Work Actions

by David Roberts.

As you may have heard, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) dropped a hint last week that he may still try to get a Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) into the Senate energy bill. According to Reid, there are two Republicans talking about supporting it, one of them likely Sam Brownback (R-Kansas). The RES in question would presumably be the one that passed the Energy Committee in June of last year, which is extremely ... modest, to put it charitably. Still, it’s something. Does it has a shot?

Policy-wise, it should be a no-brainer. To date, U.S. clean energy industries have been supported, if at all, by tax credits, which tend to come and go contingent on the political atmosphere and the mood of the Ways and Means Committee. Here’s a chart from the American Wind Energy Association that shows the effect see-sawing credits have on the industry (click for larger version):

An RES, even a modest RES, would be the first stable, long-term policy to support clean energy in the U.S. in, well, ever. It would enable serious long-term investor planning and spur some of the new infrastructure and industries America will need when we decide to get serious about climate change.

And it can’t come soon enough: according to a new report from Ernst & Young (PDF), China has passed the U.S. for the first time to become the most attractive destination for global clean energy investment:

This issue sees the US relinquishing its top position held since 2006—dropping two points to slip behind China, effectively crowning the Asian giant the most attractive market for renewables investment. This follows the failure in the US Senate’s proposed energy bill to include a Federal Renewable Energy Standard (RES) provision.

This on the heels of last month’s exasperated declaration from Deutsche Bank—which devotes $6 or $7 billion to low-carbon products—that it is taking its clean energy capital elsewhere. And then there was this extraordinary statement last week from Lew Hay,  CEO of NextEra Energy (America’s largest clean energy developer):

With an RES, we estimate that we would invest approximately $1 billion more per year in wind and $1.5 billion in solar. That would translate into roughly 40,000 jobs over the next five years.

Clean energy advocates are always going on about how private capital is “sitting on the sidelines,” waiting for a reliable policy signal. This is what they’re talking about.

What about the economy? Well, the U.S. is mired in a demand-side recession. Factories and workers are laying idle. An RES will spur demand for clean energy up and down an enormous supply chain and spur deployment of private capital without costing the federal budget anything. A quarter of the RES in the Energy Committee bill can be met with energy efficiency, which is also labor intensive and “can’t be offshored,” as they say.

According to a new report from Navigant Consulting (PDF), an RES of 25 percent by 2025 (much more ambitious than what’s on the table in the Senate) would support  274,000 new clean energy jobs. Furthermore, those jobs would be created in every region of the country, including the Southeast, where opposition to an RES tends to be centered.

Is it popular? Any politician should be so popular. Last month in a Pew/National Journal poll a whopping 78 percent of respondents supported an RES, including 70 percent of Republicans and 77 percent of Independents. Requiring utilities to use more clean energy has been one of the most reliably popular energy policy options for years. The last few months have seen a stream of editorials, signed letters, and statements of support of the policy from prominent conservatives and industry groups.

Not many policies get this kind of bipartisan support these days. People are fond of saying energy should be a bipartisan issue and surely reasonable people can agree, etc. Well, here it is, happening.

But ... you knew there was a but, right? ... it’s tough to see it passing this year. The harsh math of the filibuster means Harry Reid depends entirely on Republican votes. Time after time this session, this or that Republican has held out the prospect of cooperation; time after time, they’ve yanked it away in the end.

Right now, Republicans are in the catbird seat. By all indications they are heading for historic victories in the 2012 midterms. Every poll is swinging their way and the Democrats are having one crappy news cycle after another. What conceivable incentive do they have to allow Dems a legislative victory at this late hour, right when they’re on the ropes?

I mean, in a period of 10 percent unemployment, the GOP fought against unemployment benefits. You think they won’t block an RES? They’re now arguing against R&D tax credits and infrastructure spending, two policies they have (rhetorically) supported for years. You think they won’t turn their back on an RES?

Few people on the center left—and I include both Obama and Reid in this—seem able to get their heads around what the GOP has become. They keep thinking there are policy compromises so obviously in the public interest that Republicans will feel a sense of shame and call a time out on partisan warfare. By now, though, it should be clear beyond all doubt that Republicans have no interest in doing so. It’s got nothing to do with policy or the public interest. Maximal obstruction is proving electorally successful for the GOP and getting power back is their sole and overriding priority. Pressure on their members not to cross the aisle will be overwhelming. They want to destroy Obama and the Dems. That’s it. That’s really it.

