| Energy and Global Warming News for September 15: China's new climate plans; House passes wind energy bill Posted: 15 Sep 2009 09:22 AM PDT 
China's Hu to unveil new climate proposals to U.N. China's President Hu Jintao will present China's new plans for tackling global warming at a United Nations summit on climate change later this month, the country's senior negotiator said on Tuesday..
"He will make an important speech," Xie Zhenhua told reporters ahead of Hu's trip next week to the United Nations and the G20 summit of major rich and developing economies in Pittsburgh. Hu "will announce the next policies, measures and actions that China is going to take," added Xie, who steers China's climate policy as vice director of the powerful National Development and Reform Commission.
Xie said China will strengthen its policies and take on responsibilities in keeping with its level of development and practical capacities, but declined to give further details. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will host a special summit on September 22, to discuss climate change.
House Passes Wind Energy Bill
The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill that will authorize a comprehensive program to improve the efficiency, reliability and cost-effectiveness of U.S. wind energy systems, reports North American Wind Power. The Wind Energy Research and Development Act of 2009, H.R.3165, was sponsored by Rep. Paul Tonko, D, N.Y.
The bill requires the Secretary of Energy to carry out a program of research and development to improve the energy efficiency, reliability and capacity of wind turbines; optimize the design and adaptability of wind energy systems; and reduce the cost of construction, generation and maintenance of wind energy systems, according to the press release.
The bill would also create a demonstration program to measure wind energy performance including a full range of wind conditions across the country, and requires that the demonstration programs be conducted in collaboration with private industry. The bill authorizes $200 million per year from 2010 through 2014 for these programs.
World Bank joins war on climate change The World Bank is on Tuesday expected to join the many voices that have been calling on leaders to come up with strategies to combat climate change. The global financial institution will release a report calling for action to help tackle climate change. Environment minister John Michuki is scheduled to attend the event and launch the report titled: World Development Report 2010; Development and Climate Change at the UNEP headquarters in Nairobi.
There is already overwhelming scientific evidence, as indicated in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that climate change will threaten economic growth and long-term prosperity, as well as survival of the most vulnerable populations. IPCC projects that if emissions continue to rise at their current pace and are allowed to double from pre-industrial levels, the world will face an average temperature rise of around 3° C this century.
This will lead to a rise in sea-level, shifts in seasons, and more frequent and intense extreme weather such as storms, floods and droughts. Climate analyses indicate that Kenya will very likely be warmer by up to five degrees by 2100. Droughts will continue, possibly becoming more severe.
Whole Foods Market(R) Helps Fund New Wind Farm, Makes Landmark Purchase of Wind Energy Credits Whole Foods Market (Nasdaq: WFMI) today announced the completion of its 2009 landmark 776 million-kilowatt-hour purchase of renewable energy credits (RECs) from wind farms. The RECs are equal to 100 percent of the Company's electricity use in its North American locations, and nearly 90 percent of this year's purchase is helping to fund E.ON Climate & Renewables' (EC&R) recently-completed Texas-based Panther Creek wind farm.
"Whole Foods Market is working hard to be a leader in environmental stewardship and to make sure that our investment drives new wind power growth for the country. Buying nearly all of our 2009 renewable energy credits from Panther Creek to help bring new power from the wind farm to the grid is a great example of that," said Lee Matecko, Whole Foods Market global vice president of Construction and Store Development. "And as a Texas-based company, it also feels great to support a Texas-based wind farm. We appreciate Renewable Choice Energy for bringing this partnership together.."
Continuing its commitment to clean energy, nearly 90 percent of the RECs Whole Foods Market has purchased for 2009 came from a Big Spring, Texas-based wind farm, which is 50 miles east of Midland. The project is built and operated by EC&R North America, a renewable energy developer headquartered in Chicago, with development offices in Austin and Denver. The remaining RECs come from a number of different wind farms in locations across the U.S. and Canada. The total purchase of 776,115,000 kilowatt hours, the largest to date by a U.S. retailer, was made in partnership with Boulder, Colo.-based Renewable Choice Energy.
California feud breaks out on clean energy plan California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will veto a bill requiring the state to get a third of its electricity from solar, wind and other renewable sources, his staff said on Monday in a fight that shows the difficulties of addressing climate change fast.
However, the governor on Tuesday will issue an executive order with the same goal, but different rules, his staff said. Schwarzenegger, whose legacy is largely pinned on driving California's response to global warming, believes the bill passed in the last hours of the legislative session on Friday would make it more difficult to build solar plants in the state and to buy power from neighbors.
California's rank as the largest market for renewable power makes any decision important, and as the U.S. Congress struggles to put together a federal plan, the state's leadership and failures could shape a national plan. "The industry and regulators are going to wind up spending the next few years wrangling about how to implement the bill as opposed to actually putting steel in the ground," said Public Utilities Commission Deputy Director Nancy Ryan on a call sponsored by the governor.
Hawaii Tries Green Tools in Remaking Power Grids Two miles or so from this tiny town in the southernmost corner of the United States, across ranches where cattle herds graze beneath the distant Mauna Loa volcano, the giant turbines of a new wind farm cut through the air. Sixty miles to the northeast, near a spot where golden-red lava streams meet the sea in clouds of steam, a small power plant extracts heat from the volcanic rock beneath it to generate electricity.
These projects are just a slice of the energy experiment unfolding across Hawaii's six main islands. With the most diverse array of alternative energy potential of any state in the nation, Hawaii has set out to become a living laboratory for the rest of the country, hoping it can slash its dependence on fossil fuels while keeping the lights on.
Every island has at least one energy accent: waves in Maui, wind in Lanai and Molokai, solar panels in Oahu and eventually, if all goes well, biomass energy from crops grown on Kauai. Here on the Big Island of Hawaii, seawater is also being converted to electricity.
