk about the urgency of a "cap" on emissions in the United States, China has become the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases and its voracious appetite for energy threatens to wipe out any gains we achieve here in the United States.
China has moved aggressively in recent years to become a leader in the clean energy industry; with timing so perfectly ironic it seems almost planned, China announced today that the national government would level a staggering $74 billion in annual investments over the next ten years (5 trillion yuan) to adopt clean fuels and build the nation's clean energy industries. But even while establishing itself as the dominant global clean energy power, China's insatiable energy demand is so large that the nation's demand for fossil fuels continues to rise almost unabated.
In the end, until we make clean energy cheap enough to be widely available and affordable throughout the world, countries like China will continue to satisfy the majority of their increasing energy demand with fossil fuels.
Planning Anew for Clean Energy Progress
Given the stakes for both the global climate and the nation's economic outlook, we can't afford yet another episode in the serial failure of the cap and trade strategy.
This moment demands a fundamentally new strategy designed to overcome the inherent political obstacles to carbon pricing and simultaneously achieve the primary objective upon which our climate future hinges: making clean energy cheap in real, unsubsidized terms.
History shows that such technological transformations do not occur through modest shifts in market price signals. We didn't tax the telegraph to get telephones or put a cap on typewriters to see the birth of the personal computer, as Breakthrough's Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus often note.
Instead, time-and-time again, the most reliably successful driver of new innovation and transformative technology changes has been an active partnership between private-sector entrepreneurs and innovators and a public sector acting as both an initial funder and demanding customer of new, cutting-edge technologies.
This will demand an unprecedented level of public investment in clean energy innovation and the accelerated adoption, scale-up, and improvement of a full suite of clean energy technologies.
Such a strategy can begin to cut U.S. emissions in the near-term, but most importantly it will be absolutely essential to establish the technological and economic foundations for deep emissions cuts in the long term.
As the International Energy Agency has been clear, a global clean energy technology revolution is urgently required, and we have not a moment left to lose.
Without clean, cheap energy, emissions both at home and abroad will continue their inexorable rise, while China and other economic competitors solidify their dominance of new global clean technology markets. With this latest death of cap and trade, will we finally bury a fundamentally flawed strategy and dare to plan (and act!) anew? Read more!
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Oregon Offered a Chance at a Coal Free Future
Oregon has the opportunity to lead the United States toward a coal-free future and lay groundwork for averting the worst consequences of global warming. Alternatively, state agencies and commissions can bow to industry pressure and set a different kind of precedent, one of prolonging the life of a dirty coal plant for close to a decade or longer, in the process making it very difficult to achieve the reductions in greenhouse emissions which the best climate science mandates. Oregon’s choice has become starkly clear in recent weeks, as the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality has laid out three options for the future of the Portland General Electric (PGE) Boardman Coal Plant.
One option for the Boardman Coal Plant would commit Oregon to ten more years of burning coal, while PGE invested huge amounts of ratepayer money into prolonging the plant’s life. A second option would see the coal plant only slightly sooner, while still forcing ratepayers to pay for expensive upgrades. Only one option would require Boardman closing on a timescale consistent with Oregon’s greenhouse emissions reduction goals. That third option lights the one clear path toward Oregon’s clean energy future.
As I’ve written previously, students and youth activists in Oregon have been organizing for months to close the Boardman Coal Plant by the year 2014 – a date selected because it would allow PGE to avoid installing millions of dollars’ worth of pollution control upgrades required on the plant after that time. Most notably, student governments at ten educational institutions in Oregon passed resolutions supporting the 2014 date, which collectively represent over 107,000 Oregon students.
At the same time however, PGE was pushing the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to let most new pollution controls slide and allow Boardman to burn coal until 2020. Fortunately the DEQ rejected PGE’s initial request for pollution waivers. Instead, the agency has proposed a tentative list of three possible routes to Boardman’s closure: PGE can keep Boardman open until 2020 and install $320 million in new pollution controls; the company can run Boardman through 2018 and fork up $100 million worth of controls; or PGE can install only $35 million of essential pollution controls, and close the coal plant somewhere in late 2015 or early 2016.