But hell. Maybe Reid is right that if he approaches Republican senators during the lame duck session they’ll be free of electoral pressure and ready to get something done an RES. Maybe I’ll be proven wrong and readers will be right to scold me for seeing the Congressional GOP as a purely malign force in contemporary energy policy. I certainly hope so. I commend all the work being done to make it so and encourage anyone who can to join that work. But at the moment my pessimism-of-the-intellect is sitting on top of my optimism-of-the-will, giving it a wedgie.

Related Links:

The Climate Post: Will the “dead” climate bill become a federal renewable energy standard?

Feds lease prime solar land, but nary a panel is in sight

Richard Burr: objectionable and vulnerable

by Joseph Romm.

This post was cowritten by Araceli Ruano, the Center for American Progress’ senior vice president and director for California. Andrew Fitzgerald Adams also contributed to this post.

Last week, Politico reported on the California Senate debate:  “Fiorina’s major stumble came on the issue of Proposition 23.” Carly Fiorina had waffled on whether she supported the landmark climate and clean energy legislation (AB 32) that Prop 23 would kill, since, of course, she supported cap-and-trade during the presidential campaign.

Now the GOP Senate candidate has completed her flip-flop to full support for the dirty energy proposition funded by Big Oil, as the L.A. Times notes.

Fiorina’s campaign finally released a (somewhat) clear message on where she stands on Prop 23 on Friday, calling the measure a “Band-Aid fix and an imperfect solution”  to addressing energy and climate issues, but still supporting it. Here is her full statement on Prop 23:

Proposition 23 is a Band-Aid fix and an imperfect solution to addressing our nation’s climate and energy challenges. The real solution to these challenges lies not with a single state taking action on its own, but rather with global action. That’s why we need a comprehensive, national energy solution that funds energy R&D and takes advantage of every source of domestic energy we have—including nuclear, wind, and solar—in an environmentally responsible way. That said, AB 32 is undoubtedly a job killer, and it should be suspended.

It is unclear how a candidate can call for extensive research and legislative action on the climate and energy “challenge” and at the same time support a proposition that would bury the work that California   has done on the issue over the last decade. California has set itself up to be the leader in renewable energy through AB 32 and the resulting rules, but Prop 23 would eviscerate all the progress the state   has made.

How can she say AB 32 “is undoubtedly a job killer” now when just two years ago she said cap-and-trade “will both create jobs and lower the cost of energy?”

Fiorina seems to be trying to pass the buck to the federal government, in language that is eerily similar to that coming from the climate change deniers at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber, which has endorsed Fiorina, is notorious for questioning the science of global warming. It made headlines when its anti-climate position caused a number of major companies to walk away from the Chamber last year.

Again, as recently as 2008, she advocated for the proposed cap-and-trade system she now opposes. And now she appears to be siding with Texas oil interests over her own state and an approach she embraced just two years ago), as this video makes clear:

What changed? Could it be all the contributions from the Koch brothers, ExxonMobil, Halliburton, Sarah Palin, and Tesoro—all part of a PAC contribution list that reads like a Who’s Who of oil profiteers? The same Koch brothers that have sent a reported $50 million to climate change denying groups have already given thousands of dollars to Fiorina, with more likely on the way.

Fiorina’s vacillation and final decision to support Prop 23 leads one   to believe that her support is available to the highest bidder or whatever way the political winds blow. Instead of standing with the thousands of jobs in renewable energy,  or the millions of Californians that want the state to lead on climate change, she has chased campaign donations. What a shame.

Related Links:

Florida governor’s race: Sink vs. Scott

Michigan governor’s race: Snyder vs. Bernero

California’s Prop 23 is bad news for Latino families

by Christopher Mims.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) found new ways to let the public know there is absolutely no way the U.S. will get a climate and energy bill this year, the failure of which climate activist Bill McKibben lays at the feet of attempts to make the issue about energy security and the economy.

The aftermath of the climate bill has been opportunity for a cast of experts to opine about what comes next. On the table: the usual debate about investing in research and development of new technology vs. rolling out existing technology, and yet more calls for a national Renewable Energy Standard (RES), which probably won’t happen even though it would be great for the renewable power industry.

Congress’s failure to pass even an RES was the direct reason the U.S. fell to second place, behind China, in Ernst & Young’s index of the world’s best places to invest in renewable energy.

