While Trying to Force Tar Sands, Sen. Alexander Says He “Cannot Think of” Extending Tax Credits to Wind Energy

Senator Lamar Alexander, R-LA

by Stephen Lacey – With every passing day, Congress outdoes its own abysmal environmental record.

Even as federal policymakers consider a transportation bill that would open up sensitive areas for offshore drilling, encourage use of dirty oil shale, force a decision on the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, and derail public investments in public transportation, they couldn’t even compromise on a simple short-term tax credit for wind energy.

Wind businesses were calling an extension of the credit an “emergency” due to looming mass layoffs in the industry. But history has proven time and time again, if it’s clean and renewable, it doesn’t force any urgency in Congress. … Continue Reading

Where the Real Jobs Are

The Republicans believe they have President Obama in a box: either he approves a controversial Canadian oil pipeline or they accuse him of depriving the nation of jobs. Mr. Obama can and should push back hard.

This is precisely the moment for him to argue the case for alternative fuel sources and clean energy jobs — and to lambaste the Republicans for doubling down on conventional fuels while ceding a $5 trillion global clean technology market (and the jobs that go with it) to more aggressive competitors like China and Germany.

The payroll tax cut bill, which Mr. Obama signed last month, gave him 60 days to decide on the Keystone XL pipeline. That is not enough time to complete the required environmental review of a project that, in its present design, crosses ecologically sensitive territory and risks polluting an aquifer critical to Midwestern water supplies.

The Republicans’ claim that the pipeline will create tens of thousands of new jobs — 20,000 according to House Speaker John Boehner and 100,000 according to Jon Huntsman — are wildly inflated. A more accurate forecast from the federal government, one with which TransCanada, the pipeline company, agrees, says the project would create 6,000 to 6,500 temporary construction jobs at best, for two years.

The country obviously needs more jobs. Mr. Obama needs to lay out the case that industry, with government help, can create hundreds of thousands of clean energy jobs without incurring environmental risks — by upgrading old power plants to comply with environmental laws, retrofitting commercial and residential buildings that soak up nearly 40 percent of the country’s energy (and produce nearly 40 percent of its carbon emissions) and promoting growth in new industries like wind and solar power and advanced vehicles.

By even the most conservative estimates, the power plant upgrades required by the new rule governing mercury emissions is expected to create about 45,000 temporary construction jobs over the next five years, and as many as 8,000 permanent jobs as utilities install pollution control equipment. And while the projects are new and the numbers tentative, the Energy Department predicts that its loan guarantee programs could create more than 60,000 direct jobs in the solar and wind industries and in companies developing advanced batteries and other components for more fuel-efficient cars.

Much more needs to happen. Europe has encouraged the commercial development of carbon-reducing technologies with a robust mix of direct government investment and tax breaks, loans and laws that cap or tax greenhouse gas emissions. This country needs a comparably broad strategy that will create a pathway from the fossil fuels of today to the greener fuels of tomorrow.

We are under no illusions that such an appeal by Mr. Obama would win support among Republicans on Capitol Hill. House Republicans voted 191 times last year to undermine existing environmental protections or reject Democratic efforts to strengthen them — even killing off a modest regulation requiring more energy efficient light bulbs — and in general have vowed to resist new energy strategies or do anything at all that might disturb their patrons in the fossil fuel industries.  Continue reading more…

Norquist Stance on Renewable Electricity Standards Gets Zapped

Stern-faced Norquist challanged in RES remarks

By Bill DiBenedetto – Where to start with right-wing maven Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, especially when he weighs in on the environment and renewable energy in his typically uninformed, anti-intellectual, anti-science, ideological and agenda-ridden style?

Well let’s start with the fact that Norquist and Patrick Gleason, director state affairs for Norquist’s organization, have published an op-ed article in Politico, “Rethink Energy Mandates,” which calls on states to scrap renewable electricity standards (RES).

That’s where the facts end.

RES are a successful, bipartisan policy that requires utilities to gradually increase their use of wind, solar, and other renewable power sources over time. The standards have been a primary driver for deploying clean power sources for the last fifteen years, says Jeff Deyette, assistant director of research & analysis, Clean Energy for the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Deyette took on the admirable task of discrediting the Norquist article. His response blows it out of the water.

It is no wonder, Deyette writes, that “champions for the coal industry and a 20th century power system have launched an all-out assault on the popular and successful [RES] policy.”

He continues that the most ridiculous claim in the Norquist/Gleason piece, “which was thoroughly debunked in an excellent blog post by the folks at Climate Progress, attempts to lay sole blame on state RES policies for the wide range of electricity rates paid by consumers in various states.” Norquist writes that RESs are intended “by design” to drive up energy costs by “requiring utilities to use more expensive and often less reliable sources of energy.”