PGE has a clear choice: commit to the DEQ’s earliest proposed closure scenario for Boardman, or continue the public relations nightmare which burning coal has become for this utility. Yet the choice for Oregon is even more stark. If the Boardman Coal Plant closes in 2015 or early 2016, the state will have a much better chance of meeting its greenhouse emissions reduction goals, and will set an example for the rest of the country. If Boardman continues to burn coal for ten or eight more years, utilities across the nation will seize the chance to ask for lifetime extensions for their own aging, dirty coal plants.
This shouldn’t be such a hard choice to make.
Friday, July 09, 2010
Jenkins 'Empanelated' At Grist
Over at online environmental magazine Grist.org, I've been featured among a panel of "seven of Grist's favorite journos and wonks" each offering their two cents on what (if any) changes to climate and clean energy strategy should be made now that cap and trade is on the ropes.
Part 1 focuses on what to do with the remainder if this quickly-waning Congressional year, while Part 2 focuses on longer-term strategy. Here's my response to each question:
Grist: If it's true that a carbon price is impossible this year, what policies should energy reformers rally around in the short-term?
Jenkins: The focus for the remaining few weeks left has to be on substantive steps forward we can take without ceding ground or giving up too much in the way of opportunity cost. There's not a lot of time left to rally support for new ideas, so it has to be something that's already on the drawing board, like vehicle electrification and other efforts to win our freedom from oil. One big opportunity that's been ignored is the America Competes Act, which would authorize a number of key provisions to strengthen our clean energy innovation system in the United States. Some of those provisions could be put into Senate energy legislation. And there's the Clean Energy Deployment Administration, which could be an important part of financing emerging, innovative technologies. I would hate to see that fall through the cracks.
Grist: Given that the pursuit of cap-and-trade has fallen short yet again, is there reason for energy reformers to reassess their broad legislative strategy?
Jenkins: The policy approach of the last five years -- McCain-Lieberman through McCain-Warner through Lieberman-Warner through Waxman-Markey and the American Power Act -- has run its course. We should rethink a strategy that can be more politically and substantively effective in 2011. The broad contours are: We should try much less to make dirty energy more expensive and focus much more on making clean energy cheaper in unsubsidized terms in the long term. That doesn't mean that there's no role for carbon pricing, but it's a different role than it has under Waxman-Markey. First, it's a mechanism to provide the long-term, stable funding we need to make public investments in clean energy technology innovation, demonstration, and deployment. Second, price plays an important role in helping close off some externalities, helping make the market work more efficiently, and providing a synergistic demand pull for more mature clean energy technologies.
If you look at what Americans support in poll after poll, it is clean energy technology. There's very little support for clean energy technology in the current approach, because the money in cap-and-trade has been used as the bargaining chip for efforts to get an increasingly weaker carbon cap in place. Put investment in clean technology front and center -- and oh, by the way, we're going to pay for this with a modest fee on carbon.
See also:
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
Elementary Particles, Complex Challenges
By Mark Caine, Breakthrough Fellow
This is a guest post from the Breakthrough Generation blog. Breakthrough Generation is the young leaders' initiative of the Breakthrough Institute, a public policy think tank. Founded in 2007, Breakthrough Generation has fostered the development of young thought leaders capable of fully grappling with the scale and complexity of today's greatest challenges and advancing large-scale solutions over the near and long term. To read more writings from this year's 2010 Breakthrough Fellows, head to http://breakthroughgen.org
Environmentalists have long couched their opposition to nuclear power in the argument that tinkering with elementary particles to produce energy is inherently unsafe. But advances in climate and nuclear sciences suggest that the dangers posed by today's nuclear technology are far less serious than the risks of tinkering with global climate systems.
In 1945, J. Robert Oppenheimer gave the go-ahead for the Trinity test, the first human-induced nuclear explosion. As he observed the massive explosion unleashed by his creation, he uttered the now-famous phrase:
"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."With these words, excerpted from the Bhagavad Gita, Oppenheimer captured and reinforced a widely-held sentiment that nuclear technology is a fundamentally destructive force worthy of great respect and profound trepidation.
This view would be strengthened by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a month later and again in 1979 and 1986 by the meltdowns at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.