Still, the state faces enormous challenges in delivering the power to the people who need it. While the urban sprawl around Honolulu consumes the bulk of the energy, most potential renewable sources are far from the city, 150 miles southeast or 100 miles to the northwest.
Each of the state's six electric grids belongs to its own island and is unconnected to the others. And according to state figures, Hawaii still relies on imported oil to generate 77 percent of its electricity, a level of dependency unique in the United States. Coal-fired power provides 14 percent, and 9 percent comes from renewable sources like the wind or the sun.
Conference Brings Attention to Himalayan Climate Threat Scientists, policymakers, and community representatives from across South Asia met earlier this month to discuss the many threats that climate change poses to the continent's Greater Himalayan region.
Across Nepal and Tibet, average temperatures have been up to six times warmer in the mountains than in the plains, triggering changes in regional weather patterns. These changes have been accompanied by increases in pest and disease populations, losses in local biodiversity, and more than 3,500 forest fires in the Himalayas this spring alone.
"Accelerated melting of glaciers in the Himalayas is…posing a catastrophic threat to the 1.3 billion people in [the region's] river basins," said Uday Sharma, secretary of Nepal's Ministry of Environment, who attended the meeting in Kathmandu in early September.
Unseasonal weather, including floods, droughts, and late frosts, has also prompted crop failures from Tajikistan to northern India, according to Brian Peniston, Nepal and India country director with the Mountain Institute.
Climate Change Risks Could Cost Developing Countries Up to 19% of GDP by 2030 A report from the Economics of Climate Adaptation Working Group released today indicates that climate risks could cost nations up to 19% of their GDP by 2030, with developing countries most vulnerable. The report concludes, however, that cost effective adaptation measures already exist that can prevent between 40 and 68 percent of the expected economic loss with even higher levels of prevention possible in highly target geographies.
The report, titled "Shaping Climate-Resilient Development", offers a comprehensive and replicable methodology to determine the risks that climate change imposes on economies. It provides a set of tools for decision makers to adopt a tailored approach for estimating these costs based on local climate conditions, and for building more resilient economies. These tools do not include estimates or measures for emissions reduction, which would need to be examined separately.
By determining a location's total climate risk – calculated by combining existing climate risks, climate change and the value of future economic development – and using a cost-benefit analysis to create a list of location specific measures to adapt to the identified risk, the Working Group was able to evaluate current and potential costs of climate change and how to prevent them. The methodology was tested in localities within eight different countries (China, United States, Guyana, Mali, United Kingdom, Samoa, India, and Tanzania), which together represent a wide range of climate hazards, economic impacts, and development stages.
The working group estimated expected economic loss for the eight different case study regions leveraging natural catastrophe risk modeling techniques assuming current GDP growth estimates, under three different climate change scenarios – today's climate (assuming that there is no additional impact from climate change); moderate climate change (based on the average forecast of climate change for the particular hazard in the location studied); and high climate change (based on the outer range of the climate change considered possible by 2030). The methodology is applicable in any setting where society must consider risk. For example, in Florida the report estimates an annual expected loss of $33 billion from hurricanes – more than 10 percent of GDP – under a high climate change scenario.
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| EIA stunner: By year's end, we'll be 8.5% below 2005 levels of CO2 — halfway to climate bill's 2020 target. Posted: 15 Sep 2009 06:55 AM PDT The Energy Information Administration released its monthly Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) last week with a bombshell prediction for near-term carbon dioxide emissions: Projected carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels fall by 6.0 percent in 2009 because of the weak economic conditions and declines in the consumption of most fossil fuels (U.S. Carbon Dioxide Emissions Growth Chart). Coal leads the drop in 2009 CO2 emissions, falling by nearly 10 percent because of fuel switching from coal to natural gas in the electric power sector. The projected recovery in the economy contributes to an expected 0.9-percent increase in CO2 emissions in 2010.
Now that's the perfect storm: a weak economy, low natural gas prices, state renewable energy standards, and a clean-energy-friendly stimulus (see "EIA projects wind at 5% of U.S. electricity in 2012, all renewables at 14%, thanks to Obama stimulus!"). This 6% drop in CO2 emissions from fossil fuels in 2009 is double the drop EIA had projected just 5 months ago in its Updated Annual Energy Outlook 2009 Reference Case Reflecting Provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and Recent Changes in the Economic Outlook, which had this chart: ![]( "eia-carbon-dioxide-emissions")
If my calculations are right, this means by year's end we'll actually be more than 8.5% below 2005 levels in energy-related CO2 emissions, which make up the overwhelming majority of U.S.. greenhouse gases. And that is halfway to the 2020 Waxman-Markey target! And EIA doesn't project a dramatic recovery in emissions in 2010 — just a 0.9% rise. This has a bunch of big implications for what the Senate should do in writing its climate bill:
- Senator Boxer (D-CA) should strengthen the 2020 target to, say 20% below 2005 levels. If we keep using 2005 as the baseline, then EIA's STEO analysis suggests the 2020 target of a 17% reduction just got even easier than it already was.
- The emissions allowances for at least the first several years also need to be reduced. We certainly don't want to issue excess allowances, as Europe did in its experimental phase. Of course, Waxman-Markey won't see a price collapse as the Europeans did since it has a built-in (rising) floor price and too weak targets to begin with. But the starting floor price, $10, is sufficiently low that polluters are likely to buy excess allowances in the early years so they don't have to buy more expensive ones later.