There is utterly no evidence to confirm that assertion. “Suffice it to say their level of analytic rigor in supporting this claim wouldn’t pass muster even in a middle school classroom,” says Deyette.

Norquist believes that state RES are driven by “global warming alarmists” and thus are ripe for repeal in Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania because their state legislatures and governors are controlled by Republicans. He conveniently ignores the fact that “Republicans played a substantial role in originally adopting the RES in each of those states,” Deyette writes. “In both Ohio and Pennsylvania, Republicans had majority control of the House and Senate chambers that approved RES legislation. In Michigan and Wisconsin, Republicans controlled one of the chambers at the time of enactment, and Wisconsin’s Republican Governor Tommy Thompson signed it into law (one year before then-Governor George W. Bush signed the Texas RES into law).”

Of the 35 states that adopted either enforceable RESs or voluntary renewable energy goals, all but eight were put in place with the support of a Republican-controlled House, Senate, or governorship, and three other states, Colorado, Washington and Missouri, adopted their RESs via ballot initiatives.

In fact they are hugely bipartisan.

“The reason that Democrat and Republican policy makers alike have backed state RESs is that they recognize the economic development, job creation, fuel diversity, and public health benefits that come from increasing our use of clean, homegrown renewable energy,” says Deyette.

Then there is the jobs thing. Norquist falsely claims that state RESs could lead to job losses, says Deyette, despite strong evidence to the contrary. “Renewable electricity standards create demand for investments in new clean power facilities, which in turn lead to jobs in project development, construction, operations, and maintenance.”  Continue reading more…

Rethink renewable energy mandates

Is this the real Republican leader? - Grover Norquist

By GROVER G. NORQUIST and PATRICK GLEASON -

It’s been a rough two years for global warming alarmists.

Cap and trade failed in 2009, despite the fact that Democrats controlled the House, Senate and White House. The recent United Nations summit produced an agreement that means little — with countries like Canada dropping off an extension of the Kyoto Protocol. Meanwhile, high unemployment and economic woes are drawing public attention from environmental issues.

Groups like the Sierra Club and Greenpeace, left in the legislative wilderness, must be wondering where to go from here. The consensus among Democratic offices on Capitol Hill is that the best hope for their agenda — now that cap and trade is dead for good — is to pass a national renewable energy standard. This would require utility companies to produce a certain percentage of electricity from renewable sources.

Thankfully, we have the states — those “50 laboratories of democracy,” as Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis called them — to show us that this mandate, like cap and trade, would drive up electricity bills for families, increase costs for employers and destroy jobs — and likely be unfeasible, to boot.

A renewable energy standard is nothing new. In fact, 29 states and the District of Columbia have a binding renewable energy standard on the books. The Democratic election waves of 2006 and 2008 swept in many liberal state legislators who, though they hadn’t run on it, passed renewable energy mandates once in office.

We’ve now had a few years to see some of the results. It isn’t pretty for taxpayers or the economy.

Renewable energy standards, by design, are intended to drive up energy costs — requiring utilities to use more expensive and often less reliable sources of energy. Not surprisingly, such laws have hit ratepayers hard. States that have a binding RES now have electricity costs that are 39 percent higher than states that don’t have a binding RES.

Suffolk University’s Beacon Hill Institute has examined the effects of these mandates in individual states, and the results don’t get better. The RES in North Carolina, one of 2012’s key battleground states, is projected to reduce real disposable income by $56.8 million and likely be responsible for the loss of 3,592 jobs by 2021.

New Mexicans could pay an estimated $2.3 billion more for their power and lose more than 2,800 jobs by 2020, as a result of that state’s RES. Beacon Hill projected similarly bleak economic effects in various other states with an RES.

Opposition to renewable energy mandates should not be misinterpreted as an aversion to renewable energy. In fact, renewable sources could play a significant role in the future. But as Todd Wynn of the American Legislative Exchange Council astutely noted in a Cascade Policy Institute report: “Legislation that forces the use of renewable energies despite the resistance of the economy distorts the free market, reduces our freedom and raises the cost of doing business, thus endangering economic growth.”

Repealing renewable energy mandates already on the books in these 29 states would reduce costs for employers and promote economic growth. It’s not just good policy, it’s smart politics heading into an important election year.

With unemployment so high and the economy still in critical condition, the Pew Research Center’s latest annual survey of Americans’ top priorities found global warming ranked 21st — one spot above last place. The Pew survey listed the economy and jobs as the top two issues, respectively, with 87 percent of Americans citing the economy as their highest priority.