Justifiably influenced by the specter of nuclear meltdown or, worse, worldwide nuclear war, early environmentalists adopted a vehement anti-nuclear stance. At the time, nuclear proliferation seemed to present an existential threat to the natural environment, to human health, and to world peace.
Patrick Moore, a founder of Greenpeace, summed it up in his 1976 report Assault on Future Generations:
Nuclear power plants are, next to nuclear warheads themselves, the most dangerous devices that man has ever created. Their construction and proliferation is the most irresponsible, in fact the most criminal act ever to have taken place on this planet.Forged in an era of fear, uncertainty, and disaster, this uncompromisingly critical stance towards nuclear energy has remained a central tenet of U.S. environmentalism ever since.
While this stance is understandable as a reaction to the events of World War II and Chernobyl, it has become drastically outdated in the nearly twenty five years since the Chernobyl disaster took place.
These twenty five years have seen two fundamental, ground-shifting changes.
First, climate scientists--and increasingly the general public--have become aware that carbon dioxide emissions lead to global climate change and a host of resultant ecological and atmospheric consequences. Second, nuclear energy technologies have developed to become far safer and more efficient than their decades-old antecedents.
These two transitions have redefined the energy landscape; taken together, they should redefine the energy debate.
At this point, anyone serious about climate change should be asking themselves: what role should nuclear power have in a clean energy future? Can we decarbonize our economy without nuclear power?
While the science, the technology, and the debate have shifted beneath their feet, mainstream environmental groups have resolutely held their anti-nuclear ground.
The Sierra Club, an early opponent of nuclear power, continues to stick by the nuclear policy it established 36 years ago in 1974:
The Sierra Club opposes the licensing, construction and operation of new nuclear reactors utilizing the fission process.Greenpeace, another early nuclear opponent, calls not only for no new construction but also for the dismantling of existing plants:
Greenpeace has always fought - and will continue to fight - vigorously against nuclear power because it is an unacceptable risk to the environment and to humanity. The only solution is to halt the expansion of all nuclear power, and for the shutdown of existing plants.Most recently, Friends of the Earth has been releasing egregious anti-nuclear advertisements employing ominous music, dark photographs, and hyperbolic rhetoric to inspire visceral fear of nuclear power.
Contrary to the frightful narratives sown by mainstream environmental groups, the long-term safety record of nuclear power is in fact far better than that of coal, our primary source of electricity. Even in terms of direct deaths, which do not include the tens of thousands of yearly deaths caused by pollution from coal combustion, nuclear comes out on top:
Compiled by Jesse Jenkins, The Breakthrough Institute
When it comes to waste and emissions, nuclear again emerges the clear winner: while powering a single person's lifetime with coal produces 68 tons of solid waste and 77 tons of carbon dioxide emissions, a person-lifetime worth of nuclear-generated electricity produces zero emissions and an volume of solid waste the size of a soda can.
These waste and emissions disparities raise a critical question: which is worse, small quantities of radioactive waste in secured storage or huge amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?
For greens who find themselves increasingly concerned about climate change and its impacts on humans, oceans, and ecosystems, this lesser-of-two-evils debate should not be taken lightly.
Given the capacity of nuclear to produce emissions-free energy with orders of magnitude less waste than coal combustion, it would appear that the environmental community's reflexive rejection of nuclear energy runs counter to its most basic charge: to employ sound science and smart policy to protect the environment and the people within it. Read more!
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
With Seconds on the Clock, Democrats May Waste Last Chance for Clean Energy Win
With the final seconds ticking down on the Congressional clock, President Obama and Senate Democrats emerged from a White House summit with Republican moderates Tuesday still lacking any plan to score a last minute win for clean energy.
Wasted opportunity
Establishing a price (any price) on carbon pollution through a(n increasingly weak) cap and trade system continues to be the the preferred climate and energy approach of environmental advocacy groups and Democratic leadership. This preference holds despite the fact that for at least three years, that plan has consistently failed to uncover any route to securing the sixty votes necessary for passage in the Senate (a similar bill narrowly passed the House last June).