- Congress should quickly task the EIA with coming up with a revised projection of CO2 emissions through at least 2020, if not 2030. In addition to the near term changes, EIA also needs to factor in CO2 reductions from Obama's change in fuel economy standards (see "Obama to raise new car fuel efficiency standard to 39 mpg by 2016 — The biggest step the U.S. government has ever taken to cut CO2"). It is important to note that the EIA is likely to keep overestimating CO2 emissions, since they simply will not model any national or state policies that have not been enacted into law. Thus, for instance, they assume that the wind production tax credit will be zero forever after the stimulus funding for it ends in 2012, concluding in April "wind capacity growth is projected to slow significantly after the expiration of the Federal tax credits in 2012." Slow significantly? That's an understatement. EIA projects U.S. wind capacity rising from about 25 GW in 2008 to 66 GW in 2014 — but then to only 68 GW in 2030! Anybody want to bet me that wind capacity will grow 2 GW from 2015 to 2030? Didn't think so. And EIA projects solar thermal power in 2014 will be … wait for it … 790 MW, and in 2030 … wait even longer and longer for it … 860 MW. EIA just does not like renewables — even those with power purchase agreements (see "World's largest solar plant with thermal storage to be built in Arizona — total of 8500 MW of this core climate solution planned for 2014 in U.S. alone").
- The CBO, EIA, and EPA should redo their cost estimates based on those new EIA CO2 projections. If the emissions baseline drops, meeting the targets will be easier — especially if, as many fear, the Senate ultimately adopts a weaker target than the House.
- The Senate should raise the 2012 starting point for the auction floor price to $14 (rising 5% plus inflation a year). Why? Since EIA will keep overestimating CO2 emissions, too many allowances are still likely to be issued. To discourage companies from buying excess permits in the auction for hoarding, you want to have a higher floor price. Any permits that are not sold in the auction should go into the strategic reserve.
- The climate bill should give the president authority for 5 years (2012 to 2017) to revise the number of allowances issued based on EIA's short-term projection. The STEO is far more accurate and less susceptible to flawed methodology than EIA's long-term forecast. If, as I suspect, fossil fuel companies complain that this would be changing the rules after the fact, then I suggest at least giving the president the authority to put those extra allowances into the strategic reserve directly, rather than offering them up for auction.
Getting the number of allowances right is a big deal. It is very important that Congress and the President do this right. The Senate should even consider holding a hearing on this. It would certainly be a far more useful subject than " price volatility in the energy sector as a result of a greenhouse gas trading program." |
| O'Reilly's weatherman, befuddled Bastardi: "Global cooling is actually a cause of drought in California." Posted: 15 Sep 2009 05:14 AM PDT Ocean temperatures are at record levels (see "Breaking heat records in water is more ominous as a sign of global warming than breaking temperature marks on land.") The 2000s are on track to be nearly 0.2°C warmer than the 1990s, meaning "this will be the hottest decade in recorded history by far" – and that temperature jump is especially worrisome since the 1990s were only 0.14°C warmer than the 1980s. The World Meteorological Organization Secretary General explained to the bewildered editors of the Washington Post: Data collected over the past 150 years by the 188 members of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) through observing networks of tens of thousands of stations on land, at sea, in the air and from constellations of weather and climate satellites lead to an unequivocal conclusion: The observed increase in global surface temperatures is a manifestation of global warming. Warming has accelerated particularly in the past 20 years.
What follows is Wonk Room repost of yet another addition to the right wing disinformation campaign — Fox News host Bill O'Reilly promoting "the conspiracy theories" of Accuweather meteorologist Joe Bastardi, who "scoffed at the connection between global warming and wildfires in California." Indeed "Bastardi — who has an undergraduate degree in meteorology from 1978 and no other academic credentials — went so far as to claim":
I'm gonna show you the facts over the last two years. California has been very, very dry. Why is that the case? Well, whenever the Pacific Ocean starts cooling, and the global temperatures start to cool, California gets dry. You see this ocean temperature presentation, all this cold water off California means the air sinks over top of California. When it sinks, it dries out, so global cooling is actually a cause of drought in California, which by the way is a dry climate naturally.
Watch it:
The upswelling of cold waters in the eastern Pacific, known as La Nina events (the opposite of El Nino events), is certainly a factor in California's epic drought and unprecedented wildfires. However, what Bastardi fails to mention is that temperatures have also been unusually warm during the present drought, despite the cold La Nina airmass: California Temperatures During La Nina Droughts
 Previous events during 1949, 1954, 1964, 1970, 1973, 1975, 1988, 1995, 1998 Bastardi's claim of "global cooling" is completely unsubstantiated. Even with the upwelling of cold water during the La Nina cycle, average ocean temperatures during the "cool" years of 2006-2008 were higher than any year before 1997. It has been the warmest decade for both ocean and land temperatures in recorded history. This summer, the La Nina event was replaced by its counterpart, El Nino, and average sea surface temperatures are now at their highest in recorded history. Bastardi also showed a graph he purported was the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's forecast for global temperatures to "go up, up, up" against actual temperatures "over the last 10 years" supposedly "coming down": | Fake IPCC Chart Claims 'Global Cooling' |  | This graph is from a climate denier conspiracy website, The Next Ice Age Now, whose proprietor Robert Felix believes global warming is actually caused by "underwater volcanism." The graph cites SPPI — the Science and Public Policy Institute, a fringe climate denier organization. Actual IPCC estimates find measured temperatures over the past decade to be well within the range of the forecasts. Furthermore, the