President Obama wants $50 billion for the nation’s transportation infrastructure, but the plan to pay for it by taking back some oil and gas industry tax breaks is going to be a tough sell among legislators backed by those groups.

Sunny Climes Warm to Climate Legislation

The Koch brothers, recently in the news because of a lengthy profile in The New Yorker outlining, among other things, their funding of groups hostile to action on climate change, just donated $1 million to the effort to repeal California’s greenhouse gas emissions standards. Politicians in favor of the proposition are getting heat from their eco-conscious constituents.

Shifting political winds in Australia have that country’s Greens Party declaring right now is the best opportunity they’ve ever had to pass legislation that will result in substantial emissions reductions.

Obama’s proposal to let businesses write-off the full value of new equipment purchases is also an accidental emissions-reduction plan.

Scientists Get Political

In a rare, explicitly political editorial, the world’s top science journal decried the “anti-science strain pervading the right wing in the United States.”

China Gets Aggro on Messaging, Energy

China tells the world it will always prioritize its national interests above cutting its emissions, even as its regional leaders inflict blackouts on their constituents in order to meet national energy-saving targets set by Beijing.

A massive new offshore wind project in China underscores the fact that the country is no longer a hub of manufacturing, but increasingly an innovator in its own right.

HSBC is projecting a tripling of the global market for low-carbon energy by 2020, with the fastest growth in China.

The U.S., meanwhile, is about to drop $575 million across 15 states for clean coal.

Preventing Wars Spawned by Climate Change

Climate change will lead to “irregular challenges” for the U.S. military, but the debate over whether it already has just got more interesting. A new paper says recent wars in Africa cannot be attributed to our warming world.

Water storage will be increasingly necessary to guarantee food security in the developing world, which is already experiencing jumps in food prices reminiscent of 2008, all due to this year’s extreme weather.

The irrigation on which so much food production depends has a second effect - it may be cooling some areas of the planet as much or more than climate change has warmed them, an effect that will disappear if the underground aquifers enabling this practice run dry.

Meat: Not A Climate Villain After All?

Eco-pundit George Monbiot reviews a new book that declares meat is not inherently a climate villain - it’s how we produce it that’s the problem.

Nuclear: Still Not Green

An incredibly detailed review of the literature declares that nuclear is, at best, only marginally better than natural gas at either returning invested energy to its producers or reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Getting (Green) Power to Those Who Have None

A pair of special reports address efforts to exploit the fact that renewables are inherently a distributed form of power generation to bring electricity and lighting to India and the developing world in general.

The Spotlight Shifts to Adaptation

The New York Times’s Andrew Revkin points out that a lot of our vulnerability to extreme weather is a systematic inability or unwillingness to plan for rare but not impossible events. This may be one reason why the world’s insurer’s are demanding a role in helping the UN come up with climate change adaptation plans for the developing world.

A forthcoming book from a pair of esteemed Stanford environmental scientists sums up the general mood: Preparing for Climate Change.

Related Links:

Meat eating can be an environmentally friendly choice, argues Geoge Monbiot

Moving beyond oil [TRANSCRIPT]

The Climate Post: Primaries move GOP to the right (on climate)

by Randy Rieland.

The reviews are in and they’re not good. Reaction to BP’s report from its internal investigation of the Gulf explosion has been almost all negative. Most critics have ripped BP for placing the bulk of the blame on its partners, but some are also asking what the pattern of mistakes and bad decisions says about how things are done on those huge oil rigs in the ocean.

Sorry seems to be the hardest word: The AP gets to the heart of the matter through a simple analysis of the lawyer-washed language of BP’s report. It never mentions the words blame, regret, apology, mistake, or pollution. The word fault does show up 20 times, but only once in the same sentence as the company’s name.

Here’s a sampling of other reactions:

Loren Steffy, Houston Chronicle:

If all of this sounds familiar, it should. Today’s Bly Report follows a template established by the Mogford Report, issued a few months after the March 2005 explosion at BP’s Texas City refinery that killed 15 people. That report, too, placed blame far down the management chain, laying it at the feet of contract workers and mid-level managers. Neither report addresses the root causes of the disasters they were supposed to investigate. Neither addresses the broader issues that dictate bigger decisions—such as well design—that were at the forefront of recent investigative hearings by the U.S. Coast Guard and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement.