Heading into the Tuesday morning White House summit, Republicans eyed as key swing votes for any clean energy or climate bill telegraphed clear intentions: cap and trade would be a practical non-starter, but they were ready to act with the President on measures to promote zero-carbon electricity, electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, and greater energy technology innovation, clean up dirty coal plants, and improve energy efficiency.
The summit offered President Obama a prime opportunity to reset the Senate energy debate by calling a new play: take up the energy provisions Republicans have offered, counter with a more aggressive proposal on similar fronts, and begin earnest negotiations with GOP swing votes to ensure passage of a final bill that could move America towards a clean energy economy before the Congressional clock expires.
Unfortunately, President Obama let this chance to break from the failed and increasingly desperate cap and trade agenda slip by, using the meeting, instead, to reiterate to the assembled Senators - and greens watching from the sidelines - that "he still believes the best way for us to transition to a clean energy economy is ... by putting a price on [carbon] pollution."
In what seemed to be an effort to convince outside audiences that Obama had not given up on cap and trade, rather than a real display of leadership, the President failed to present any clear plan of action or convince new supporters to back the much-diminished ambitions of a utility-only cap and trade bill. Instead, the White House team emerged from the meeting simply noting that, "Not all of the Senators agreed with this [carbon pricing] approach, and the President welcomed other approaches and ideas..."
Senator John Kerry (D-MA), the dogged architect (with Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut) of the increasingly embattled Senate cap and trade strategy, boldly declared that Democrats were willing to make even more concessions in the quest for permanently elusive GOP cap and trade supporters.
"We believe we have compromised significantly, but we're prepared to compromise further," Sen. Kerry told reporters.
This after Democrats had already stacked their "comprehensive" climate and energy bill full of enough offsets and cost containment mechanisms to render the emissions "cap" non-binding on covered sectors--and after recent offers to scale back the cap to cover only electric utilities, a sector responsible for just about one-third of U.S. carbon emissions...
Running out the clock
Thus, it seems that Democrats are now poised to waste what little time remains this year on what could be described either as an increasingly desperate effort to appease Republicans firmly opposed to what they've dubbed "a nationwide energy tax," or as an increasingly transparent attempt to assure green supporters they are 'fighting hard' for cap and trade in preparation for pinning their inevitable failure on 'those dastardly Republican obstructionists.'
Regardless, this strategy is all but certain to leave America empty handed on clean energy reform.
As oil gushes into the Gulf and global temperatures continue to rise, coming away from this Congressional year with nothing would be the greatest tragedy of all. But if Democrats can put aside their insistence on a wholly-compromised, "comprehensive" cap and trade bill, there may yet be hope for a political and substantive victory.
Republicans signal opening
Last week, Republicans invited to the White House summit emerged from a quick planning huddle to tell reporters that they would press Obama to drop cap and trade and work with the GOP to promote several provisions to advance clean electricity, electrification of cars and trucks, and research and development of low-carbon energy technologies.
The GOP has several "clean energy proposals which we are for and he's for too," said Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN), who as Republican Conference Chair is at the center of GOP leadership.
After Tuesday's inconclusive meeting, key swing Republicans reiterated that there was still an opening to move forward on clean energy--if Democrats would drop cap and trade.
Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) stated:"As I have long advocated, working toward energy independence is an imperative for our economic and national security. Which is why today I urged the President to seize control of our own energy destiny and, for the first time, establish clearly defined national timetables for clean energy production, benchmarks for oil consumption reduction, and goals for game-changing research - which no other president has ever done, to ensure we actually attain that independence.
The Maine moderate pointed to bi-partisan measures she had sponsored to promote energy efficiency, renewable electricity generation, and research, meanwhile stating that while she supported a limited carbon-pricing program in principle, "today we are in different and perilous economic times," stating that economy-wide cap and trade was something America "simply cannot afford."
Likewise, Senator George Voinovich (R-OH) characterized the White House meeting as "a clear signal to the president, Senator Kerry and Senator Lieberman that the chances of passing their cap and trade legislation are quite slim."
The senator went on to note: "On the other hand, there seemed to be consensus that Senator Bingaman's energy bill may be a viable path forward in the Senate. While in need of improvement, it has bipartisan support and presents a variety of policy tools to expand domestic clean energy resources and reduce emissions.