Ice Age Now chart begins in 2001 — not "ten years ago. Because 1999 and 2000 were relatively cool years for this decade (though extremely warm historically), their inclusion in the denier chart would have ruined the "global cooling" claim. Bastardi, like other fringe deniers, is seeing patterns that aren't there. In July, O'Reilly mocked "hard core right-wingers who don't believe in global warming even though the temperature shows that the earth has warmed in the last 30 years, three times faster than the previous hundred," saying, "you don't debate that." Evidently, he's changed his mind. Transcript: O'REILLY: Unresolved problems segment tonight. The Obama administration believes that climate change is a front line issue, that global warming must be addressed. That pleases groups like Greenpeace who are now saying the wildfires in California are spreading quicker because of climate change. We invited Greenpeace on. First they said, "Yeah, we will come on," and suddenly changed their minds and ran away. Joining us from State College, PA is Accuweather guy Joe Bastardi, who thinks Greenpeace wildife theory is wrong. What is going on with Greenpeace? Why didn't they show up tonight? And is there anything to their wildfire-spreading-quickly theory? BASTARDI: I don't want to disparage them. They have done some good things. In this case their house of cards goes up in smoke when you compare it to the foundation of fact. I'm gonna show you the facts over the last two years. California has been very, very dry. Why is that the case? Well, whenever the Pacific Ocean starts cooling, and the global temperatures start to cool, California gets dry. You see this ocean temperature presentation, all this cold water off California means the air sinks over top of California. When it sinks, it dries out, so global cooling is actually a cause of drought in California, which by the way is a dry climate naturally. And to prove to you that the globe is actually cooling, if you look at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, their forecast was for temperatures to go up, up, up. Over the last 10 years you can see in an up and down manner they are coming down. So, there's no question about the fact over at least the last 10 years it's cooling. O'REILLY: Okay. Why is the global warming movement so successful throughout the world? BASTARDI: Well, I think people haven't been confronted with the facts. You know, I don't ask people to believe me. I ask people to go and arm themselves and build the facts for themselves. go look for the facts themselves. The biggest secret behind all of this is right up my alley with the tropics. You see, while the earth was supposed to be warming a little bit, the atmosphere over the tropics was supposed to really be warming up quite a bit. This is up to 30 to 50,000 feet. That would trap warmth underneath and what has actually been happening? Nada. And consequently, an inconvenient truth is tropical cyclone energy is down to record low levels not record high levels. You have to look globally. O'REILLY: Your stats are very solid, which is why we put you on the program. But this big industry, and the president of the United States is on board on the industry, Al Gore has made $100 million from it. I don't understand why so many people around the world just buy it. They just — like Greenpeace comes out and says okay, the California wildfires, terrible, are spreading faster because of global warming. You say that's bull, that there is no science to back that up. I will submit to you, Joe, millions of people believe Greenpeace. They don't even care about the data! BASTARDI: Well, that's a problem in society today. You're a historian. You know the facts. You have to go back and look. For instance, let's take the hurricanes. Hurricanes are stronger now. Oh, is that so? How were we measuring hurricanes out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico back in 1920, 1930? When you look at a hurricane now, it's like we have a patient tied to an IC unit. We're constantly monitoring every single second. If you look at the strength of landfalling hurricanes, for instance, they're no different than what they were 30, 40, 100 years ago. In fact the 1944 hurricane up along the Eastern seaboard — 600-mile-wide diameter of hurricane force winds — drove the boardwalk in Atlantic City back to Baltic Avenue. The point of the matter is look at the history, look at the facts, go arm yourself, and then you make the call yourself. O'REILLY: All right. That's why Greenpeace didn't come on the show. They knew you had the facts and they didn't.
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| Senate Energy Committee hearing aimed at overselling volatility threat from climate bill, which in fact will make Americans' energy bills MORE stable Posted: 14 Sep 2009 06:14 PM PDT Fossil fuels have very volatile prices. Solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, energy efficiency — not so much. So the Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources should be holding a hearing on how the climate and clean energy bill — which accelerates the transition to clean energy sources that never run out and that stabilize the energy bills of American taxpayers — decreases voltality. After all, the House bill's huge push on energy efficiency (which is nowhere to be found in the Senate energy bill), actually keeps American energy bills flat (or declining) even as the carbon price rises (see "The triumph of energy efficiency: Waxman-Markey could save $3,900 per household" and "New EPA analysis of Waxman-Markey: Consumer electric bills 7% lower in 2020 thanks to efficiency"). But in fact on Tuesday the committee is having a hearing "to explore potential costs and price volatility in the energy sector as a result of a greenhouse gas trading program." Why? As E&E Daily (subs. req'd) explains:
Bingaman has largely kept his distance from the cap-and-trade debate. A Bingaman aide said the chairman is planning several hearings this month as Democratic leaders gear up for a floor debate later this year that entails piecing together a comprehensive energy and climate bill based on the work of six committees.
Bingaman begins tomorrow with a hearing to examine the projected costs of a cap-and-trade bill, and the potential for price volatility in the energy security. He has long advocated price controls as part of a cap-and-trade bill, including a "safety valve" that places an absolute ceiling on the price of carbon allowances. That idea often has drawn outright opposition from environmental groups who say it would not do enough to stimulate low-carbon energy technologies.
