As featured on p. 218 of "Bloggers on the Bus," under the name "a MyDD blogger."
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
America's Jack-Off
Remember when T.Boone Pickens tried to convince everyone that we had to give his natural gas and wind power companies hundreds of billions of dollars RIGHT NOW or the world would explode? Remember that?
T. Boone Pickens has temporarily shelved plans to build the world's biggest wind farm in the Texas Panhandle because of tight credit markets and low natural gas prices, and his company Mesa Power is looking for other projects that could use the $2 billion worth of wind turbines already on order.
Pickens unveiled plans in 2007 for the 4,000-megawatt wind farm -- big enough to power 1.3 million homes -- at a projected cost of $10 billion. In May 2008, Pickens ordered 667 wind turbines from General Electric for the first of four project phases. Mesa is scheduled to begin taking delivery in 2011.
The project was a symbol of the oilman's commitment to his high-profile campaign to slash the nation's dependence on foreign oil with a combination of wind power and the use of natural gas in vehicles.
"Boone still remains committed and focused on developing wind energy in the United States," said Jay Rosser, a spokesman for Pickens's BP Capital Management. "The timing is not as aggressive as he originally outlined because of the collapse of the capital markets and because of the steep downturn of natural gas prices." (Many utilities are choosing natural gas to generate electricity.)
Remember, we had to end our dependence on foreign oil as an urgent national security and environmental issue. "We've been talking about it for 40 years," and the consequences of delay were grave.
Unless the market drops.
So, the moral of the story is, don't do business with right-wing greedheads who really aren't committed to anything but lining their pockets.
The value of a planned economy: no need for debates that can be hijacked by the forces of regress.
As the United States takes its first steps toward mandating that power companies generate more electricity from renewable sources, China already has a similar requirement and is investing billions to remake itself into a green energy superpower.
Through a combination of carrots and sticks, Beijing is starting to change how this country generates energy. Although coal remains the biggest energy source and is almost certain to stay that way, the rise of renewable energy, especially wind power, is helping to slow China’s steep growth in emissions of global warming gases [...]
This year China is on track to pass the United States as the world’s largest market for wind turbines — after doubling wind power capacity in each of the last four years. State-owned power companies are competing to see which can build solar plants fastest, though these projects are much smaller than the wind projects. And other green energy projects, like burning farm waste to generate electricity, are sprouting up.
To be clear, I don't SUPPORT the kind of totalitarianism evident in China, easier though it may make the transition to renewable energy. I wish that Republicans in this country would figure out that our value to the global economy lies in innovation and entrepreneurship, which is far more flexible here than in China, and if they would only allow it to flourish, America could easily become a world leader on this front. As it is, China uses its buying power and the relative alacrity with which they can turn the ship of state to crush us.
The article contains good news for the planet, and that supersedes the depressing news it augurs for this country's role in the post-American world, but it's frustrating to watch.
Today is the 39th anniversary of Earth Day, which drew 20 million people to events in 1970. Without the Internet. Or Fox News promotion. And the House of Representatives used the anniversary to fire the starting gun for major climate change legislation:
Congress is launching the “mother of all climate weeks” on Tuesday, with a monster hearing designed to push forward global warming legislation.
Fifty-four witnesses will testify on climate change legislation in three full days before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, topped off with an appearance from Al Gore on Friday. The committee will also hear from EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and high-profile representatives from business and the environmental movement.
As I noted last week, Chairman Henry Waxman seeks to get the bill out of committee by Memorial Day. The hearings are taking place right now. The efforts for legislation got a major boost with an EPA report suggesting that the consumer cost would be far less than the claims being made by Republicans.
With Republican critics of the bill zeroing in on the cost to consumers and industry, a pivotal issue will be how to mitigate the bill’s economic impact. Under a cap-and-trade plan, overall emissions would be limited and polluters would be issued emission allowances, which they then could buy and sell.
An EPA analysis released to the committee on Tuesday found that the price of emission allowances would be less than projected for a similar bill the Senate debated but did not pass last summer. Allowance prices would range from $13 to $17 per ton of emissions in 2015, and $74 to $96 per ton in 2050, the EPA reported. Last year, the agency projected that the Senate bill would cost $20 to $50 per ton in 2015 and $160 to $200 per ton in 2050.
The agency said forecasts have changed in part due to lower projected growth in gross domestic product, which means industrial output of greenhouse gases will be lower than expected.
“With lower forecast emissions, the allowance prices necessary to achieve the goals set in the discussion draft are also reduced,” the EPA said.
The EPA also said the bill’s average annual cost per household would be between $98 and $140, leading proponents to say the bill would have a relatively modest impact.