Republicans have thus put a clean energy offer on the table constituting a clear path to bipartisan energy progress - focus on measures to boost clean electricity generation, oil reduction, energy innovation, and efficiency.
Scoring the last minute clean energy win
Herein lies the last opportunity for Democrats to score a win for energy reform. To date, Republicans have backed a number of key Senate proposals that collectively offer the foundations for a bipartisan clean energy bill that could achieve actual progress, despite the limited time to act in the crowded Congressional calendar [1 - see notes at end for more detail]:
Clean electricity generation: Republicans have backed both a (modest but first-ever) requirement that utilities nationwide purchase a portion of their electricity from renewable energy sources [2], as well as a more aggressive clean electricity requirement that would make nuclear power and carbon capture and storage at fossil fuels plants eligible alongside renewables [3]. Democrats have an opportunity to counter-offer with a slightly more expansive proposal, calling, say, for 25% of all U.S. electricity to come from new, zero-carbon electricity sources by 2020 and 35% by 2030, then negotiate from there. The end result would be a mandate to transform the U.S. electricity sector, putting American utilities on a path to a low-carbon future.
Similarly, Republicans have consistently championed financial incentives to deploy zero-carbon electricity sources. They, of course prefer nuclear power, but this offer still provides an opportunity for Democrats to counter. Instead of $10 billion to back loan guarantees for just nuclear power plants [4], Democrats could propose a similar (or even greater) amount of funding to capitalize a Clean Energy Deployment Administration capable of using a variety of flexible credit enhancement and financing mechanisms to spur the deployment of numerous innovative zero-carbon energy sources, including nuclear power, but also a suite of other cutting edge clean technologies [5].
Vehicle electrification and advanced biofuels: Senator Alexander has joined with Democrats Byron Dorgan (ND) and Jeff Merkley (OR) to propose a bill aiming to put the U.S. on track to electrify half of all vehicles on the road by 2030 [6]. A perfect bipartisan response to the unfolding Gulf oil crisis, the proposal represents a major multi-billion-dollar push to roll out charging infrastructure, incentivize the purchase of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles and trucks, and invent and manufacture advanced batteries here in the United States that would do more to reduce U.S. oil consumption than any 10 or 20 cent increase in gasoline prices imposed by a cap and trade bill.
This electrification push could be coupled with financial incentives to spur advanced non-grain biofuels and escalating requirements to produce flexible-fuel vehicles that can run on gasoline biofuels (another Republican-backed proposal [7]). Combine these two measures to promote flexible-fuel, plug-in hybrids that can run on electricity as well and you've got essentially the very same plan proposed by the cogent David Sandalow (now an Assistant Secretary of Energy in the Obama Administration) to win America's "Freedom from Oil."
Clean energy research and innovation: Investment in energy technology innovation has consistently enjoyed bipartisan support, both from policymakers and the public, which routinely rank greater clean technology investment as their top policy response to energy and climate concerns. A doubling of DOE energy research [8], the scale-up of the newly established Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E), and the creation of a new nationwide network of clean energy innovation centers [9] or clusters [10] would each be critical components of a robust U.S. energy innovation system capable of driving both the incremental and transformational innovation needed to make clean energy cheap and ensure the next generation of clean technologies are invented and commercialized in America.
Cleaning up the dirtiest coal plants: Financial incentives to accelerate the shut down of the oldest, dirtiest coal plants in America and new air pollution regulations to clean up remaining plants could deliver huge public health gains and probably even greater emissions reductions than any weakened, utility-only cap and trade bill. Both provisions have enjoyed bipartisan support [11].
A "cash for coal clunkers" program could provide such financial incentives to close the old high-polluting coal plants (many of them pre-dating, and thus exempt from, Clean Air Act regulations) and replace them with cleaner power plants (with one level of incentive to replace the coal plant with a state-of-the-art natural gas plant, and progressively larger incentives for zero-carbon alternatives like renewables and nuclear power). Old, dirty coal plants provide just a small share of U.S. electricity but make up a disproportionately large share of U.S. power-sector greenhouse gas emissions and pollutants (with associated health impacts and economic costs).