A cap-busting safety valve is not good from an environmental perspective (see "Safety Valves Won't Make Us Safer"). That's why I have long opposed them (see "The history of the 'safety valve' debate"), especially when set at ridiculously low levels, such as $7 per metric ton of CO2-equivalent (and rising a tad above inflation annually), as the National Commission on Energy Policy proposed in 2004. If you hate energy price volatility, the first thing you'd do is pass a strong climate and clean energy bill, to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels, which have incredibly volatile prices. Oil in particular will see increasingly brutal price spikes in the future, as peak oil price hikes are followed by economic slowdown and price declines, then even higher prices followed by economic slowdown and price declines, with higher highs and lows (see World's top energy economist warns peak oil threatens recovery, urges immediate action: "We have to leave oil before oil leaves us"). To further minimize volatility, your climate and clean energy bill should have what I've called 'price collar plus' — a rising CO2 floor price and ceiling price, but with the ceiling not being a pure safety valve where the government simply issues unlimited emissions credits at the ceiling price but instead making use of tons set aside in a strategic reserve, as the House bill does. Here's where this hearing becomes much ado about no much: Earlier this summer, Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said she wanted to address the price volatility issue in her cap-and-trade bill. But Boxer said she would consider using a "price collar" to help control costs, and a senior aide later clarified that the idea under consideration involves a reserve fund that can address price swings without destroying the environmental integrity of the overall legislation. Bingaman, who has no plans to write his own cap-and-trade bill this time around, responded that he thought Boxer's idea was a good one. "I think it's something that makes a lot of sense to look at," he said. Several top industry groups have also been lobbying for a "price collar" as part of the climate bill, including the Edison Electric Institute, the lead trade association for investor-owned utilities, and the Midwestern Climate Coalition, which includes MidAmerican Energy Holdings Inc., Alliant Energy Corp. and Wisconsin Energy Corp
So there is going to be a price collar, and progressives just need to work hard to make sure that their is a strategic reserve and a high ceiling price that rises 5% plus inflation a year. The hearing itself is I fear of going to miss the point, but I certainly hope that Pew's Eileen Claussen, and NCEP's Jason Grumet make some of the arguments that I have above. One final point — even if a generic cap and trade system might be subject to price volatility, the Waxman-Markey bill is unlikely to see very volatile prices through the 2020s because the targets are too easy to meet (see "(see "Game changer, Part 2: Unconventional gas makes the 2020 Waxman-Markey target so damn easy and cheap to meet"). I expect the CO2 price will hug the auction floor price for at least the first five years and possibly the first 10 years. Indeed, the greatest risk of volatility is probably on the down side, to go by other carbon markets (such as the Europeans and the New England states). So if you don't like volatility, raise the floor price starting point from $10 to $14 (still rising 5% real per year). That is a proposal I will elaborate on in a future post.
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| Department of Interior launches Climate Change Response Strategy Posted: 14 Sep 2009 04:54 PM PDT 
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar today launched the Department of the Interior's "first-ever coordinated strategy to address current and future impacts of climate change on America's land, water, ocean, fish, wildlife, and cultural resources." "Across the country, Americans are experiencing first-hand the impacts of climate change, from growing pressure on water supplies to more intense droughts and fires to rampant bark beetle infestations," said Salazar. "Because Interior manages one-fifth of our nation's landmass and 1.7 billion acres on the Outer Continental Shelf it is imperative that we tackle these impacts of a failed and outdated energy policy. This secretarial order is another milestone in our continuing effort to change how Interior does business to respond to the energy and climate challenges of our time."
The secretarial order signed today at Interior's command center establishes a framework through which Interior bureaus will coordinate climate change science and resource management strategies.. Under the framework:
- A new Climate Change Response Council, led by the Secretary, Deputy Secretary and Counselor, will coordinate DOI's response to the impacts of climate change within and among the Interior bureaus and will work to improve the sharing and communication of climate change impact science, including through www.data.gov;
- Eight DOI regional Climate Change Response Centers, serving Alaska, the Northeast, the Southeast, the Southwest, the Midwest, the West, Northwest, and Pacific regions – will synthesize existing climate change impact data and management strategies, help resource managers put them into action on the ground, and engage the public through education initiatives; and
- A network of Landscape Conservation Cooperatives will engage DOI and federal agencies, local and state partners, and the public to craft practical, landscape-level strategies for managing climate change impacts within the eight regions. The cooperatives will focus on impacts such as the effects of climate change on wildlife migration patterns, wildfire risk, drought, or invasive species that typically extend beyond the borders of any single National Wildlife Refuge, BLM unit, or National Park.
Center for American Progress CEO John Podesta released the following statement: "We applaud Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's directive that Interior Department agencies develop coordinated strategies to address the many challenges posed by global climate change. With management responsibility for hundreds of millions of acres of public lands, rivers and offshore energy development, the Department of Interior has a unique opportunity to monitor, report and respond to the impacts of global warming on the nation's air, land, water, trees and wildlife. Better coordination among Interior Department agencies with responsibility for water, energy development, parks, rangeland and fish and wildlife, and endangered species will go a long way to ensuring that the federal government's response to climate change is cohesive and reflects the best available science. In many respects the American West is ground zero for the impacts of climate change. Already the region suffers from prolonged drought, reduced water supplies, more wildfires and invasive species, and more serious impacts lie ahead. By making climate change mitigation and adaptation a priority now, Interior will be able to not just better protect landscapes and resources that are precious to all Americans, but serve as an effective advocate for a rapid transition to a low carbon economy."
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| Waxman-Markey clean air, clean water, clean energy jobs bill creates $1.5 trillion in benefits Posted: 14 Sep 2009 11:47 AM PDT As award-winning journalist Eric Pooley concluded in a comprehensive study of the media's mistakes and biases during the Lieberman-Warner climate bill debate, "The press failed to perform the basic service of making climate policy and its economic impact understandable to the reader and allowed opponents of climate action to set the terms of the cost debate. The argument centered on the short-term costs of taking action–i.e., higher electricity and gasoline prices–and sometimes assumed that doing nothing about climate change carried no cost." See How the press bungles its coverage of climate economics — "The media's decision to play the stenographer role helped opponents of climate action stifle progress." The following repost from guest blogger Daniel J. Weiss, a Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, looks at a new study that aims to help address the flaw in economics coverage.
A new analysis of clean energy legislation finds that it will produce likely economic benefits of $1.5 trillion. The finding by the New York University School of Law's Institute for Policy Integrity explains that the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) is "cost‐benefit justified under most reasonable assumptions about the likely 'social cost of carbon.'" In "The Other Side of the Coin: The Economic Benefits of Climate Legislation," the Institute for Policy Integrity finds that the "benefits of H.R. 2454 could likely exceed the costs by as much as nine-to-one": Using conservative assumptions, the benefits of H.R. 2454 could likely exceed the costs by as much as nine-to-one, or more. The estimated benefits do not include a significant number of ancillary and un‐quantified benefits, such as the reduction of co‐pollutants (particularly sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide), the prevention of species extinction, and lower maintenance costs for energy infrastructure. Due to those limitations, the benefits estimates should be considered to be very conservative.