Terry Macalister, energy editor, The Guardian:

What is really shocking about this report is the catalogue of errors—both human and mechanical. They demolish once and for all the oil industry’s much quoted mantra that “safety always comes first.” It may come first in the board room but it does not down at the wellhead where the real dangers are faced. It is worth remembering that BP, its rig operator Transocean and the main well contractor Halliburton are the blue chip companies in the wider oil and gas sector. If the shoddy work practices highlighted here are what the best-in-class do, then what is happening in the lower reaches of this industry?

Ian Urbina, The New York Times:

Central to BP’s legal strategy will be the need to rebuff claims that the company acted with gross negligence. The difference between gross negligence and negligence for BP, in this case, may be more than $15 billion in additional civil penalties under the Clean Water Act. Toward that end, the report plays down BP’s well design as a factor in causing the explosion.

David Hammer, New Orleans Times-Picayune:

The report stands in stark contrast to the conclusions drawn by independent engineering experts, federal investigators and news reporters based on reviews of available evidence. Those generally found that BP engineers and supervisors chose dubious designs for the well, skipped a crucial test that could have warned them of cementing problems and then misinterpreted the results of a final pressure test before deciding to remove a final barrier against gas flowing up to the rig.

People who need people: While BP is deserving of endless slings and arrows, another easy target—perhaps less deservedly—are the federal inspectors working in the Gulf. Mention their agency by its former name—Minerals Management Services—and you conjure up images of parties and freebies and way-too-cozy relationships. But a new report by Outer Continental Shelf Safety Oversight Board suggests the failings of MMS inspectors may have had more to do with lack of training, resources, and support from their higher-ups than moral turpitude. Jonathan Tilove, writing in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, highlights the board’s findings:

The report found that the Gulf of Mexico district offices don’t have the number of engineers needed to conduct effective permit reviews, that the inspectors lacked formal training and certification, and nearly half, by their own admission, felt ill-trained. The report found that there was little sharing of information among inspectors and between offices—the Gulf inspectors even lacked laptop computers.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said yesterday that his agency hopes to hire hundreds of new inspectors. Right now about 60 inspectors are responsible for covering roughly 3,500 drilling rigs and platforms in the Gulf.

No more chasing rainbows: The Senate’s failure to deal with climate legislation has triggered another ripple. Clean Energy Works (CEW), a coalition of 80 environmental, religious, veteran, and labor groups, is closing up shop after its summer of discontent. At one point, the group had 200 field organizers and 45 staffers based in Washington. But with no chance of Congress setting a cap on greenhouse gases, it’s lost its purpose for being. David Di Martino, a spokesman for the group, says CEW was never meant to be more than a temporary organization focused on a specific issue. But when you go back and see what he was saying a year ago, well, you can’t help but be a little wistful. Here’s Di Martino last September:

Public support for clean energy legislation is overwhelming. Unfortunately, an army of special interests and their Washington lobbyists are doing everything they can block comprehensive energy reform.  This campaign will mobilize the voices of those millions of Americans who want to put us back in control of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet.

So what have you done this summer? Here’s one of those scientific advances that most of us will never begin to understand. So let’s just lean back and tip our mojitos to the researchers at MIT who’ve been able to get tiny solar cells only a few billionths of a meter wide to mimic plant life by restoring and regenerating themselves. Sounds pretty damn impressive, but the best part is that it means solar cells will be able to last a lot longer. The BBC has the details.

Lights out: The Federal Trade Commission broke new ground yesterday when it sued a California firm, Lights of America, for making misleading promises about its LED bulbs. The company claimed that one of its LEDs could replace a 40-watt incandescent bulb, which emits roughly 400 lumens. Not quite, says the FTC. According to the agency, the bulb produced only 74 lumens of light. It’s the first time the feds have challenged claims about LED bulbs. 

Not too much power to the people: And in China, local officials are taking extreme measures to meet the energy-saving targets set in Beijing. The country’s economy is growing so fast—10.3 percent last quarter—that the only way local leaders can hope to stay within the central government’s limits on energy usage is to shut down plants for days at a time and order rolling blackouts in industrial areas. One plant manager  told the AP that it’s bad enough that his factory can’t deliver on orders because of the shutdowns, but even at home, where water pumps are shut off by the blackouts, “we can’t use the toilet.”

Now that is the unkindest cut.

Related Links:

BP takes share of blame for Gulf of Mexico oil spill

BP report says there’s plenty of blame to spread around for Gulf explosion

Obama: Rebuild America by slashing oil tax breaks