Similarly, updated requirements to clean up conventional air pollutants - including toxic mercury as well as the smog and acid rain-forming sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide pollution - would both incentivize the worst culprits to shut down rather than install expensive new pollution controls, while requiring the remainder of the coal fleet to clean up its air pollution resulting in widespread public health benefits for everyone.
Enhanced efficiency: New efforts to boost the efficiency of American vehicles, buildings, appliances, lighting, and manufacturing have routinely enjoyed bipartisan support. Greater energy efficiency will help the U.S. economy get more economic bang out of our energy usage. Increasing economic productivity is a goal Republicans and Democrats can clearly come together to secure, and they have; wide-ranging efficiency measures have featured prominently in several bills currently backed by key Republicans [12].
Advancing the production of zero-carbon electricity, electrifying the American transportation fleet, catalyzing clean energy research and innovation, cleaning up the coal fleet, and boosting the efficiency and productivity of the U.S. energy system: these measures represent a nearly full list of the key levers needed to drive down emissions and U.S. dependence on coal and oil, all while building stronger domestic clean energy industries. What's more, these five areas are now ripe for bipartisanship and with Republican support, these clean energy measures presents a key opportunity for Democrats to drive America forward this year towards a clean energy economy.
What will the last play call be?
Obama and Senate Democrats now face a clear choice between two options...
They can waste precious time assuring green supporters they haven't abandoned cap and trade and meanwhile, come up empty handed by squandering the political opportunity presented by the oil catastrophe in the Gulf, appearing weak and inept before a public demanding energy reform, and handing another political victory to a GOP all too eager to enter the midterms having denied Obama and the Democrats one of their key policy priorities. More to the point, Americans will wind up without any substantive energy progress this year.
OR
Democrats can come out of the huddle prepared to build off of Republican proposals already on the table by offering more substantial counter-offers on each front: clean electricity, electrifying transportation, clean energy innovation, energy efficiency and even accelerated coal plant retirement. These energy-focused measures attached to a bill responding to the oil disaster in the Gulf would command strong public support, putting Democrats in a position to finally bargain from the high ground, secure stronger provisions, and score a real win on clean energy before the end of year.
Will it be a "comprehensive energy and climate bill?" No. And that's fine!
The inexorably-weakening "cap" and trade bills Senate Democrats seem willing to swallow are far from comprehensive already--and still unlikely to secure any passage this year.
Faced with ending up empty-handed and beaten, it is time for Democrats to bank these real wins now while making it abundantly clear to the public that this bill does not "check the box" on energy and climate for good.
If Democrats do that, they will have led America on the path to energy reform, and can tell the public that they will continue to lead a bipartisan effort to end America's dependence on dirty fossil fuels next year, if voters will back them in the November midterms.
If instead, Democrats insist on wasting these last few seconds on the obviously failing and increasingly desperate cap and trade agenda, Americans are likely to wind up without any substantive energy progress this year, and Democrats are likely to fare even worse at the polls. The ball is in their court.
Originally posted at the Breakthrough Institute
Notes:
[1] With just weeks remaining for floor votes in the Senate before the midterms hit, there's still a Supreme Court justice and a new Afghanistan commander to confirm, Financial Reform bills to conference, a budget to perhaps pass (prospects there don't look great), and on top of that, the White House just announced President Obama would give a big speech on Immigration Reform later this week, touching off yet another hot button domestic policy issue.
[2] The "American Clean Energy Leadership Act" (S.1462, or ACELA) passed the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last June with bipartisan support from four Republican committee-members: Sens. Lisa Murkowski (AK), Sam Brownback (KS), Jeff Sessions (AL), and Bob Corker (TN). That bill would establish a (modest but first-of-its-kind) requirement that utilities nationwide purchase a portion of their electricity from renewable energy sources (15% by 2020). In addition to this requirement, known as a "Renewable Electricity Standard" (RES) or "Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS), the ENR Committee bill would: establish a new federal agency to provide low-cost financing to spur the deployment of new clean technologies (the Clean Energy Deployment Administration); ramp up funding for Department of Energy R&D; establish new efficiency standards for buildings, lighting, appliances, industry and manufacturing.