The cost-benefit analyses of environmental safeguards generally favor the costs since they are relatively easy to measure. The economic benefits, however, of reduced pollution are much harder to calculate. The price of a scrubber to reduce sulfur and particulate pollution from a coal fired power plant is easy to calculate, but it is much harder to account for the value of a protected stream or restored vista. Even the federal government often projects costs while ignoring benefits of clean energy proposals. For instance, the Congressional Budget Office's assessment of the American Clean Energy and Security Act notes that its analysis "does not include the economic benefits and other benefits of the reduction in GHG emissions and the associated slowing of climate change." The "social cost of carbon" is the "the monetary valuation of incremental damage from each ton of greenhouse gas emissions." The new IPI analysis employs a recent Department of Energy estimate that the "monetary values of the benefits of carbon dioxide emission reductions, otherwise known as the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) [are] …$19 per metric ton of carbon dioxide." This estimate was developed by an interagency task force, and was employed in a Department of Energy rule for more energy efficient vending machines issued on August 31st. Using the value of $19 per ton of carbon pollution avoided, the authors determined that the total midrange projection of Waxman-Markey's benefits is $1.5 trillion total between 2012-2050. Projections estimate that the legislation would require $660 billion in investment during this time, which means that benefits are at least two times greater than costs: At the SCC values preferred by the Department of Energy, the direct benefits of H.R. 2454 are more than double the costs. Using SCC values that have a more appropriately low discount rate built in (EPA's 2% figures), direct benefits are nearly eight to nine times greater than costs.
Even these projections are very low because the estimated SCC employed in the analysis excludes the value of a number of important benefits. It excludes the reduction of other harmful pollutants released along with greenhouse gases from coal fired power plants, such as soot and mercury. It does not estimate the cost of fewer tropical diseases or respiratory ailments from smog, or less political unrest in volatile regions. Special interests that defend the status quo and oppose clean energy programs are quick to trot out their studies predicting economic Armageddon due to enormously inflated costs. Never mind that most of these industry studies are riddled with false assumptions and ideologically driven guess work, and are often proven wrong over time. Until now, advocates of progress have had few estimates of economic benefits of action. This is a credible estimate of the benefits of action, and it far outweighs the investment cost of building a clean energy economy. The Environmental Protection Agency must take the next step by conducting a more thorough, rigorous analysis of benefits to conclusively demonstrate that Americans will have a net economic benefit from clean energy and global warming legislation. Update: A new report by the Union of Concerned Scientists finds that "global warming inaction could cost the nation hundreds of billions by the end of the century." Here is some additional analysis from Stewart J. Hudson, President of the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation: This study is a great resource because of its singular focus—rather than look at benefit creation in the abstract, it examines legislation already passed in the U.S. House of Representatives, HR2454, and puts a numerical value on the social benefits that would occur once the legislation is fully implemented. Among the most important conclusions of the study: Ø The social cost of carbon that it calculates … suggests that "the benefits of HR2454 could likely exceed the costs by as much as nine-to-one, or more." Ø The methodologies it employs, and the discount rates it assumes, lead it to underestimate rather than overestimate the benefits it identifies Ø By focusing on actual legislation, rather than theoretical ideas, it makes the case that an even more ambitious approach to climate protection and clean energy would provide for an even more robust array of social and economic benefits to society A report this important will always attract critics, and they might well take aim at the fact that the report looks at the global, rather than merely domestic distribution of the social benefits from climate protection. This leads to an obvious critique—if costs borne by the United States create benefits that occur globally, is this study's cost curve a reliable basis for affecting U.S. domestic policy? Said differently, won't we end up paying for benefits we don't receive? That might seem like a reasonable question to ask, but there's a flaw that makes it less than compelling. That's because it assumes that other nations are simply free riding on the US efforts identified in HR2454. In point of fact (and this is a very important and underreported story) many other nations with whom we share the planet are already doing far more than we are on climate protection … and are paying for social benefits that are distributed globally, rather than just within their borders. In the vernacular, it's difficult to see how critics can lay a glove on the findings of this study even thought it's all but certain they will try to delegitimize its major findings. For those brave souls who read the study with an open mind the take away is this—even a conservative estimate of the other side of the coin demonstrates that the benefits of climate protection outweigh the costs; and the more of it we do, and do right, the better that benefit-cost ratio becomes, not just here at home, but around the world.
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| Energy and Global Warming News for September 14: Green jobs legislation passes in New York; China clean tech market could be worth $1 trillion a year Posted: 14 Sep 2009 11:20 AM PDT ![greenlanternrebirth6.jpg]( "greenlanternrebirth6.jpg") Landmark Green Jobs Bill Passes Senate 52 – 8
New York may be on the verge of becoming a world leader in energy efficiency. Working late into the night, the State Senate passed the historic Green Jobs-Green New York bill yesterday after more than a year of hard work from the WFP and a broad coalition of environmentalists, businesses, community groups, labor unions and key Senators and members of the Assembly. The bill – which had already passed the Assembly unanimously and is supported by the Governor – would make energy efficiency upgrades to one million homes and businesses across the state over the next five years and create tens of thousands of badly needed jobs.
Sen. Darrel Aubertine, the bill's lead Senate sponsor and champion said: "This program will create jobs, save consumers on their energy bills and help get our economy back on track.. This bill encourages conservation, helps consumers with the cost of capital improvements to their homes and businesses, and creates jobs in the new economy. It's a win-win for New York State, especially Upstate New York where a well-trained workforce will be in demand to keep the heat in and energy bills down every winter."
The key innovation in the bill is a revolving capital fund, which would leverage private investment in energy efficiency to massively increase the use of existing technology. Here's how it would work: State certified contractors would perform free or low-cost energy audits for homeowners, looking for repairs and upgrades (like air sealing, insulation, new boilers) that can pay for themselves through the energy savings they create.