Legislators in states around the country are now working with Americans for Tax Reform to repeal renewable energy mandates in 2012. The iron is hottest to strike in states where Republicans recently took control of both the Legislature and the governorship — including Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Those Rust Belt states have high unemployment and need relief from heavy-handed laws that are driving up families’ utility bills and reducing employers’ job-creating capacity.  Continue reading more…

Government Should Invest in Renewables and Clean Energy

The Department of Energy image

By Mijin Cha – Despite what critics say, the DoE’s guaranteed loan program is a successful program and government investment to further develop clean energy is the right thing to do.

Let’s start by definitively debunking the Solyndra critique: The company’s loans process began under the Bush Administration, it raised $1 billion dollars in private capital, and was named the top cleantech company in 2010 by the Wall Street Journal. Yes, it defaulted and went bankrupt, but the default rate for the entire loan portfolio is less than four percent. By comparison, the default rate for the popular Small Business Administration loan program is three times as high. Solyndra’s failure is not representative of the industry or government investment.

And, the idea that government shouldn’t be in the business of “picking winners and losers” is both misguided and disingenuous. Our current energy policy “picks” fossil fuels. Among the many tax breaks and incentives provided to the oil and gas industry, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 allows for reduced royalty payments and royalty-in-kind payments, instead of cash royalties, which leaves uncertainty as to whether fair payment is received. The royalty waiver program is estimated to cost billions of dollars in lost revenue over the life of the leases.

The Act also provides for direct investment of billions of dollars of taxpayer money in fossil fuel industries. Title IX, Subtitle J of the Act provides for direct payments to oil and natural gas corporations to drill in deepwater wells and Section 962 allots $1.137 billion of taxpayer money to make coal power a cost-competitive source of power generation. This is all money given to industries that don’t need it. Big oil companies made over $32 billion in profits just in the third quarter.

In fact, if anything, the renewable energy sector has shown its potential for market viability by posting record production levels, despite receiving far less government support. This year, the renewable energy sector produced 18 percent more energy than nuclear power. The U.S. is set to break its record on solar panel installations this year alone. Employment growth in the solar industry was 10 times higher than the national average and is expected to increase an additional 24 percent by 2012. Over 2.7 million people currently work in green jobs.

A recent report issued by Bill Gates, GE’s Jeff Immelt, and other top CEOs lays out several arguments for why the government must play an integral role in clean energy development. The report points out government’s long and successful history of investing in research and development projects that spur new technologies — the internet, anyone? — and makes an economic argument often ignored: There is no private market for certain benefits, like public health or protecting the environment. Therefore, advancements in these areas must necessarily come from public funding.  Continue reading more…

Greenhouse blues: time for a Plan B

 BY ANDREW CHARLTON -

Durban: What is so special about 2015?

The South African government, host of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban (COP17), has formally announced a comprehensive phase-out policy for inefficient lighting.

By James Murray  -  The proposal to agree a climate deal by 2015 suggests politicians understand we’re on the verge of a clean technology breakthrough

The Durban Summit enters its final day with the crucial debate centring on the EU’s proposed roadmap for agreeing a new treaty by 2015 and enacting it by 2020.

The COP rumour mill suggests a deal remains possible and an agreement may yet be reached that allows the Kyoto Protocol to continue in some form, while the large emitters sign on to a new round of negotiations designed to deliver an agreement by 2015. As such accusations and counter accusations are now centring on who is pushing for this new timeline to be adopted and potentially accelerated and who wants to see a deal delayed until after 2020.

From a political perspective the current state of affairs has to be taken as encouraging, particularly given there was a real chance going into the summit that the talks would have already collapsed by this stage. It looks as if a deal can be done that will not only allow the negotiating process to continue past 2012, but may actually deliver tangible results in terms of a new global green fund, progress on aviation and shipping emissions levies, and the continued expansion of the global carbon market. As of late yesterday evening a growing coalition of countries appeared to be willing (with varying degrees of enthusiasm) to sign on to the EU’s plan, including the groups of African nations, least developed countries, and island states, and Brazil, Canada, and most significantly the US.

Unfortunately, from an environmental perspective the new roadmap could prove pretty disastrous. In short, diplomats are working on a treaty to ensure that emissions peak years after scientists are recommending that they peak. Meanwhile, the fixation on agreeing a roadmap for a timeline to agree a framework that may eventually become a protocol, means the crucial issue of how countries share emissions reductions is again being filed in the tray marked “too difficult”.

The pros and cons of this new roadmap have been widely discussed, but what has attracted less comment is the crucial question of why 2015 and 2020 have been elected the arbitrary dates for the agreement and then finalisation of a new treaty.

What will have changed in four and nine years’ time that will suddenly make a robust international treaty viable? If you can’t agree a treaty after a decade of negotiations what makes you think an extra few years will make a difference? Equally, if you really are that close to finalising the treaty everyone says they want why do you need four more years, why can’t you lock yourselves in a room until this is done and announce a global deal in January? With the future of the global economy at stake the Turkey and crackers can surely wait.