“When you combine this analysis with cost-saving measures from updated energy efficiency measures and weatherization, the savings will pile up for consumers,” Markey said in a statement.
In addition, the benefit to energy companies, having the certainty of a cap and carbon pricing, so they can manage their businesses and support the kind of innovation needed to get under the caps, would actually provide long-run savings as well, apart from mitigating the worst effects of climate change (which would cost lots of money).
Of course, Republicans will continue to smear and fear about consumer costs, even though revenues from cap and trade can roll back to ratepayers. In fact, the Republican opposition to this bill represents throwing a bunch of junk at the wall to see what sticks. They are vacillating between denying the science and focusing on costs, and the result is muddled.
The Senate clearly wants to follow the House's lead, and this will be a long process. But in the meantime, there are steps the Administration can take to improve our energy outlook, like allowing offshore wind turbines; and the looming EPA regulations under the Clean Air Act can work as a vice to force the Republicans to either allow a cap and trade system or get steamrolled by the executive branch.
It's exciting to see a very real transition to a new energy economy, and the hard work of the policymakers committed to moving forward. I urge you to watch these hearings.
...This is awesome from new Obama Administration advisor Van Jones.
The President clearly has an electrification strategy as part of his agenda to transform our energy policy. At the last minute he snuck $8 billion dollars for high speed rail into the stimulus package. And while he showed tough love toward the carmakers by denying them bailout money, he (and I'm assuming that he is speaking through the newly installed GM chairman) exempted the plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt from the otherwise stringent requirements of other vehicles in the fleet:
Rick Wagoner's replacement as GM CEO, Fritz Henderson, might have recently said that all of GM's car models will need to "pay the rent" (unlike the previous business model, which was to make huge margins on ginormous SUVs and trucks, and to build unprofitable small cars as an afterthought), but there was some fine print on that claim. This new rule won't apply to the GM Volt plug-in hybrid car, and that's probably a good thing.
GM needs some long-term vision. It put all its eggs into big SUVs, and now changing direction will take much effort (as is pretty obvious from recent headlines). I can't imagine how much inertia had to be fought to even get the Volt project started after the demise of the EV1.
In other words, with such a heavy lift to actually get the Volt to market, we cannot abandon this first forward-thinking effort by American car manufacturers in decades. And there's no question in my mind that Obama's behind that. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to see whatever reconstructed GM coming out of any potential bankruptcy process have the Volt as its flagship vehicle, perhaps even with some backing (and I'd like to see the same for Tesla).
A broad shift to electric, as opposed to flex fuels and ethanol, makes lots of sense, because renewables can be rapidly scaled up to accommodate major carbon reductions in ways that alternative fuels can never reach. A new study shows that offshore wind turbines could meet current electricity demand TODAY.
Reporting from Arlington, Va. -- Wind turbines off U.S. coastlines could potentially supply more than enough electricity to meet the nation's current demand, the Interior Department reported Thursday.
Simply harnessing the wind in relatively shallow waters -- the most accessible and technically feasible sites for offshore turbines -- could produce at least 20% of the power demand for most coastal states, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said, unveiling a report by the Minerals Management Service that details the potential for oil, gas and renewable development on the outer continental shelf.
The biggest wind potential lies off the nation's Atlantic coast, which the Interior report estimates could produce 1,000 gigawatts of electricity -- enough to meet a quarter of the national demand.
We don't have to wonder about a world without coal - we have that ability now. The only resource that needs to be tapped is political will.
With oil reaching a hundred dollars a barrel and likely to sty there, many are reaching for an alternative way to heat their homes. The problem is that they're looking backwards instead of forwards. I appreciate that there are plenty of wood-burning stoves and fireplaces out there, and I even appreciate a warm fire myself every now and again. But the production costs of logging on a mass scale outstrip the "savings" in energy derived from heating wood. These aren't efficient devices, and they typically cause pollutants. Wind power is far more efficient, and far more plentiful, actually, particularly in those Plains states that would feel an immediate economic shock if we were to jettison oil tomorrow.
Texas, once the oil capital of North America, is rapidly turning into the capital of wind power. After breakneck growth the last three years, Texas has reached the point that more than 3 percent of its electricity, enough to supply power to one million homes, comes from wind turbines.
Texans are even turning tapped-out oil fields into wind farms, and no less an oilman than Boone Pickens is getting into alternative energy.
“I have the same feelings about wind,” Mr. Pickens said in an interview, “as I had about the best oil field I ever found.” He is planning to build the biggest wind farm in the world, a $10 billion behemoth that could power a small city by itself.
I'm not T.Boone Pickens' biggest fan, but if he's excited about wind, perhaps there's some common ground between environmentalists and oilmen to work toward a common purpose, expanding industry while transforming our economy and our energy future. That is a realizable goal.
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