China clean tech market could be worth up to $1 trillion annually
China's booming clean tech market could soon be worth up to $1 trillion (£605bn) annually, according to a new report that credits the government's support for the sector as central to its recent stratospheric growth.
The China Greentech Report 2009, released last week, looked at businesses that could feasibly be launched in the country in areas such as clean energy, construction, transport, water and other industries.
The sectors could eventually generate between $500m and $1tn per year, with the higher figure equal to the nation's forecasted GDP for 2013, said the study, which is the first to be issued by China Greentech Initiative, a collective of more than 80 technology firms, non-governmental organisations and policy advisers that are mostly based in the West.
The report predicts that, with the help of government support, China will grow into one of the world's largest clean tech markets.
However, it warns that despite the growing role of private sector investment in the industry, state policies that would foster the widespread adoption of environmentally friendly technologies will remain vital.
"The story that has emerged is largely optimistic, tempered by the complexity of China's markets and the challenges that must be overcome," the report said.
Boxer Eyes Cost in Prepping for Climate Bill Fight In May 2008, Environment and Public Works Chair Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) delivered the final text of the Climate Security Act, the failed bill to conquer climate change. She included with her summary a long list of how the $6.7 trillion in pollution permits would be distributed.
Some observers equated Boxer's list to a deli counter for special interests – line up, get a number, get a cut. The document read like a massive wish-list, and included "transition assistance" for every fossil fuel and heavy industry, and handouts to agriculture, the building sector, renewable energies, "clean" coal, cellulosic biofuels, truck fleets, firefighters, and state energy programs. The bill, which Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and John Warner (R-Va.) co-sponsored and Boxer ushered through the Senate, aimed to slash carbon dioxide emissions 19 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 71 percent by 2050. The plan would create a cap-and-trade system that would require polluting entities to acquire permits to emit carbon dioxide. Some would be auctioned, while others would be handed out for free. In total, the plan would be worth trillions over the 38-year lifetime of the bill. It included a significant amount of money for consumer tax relief, but that was lost in the list of industry hand-outs. While Boxer's allocations were the result of clear political and economic calculations, it wasn't presented in a way that helped her sell it to the public.
Now, with the country wrapped up in the worst recession in decades and Republicans gearing up to malign climate legislation as just another tax on hard-working Americans, Boxer is going to have an even tougher time selling a climate plan. Her job will become more difficult if it reads like a laundry list of handouts to industry, while increasing costs on average energy consumers. Whatever climate bill Boxer puts on the table this fall will likely have a similar dollar figure attached, worth trillions over the bill's lifespan. As she shapes the bill this year, however, Boxer seems to be taking more time and deliberation in crafting her plan for distributing value of a climate program, figuring out a way to keep costs low and making other "tweaks," as she has told reporters. Environmental advocates say they are confident that stronger 2020 emissions reductions targets are among the tweaks she's going to make to the House bill, but that would likely make the plan more expensive.
One of the reasons the House was able to pass a bill in June was that they employed more effective messaging on the costs and benefits of legislation than Boxer did last year, according to advocates who have worked closely with Congress on the bills. House leaders pushing the legislation billed each allocation as pursuing one of three goals — creating new jobs, supporting the development of clean energy technology, or reducing costs to consumers. "I think that's what was maybe missing a little bit — without criticizing Boxer's staff — last year," said Nathaniel Keohane, director of economic policy and analysis
at Environmental Defense Fund. "I think one thing the House was able to do, with the benefit of the lessons learned from the Senate process, was to block out and frame what we were trying to do and accomplish with the allocations. I think that people didn't get that same message coming out of the Senate."
RPT-Calif. lawmakers pass tougher clean energy goals A bill that would power up California's already ambitious effort to shift to cleaner, renewable energy has cleared the state legislature, but it was uncertain if Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger would sign it.
Schwarzenegger, who supports the more aggressive requirements in the measure, is under pressure from interests such as small energy producers and local utility districts to veto the bill.
The plan, passed by the state Senate late on Friday, would require California's utility companies to get one-third of their electricity from solar, wind and other alternative energy sources by 2020. The state has embarked on the most ambitious U.S. effort to switch to more environmentally friendly energy production. But it is struggling to meet its current goal of sourcing 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2010. Senate Bill 14 would lift the existing renewable energy sourcing requirement and boost the 2020 goal to 33 percent. It also would limit the amount of out-of-state renewable power sold in California, a move meant to keep jobs in the nation's most populous state as it grapples with dwindling revenue and high unemployment.
Schwarzenegger has 30 days to act on the legislation, which was written by Senator Joe Simitian. His district includes Silicon Valley — the famed technology hub that gave birth to companies like Web search company Google Inc (GOOG.O) and computer maker Hewlett-Packard Co (HPQ.N)..
Warming may cut risky states' GDP by a fifth: study Climate change could cut gross domestic product in countries at a high risk from weather catastrophes by up to a fifth by 2030 unless urgent steps are taken, a report said on Monday. Developing nations will be most vulnerable to the effects of climate change but a lot of their economic loss could be avoided, a report by the Economics of Climate Adaptation (ECA) Working Group said.
Together with prevention and mitigation measures, risk transfer like insurance or catastrophe bonds can play an important role by capping losses from catastrophic events, increasing willingness to invest and providing price signals to financial markets, the working group said. The ECA working group is a partnership between reinsurance group Swiss Re, consulting firm McKinsey & Co., the Global Environment Facility, ClimateWorks, the European Commission, the Rockefeller Foundation and Standard Chartered Bank.
Current adaptation measures like sea barriers, improved drainage and building regulations could prevent 40 to 100 percent of risk to 2030, from current and future climate conditions, the working group said.