[3] This is consistent with the "Diverse Energy Standard" included in the "Practical Energy and Climate Plan" (S.3464). Introduced by Senator Richard "Dick" Lugar (R-IN) and co-sponsored by Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK and Ranking Member of the Energy Committee), and Lindsay Graham (R-SC, who backed the bill after walking away from the climate plan he drafted with Sens. Kerry and Lieberman in April), the bill has arguably surfaced as the GOP's preferred energy platform. In addition to the "diverse" clean energy standard that includes stronger requirements than the Energy Committee bill above (15% by 2015, 20% by 2020, 25% by 2025 ... 50% by 2050) but allows nuclear power and carbon capture and storage at coal plants to qualify for the utility requirement, the GOP-backed bill would: ramp up vehicle fuel efficiency standards and set the first ever standards for medium- and heavy-duty trucks; establish financial incentives for advanced biofuel production (from non-grain sources) and require new vehicles to be flexible fuel (capable of running on biofuels and gasoline); establish stronger building, appliance, and industrial efficiency standards; ; expand loan guarantees for zero-carbon nuclear power plants; and provide incentives for the retirement of the oldest and dirtiest coal plants in the country.
[4] The "Clean Energy Act" (S.2776) sponsored by Republicans Lamar Alexander (TN) and Mike Crapo (ID) and Democrats Jim Webb (VA) and Mark Warner (VA), would encourage the build-out of new nuclear plants with a major expansion of loan guarantees, providing $10 billion in appropriations to be leveraged into roughly $100 billion in loan guarantees. In addition, the bill would provide $750 million in funding to establish new "mini-Manhattan projects" to advance clean energy research.
[5] The Clean Energy Deployment Administration is included in the bipartisan ACELA bill, see note [2] above. A similar provision passed the House in the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act.
[6] The Electric Vehicle Deployment Act (S.3442), sponsored by Democrats Byron Dorgon (ND) and Jeff Merkley (OR) and Republican Lamar Alexander (TN), aims to put the US on track to electrify half of all vehicles on the road by 2030. The $7-10 billion bill would: launch pilot communities across country to spur adoption of electric and plug in hybrid vehicles (funded at $2 billion per year); subsidize the nationwide build-out of charging infrastructure and purchase of electric and plug-in vehicles, including new credits for medium- and heavy-duty hybrid purchases; provide $1.5 billion for advanced battery research and $250 million for related workforce development and education efforts.
[7] Incentives for advanced biofuels production and flexible fuel vehicles are included in the Lugar energy bill, see note [3] above.
[8] The Energy Committee bill, see note [2] above, would authorizing a doubling of applied research programs at DOE, and basic research programs at DOE and elsewhere are on track to double under the America COMPETES Act originally passed with bipartisan support and signed into law by President Bush in 2007.
[9] These innovation centers would be consistent to the "mini-Manhattan projects" proposed by the Webb-Alexander-Warner-Crapo bill, see note [5] above.
[10] Clean energy cluster programs would extend multi-sector, collaborative research efforts to enhance the strength of regional economic clusters and could be a natural and effective extension of the research programs supported by Republicans. See "Strengthening Clean Energy Competitiveness: Opportunities for America COMPETES Reauthorization"
[11] A "cash for coal clunkers" style program offering $11 billion in financial incentives to accelerate the closure of the oldest, dirtiest coal plants comprising 16% (49 GW) of the coal fleet but representing a disproportionate amount of U.S. pollution of both the carbon and conventional varieties appeared in draft legislation sponsored by Senator Dick Lugar (R-IN). The final version introduced as S.3464 (see note [3] above) included a narrower incentive program for coal plant retirement. Republicans Lamar Alexander (TN) and Susan Collins (ME) and Democrats Tom Carper (DE) and Amy Klobuchar (MT) have sponsored the "Clean Air Act Amendments of 2010" (S.2995) which would impose new 'three-pollutant' air pollution requirements on mercury, SO2 and NOx emissions at power plants.
[12] A wide range of efficiency programs are included in both the bipartisan Energy Committee bill, see note [2], and the Lugar bill, see note [3], as well as numerous other bills co-sponsored or introduced by Republican Senators.