There are two possible explanations for the 2015 and 2020 deadlines, one depressing, one encouraging.

The first is that this is yet another delaying tactic from countries that have no real intention of ever agreeing an ambitious global treaty. The goal is simply to turn the climate change negotiations into the ugly sister of the never ending Doha Trade Talks, where well-meaning rhetoric is followed time and time again by a willingness to kick difficult decisions into the long grass.

Under this explanation, China, India and the other emerging economies will never accept international measures to curb their emissions and the US and its dysfunctional political system will remain in hoc to oil companies and climate sceptic billionaires. Meanwhile, the EU will gullibly lap up the rhetoric in support of a deal from the other large emitters, while singularly failing to convince anyone to make binding commitments. The key dates of 2015 and 2020 are thrown into the mix because they are close enough to kid people that action is being taken, while far enough away to allow countries to continue along their carbon intensive paths unimpeded.

However, there is a more optimistic explanation for the delay until 2015 that can be found in the laboratories, factories, and offices of the world’s fast expanding green businesses.

The second half of this decade is slated as the period when two major technological and economic phenomena will converge.

Firstly, the emerging generation of mainstream clean technologies will begin to roll out at scale from 2015 onwards. We will see the UK’s giant offshore wind farms start generating power, the huge solar farms of China, the US, Spain, and North Africa come online, biofuel powered flights become an increasingly common occurrence, and electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles sell in their millions.

Secondly, the billions of dollars invested in the second generation of clean technologies will begin to come to fruition with analysts predicting that the second half of the decade will see the emergence of solar cells and wind turbines that can produce energy at the same cost as fossil fuels, smart grids that maximise the efficiency of every drop of energy we produce, and batteries that make electric cars viable and renewable energy reliable. Who are these radical, evangelical green analysts? Those famous tree-hugging hippies at Bloomberg and the International Energy Agency, and their eco-fundamentalist pals at companies like GE, Siemens, and IBM.

It is these converging trends that explain why the proposed delay until 2015, while hugely frustrating, might just give politicians the room they need to deliver a proper binding and ambitious treaty. They will finally have the evidence they need to sell a deal to still sceptical populations who fear cutting emissions will stall development and progress.

There is also an intriguing conspiracy theory to support this hypothesis. Talk to close observers of the long-running talks and there is a fair chance they will tell you that the real reason China repeatedly blocks an agreement is that it is stalling in order to give its fast expanding wind turbine and solar panel manufacturers time to gain complete global dominance. Once that is secured, probably sometime around 2015, they will sign up to an international treaty and sell the world the low cost energy technologies it needs to replace fossil fuels, cementing its century long global dominance once and for all.

As conspiracy theories go it is pretty convincing and it again underlines the way the US is being completely outmanoeuvred by the new emerging superpower.  Continue reading more…

My Turn: Renewable Energy Credits work, even if sold

Recently Kevin Jones of Vermont Law School wrote a My Turn criticizing Vermont’s decision to allow Vermont utilities to sell Renewable Energy Credits from renewable energy projects they had constructed themselves or agreed to fund through Power Purchase Agreements (“Renewable energy policy is an expensive illusion,” Oct. 12).

Instead Mr. Jones argued that the only way to ensure that greenhouse gas emissions were reduced was for Vermont to implement a Renewable Portfolio Standard. This is not a new debate, it happened when the Legislature implemented Vermont’s so-called SPEED rules in the first place.

Renewable Portfolio Standard advocates like Mr. Jones argue that without retirement of energy credits there is no greenhouse gas reduction. That by selling Vermont energy credits to Connecticut or Massachusetts, we are letting those states continue to run dirty, old generating plants. Instead he advocates that Vermont should establish a system to force retirement of Renewable Energy Credits itself and stop Vermont utilities from selling them out of state. It is unfortunate that Mr. Jones would ignore the financial implications of his position.

In 2008 Burlington Electric Department conducted an Integrated Resource Plan evaluating supply options over the next 20 years. That resource plan concluded that for BED to purchase 100 percent of its supply from renewable resources it would require a 25 percent rate increase. But, if we combined those purchases with sales of the Renewable Energy Credits it would require only a minimal, or possibly no, rate increase.

Since that IRP was approved BED has contracted for energy from the Sheffield Wind project, Georgia Mountain Community Wind, Hydro Quebec, and numerous solar installations. We are in discussions with Grandpa’s Knob Wind and will be looking to purchase output from the Winooski-1 hydro facility when its existing contract expires. That procurement approach puts us on a path to sourcing 100 percent of our supply from renewable resources — potentially by 2014. The cost of these purchases has been heavily mitigated by the ability to sell the Renewable Energy Credits, with nearly 6 percent of BED’s revenues now coming from energy credit sales.