Denmark's DONG sees good demand for offshore wind Denmark's DONG Energy said on Monday it had enrolled around 20 corporate and municipal customers for power from its new Horns Rev 2 wind park, which will be inaugurated this week off the west coast of Jutland.
The Horns Rev 2 wind park in the North Sea will be the world's biggest, with 91 turbines and a total capacity of 209 megawatts.
"Alone in August and September, three new partners have signed up (for supplies from Horns Rev 2), so DONG Energy is now up to 20 altogether," Executive Vice President Lars Clausen said in a statement. "And there are more on the way."
Customers include industrial groups such as drugsmaker Novo Nordisk (NOVOb.CO), enzymes producer Novozymes (NZYMb.CO) and insulation maker Rockwool (ROCKb.CO) and four municipalities, DONG Energy said.
The new wind park is expected to produce more than 800 gigawatt hours of electricity annually, which corresponds to the power consumed by about 200,000 Danish households.
U.S. climate bill should not delay grid overhaul: FERC U.S. lawmakers should not let climate change legislation delays hold up proposals to overhaul the nation's outdated electricity grid, a top energy regulator said Friday.
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee approved a comprehensive energy package this year that would give the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission the authority override state objections to expanding electricity transmission lines.
"I would hope the Senate would consider looking at a (transmission) bill separately, if in fact the climate bill does seem to be stalled," FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff told reporters after addressing a "smart grid" event in Washington. Wellinghoff said additional federal government oversight was necessary to ensure transmission lines are updated and expanded to connect renewable energy sources in remote locations to urban populations.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said he plans to combine the energy measures with legislation that would address global warming by establishing a system capping greenhouse gas emissions.
Sweden urges US Senate to act quickly on energy bill to help global talks on climate change Sweden's environment minister urged the U.S. Senate on Monday to pass legislation to control greenhouse gases, saying a delay in the vote is impeding negotiations on a new international climate treaty.
Minister Andreas Carlgren said America's complex debate over health care reforms is sidelining its vote on a climate bill that is needed to persuade other nations — especially the fast-growing economies of India and China — to commit to lowering their greenhouse gas emissions at the Copenhagen climate summit in December.
"It is crucial that the Americans deliver a reliable emission pathway," Carlgren said, referring to a plan for how emissions will be cut to stated targets. "But that is dependent on the Senate's lawmaking."
Last week, Todd Stern, the U.S. State Department's special envoy for climate change, made a similar appeal, saying that with the negotiations on a new international climate treaty proving difficult, the U.S. Senate must pass legislation to control the gases blamed for global warming. He said that would give the U.S. the "credibility and leverage" it needs to persuade other countries to reduce their pollution.
Big utility puts carbon capture technology to the test At the Mountaineer power plant, more than 10,000 tons of coal are pulverized to a fine powder each day and combusted inside the fiery inferno of one of the biggest boilers on earth.
Nestled in the hills along the Ohio River's winding banks, this was a state-of-the-art coal burner when American Electric Power put it online in 1980. Thirty years and $650 million in air pollution control retrofits later, the 1,300-megawatt behemoth is still shiny and new compared to much of the utility's aging fleet.
Now it is poised for another facelift: reducing its 8.5 million metric tons of annual CO2 emissions in what will be a first attempt to both capture and sequester carbon from an existing U.S. coal plant at any significant scale.
As Congress debates putting a cap on carbon, the fate of existing coal burners looms large over utilities. Unwilling to lose billions in investments — AEP alone has sunk more than $4 billion into air pollution scrubbers required by the Clean Air Act — companies say they have no intention of retiring their current fleets anytime soon.
Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) demonstration projects like the one slated for the Mountaineer plant are, experts say, vital to keeping their plants running while meeting a long-term cap.
Global Warming Causes Outbreak Of Rare Algae Associated With Corals, Study Finds A rare opportunity has allowed a team of biologists to evaluate corals and the essential, photosynthetic algae that live inside their cells before, during, and after a period in 2005 when global warming caused sea-surface temperatures in the Caribbean Ocean to rise.
The team, led by Penn State Assistant Professor of Biology Todd LaJeunesse, found that a rare species of algae that is tolerant of stressful environmental conditions proliferated in corals as the more-sensitive algae were being expelled from corals. The results will be published in the online version of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B on 9 September 2009.
"Symbiodinium trenchi is normally a rare species of micro-alga in the Caribbean," said LaJeunesse. "Because the species is apparently tolerant of high or fluctuating temperatures, it was able to take advantage of the warming event and become more prolific. In this way, Symbiodinium trenchi appears to have saved certain colonies of coral from the damaging effects of unusually warm water. As ocean temperatures continue to rise as a result of global warming, we can expect this species to become more common and persistent. However, since it is not normally associated with corals in the Caribbean, we don't know if its increased presence will benefit or harm corals in the long term."
Putting cattle on a diet to curb climate change Much has been made of the problem of livestock emissions of methane — a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 — but a solution might be just around the corner. Room here for both of us? If better cows' diets mean less harmful methane is emitted, beef could stay on the menu.
Room here for both of us? If better cows' diets mean less harmful methane is emitted, beef could stay on the menu. "I really think it's a solvable problem," Professor Jamie Newbold of the Animal and Microbial Sciences Division, Aberystwyth University, Wales, told CNN. "It is technically solvable. A rare good news story when it comes to climate change. While there is no magic bullet, and no one solution that will work for all animals, we are getting there."
The problem occurs because as livestock digest their food they produce methane gas as a by-product; around 250 to 500 liters a day according to a Washington State University study. Estimates of the proportion of man-made greenhouse gases that now come from livestock vary, from around five percent, up to 18 percent, depending on the parameters of the study.
But whatever the percentage there is no doubting methane's potency: it warms the Earth around 20 times quicker than CO2.
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