NEW ENERGY RISING: SOLUTIONS IN THE USA

There is a new spirit rising in the community of folks talking and writing about global climate change. The bipartisan TV spots placed in prime time by we can solve the climate crisis exemplify the move toward action and away from fear. A sense of opportunity is replacing the dread of crisis. A lengthy Time Magazine piece with a promising title (“How to Win the War on Global Warming”) offers little new to NewEnergyNews readers in substance but much about the new vision forming.

Just a sample of the new spirit rising to get the job done.

First, an important nitpick in honor of Earth Day: It’s NOT “global warming,” it’s “global climate change.” Headlines are written at big publications like Time not by the authors but by headlines specialists. Author Bryan Walsh knows better. Calling it “warming” is inaccurate and trivializes it.

Now to the substance. Time offers a 4-step approach: Put a price on emissions, get serious about efficiency, build a 21st century energy infrastructure and take the long view.

Time: “…by devising a coherent strategy that mixes short-term solutions with farsighted goals [and combining] government activism with private-sector enterprise and [blending] pragmatism with ambition…the U.S. can, without major damage to the economy, help halt the worst effects of climate change and ensure the survival of our way of life for future generations. Money will get us part of the way there, but what's needed most is will…”

The length and breadth of the Time essay make it clear the solution is not simple and will meet obstacles – but it can be done. Fred Krupp, president, Environmental Defense Fund/co-author, Earth: The Sequel: "I'm not saying the challenge isn't almost overwhelming…But this is America, and America has risen to these challenges before."

The biggest part of the essay touts the coming of cap-and-trade to the U.S. The Bush administration has resisted any effort to get the country to control its emissions. That era is over. Senators John Warner (R-Va) and Joe Liebermann (I-Conn), not known as wild-eyed radicals, will bring their climate change bill to the Senate floor this Spring. It may not pass on its first run through the gauntlet of fossil fool senators who believe emitting industries’ propaganda about it costing 4 million jobs by 2030 and reducing GDP $669 billion a year.

Representative Joe Barton (R-Tx), ranking member, House Committee on Energy and Commerce: "The environmental community would have you believe that you can make these changes and not only will there not be negative consequences, there'll be positive consequences…"

Undistracted, Warner sees the urgency. Senator John Warner (R-Va): "If we don't act, China and India will simply hide behind America's skirts of inactions and take no steps of their own…"

Warner and many others realize that there may be a cost to action but, as Harvard/Kennedy School of Government energy expert Henry Lee says, “…unchecked warming could end global prosperity.”

And Barton is most probably wrong. The truest likelihood is cap-and-trade is a huge opportunity that will cost little. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found GDP will grow just 1% less from 2010 to 2030 under Lieberman-Warner than without it and will come with long-term economic benefits. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) found that smart emissions reduction policies will contain climate change without harm to the global economy.

A UC Berkeley study concluded California’s emissions reduction law will boost the state's GDP by $60 billion in New Energy investments and create 17,000 New Energy jobs by 2020. The American Solar Energy Society (ASES) estimates there are already 8.5 million U.S. New Energy jobs and expects that to grow to 40 million by 2030 under policies like Lieberman-Warner, a national Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) and long term tax credit incentives.

Spirits are rising on the climate change front because the impetus for such new policies is clear in the electorate. The American people have had enough of political leaders who will not give them the New Energy every poll shows they want. The U.S. is on its way to participating in a national cap-and-trade system, even if it takes until after the November election to get there. When there is a price for emissions, the game is on. Fred Krupp, president, Environmental Defense Fund/co-author, Earth: The Sequel: "Cap and trade changes everything…"

After cap-and-trade comes the drive for energy efficiency. McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) report: Industry investment of $170 billion/year in efficiency (ex:green buildings, higher-mileage cars) yields $900 billion/year in savings by 2020.

And then the development of New Energy technology. Jack Newman, Amyris Biotechnologies: "There are staggering things that technology can do…"

Many expect a shift in government policy to follow these changes, making way for greater change and innovation.

Time: “If Washington better allocated its own research-and-development dollars—as it did in the storied Apollo days—it could accelerate things even more. Currently, the Federal Government budgets about $5 billion per year for research and tax incentives for renewables and energy efficiency. With a federal budget of $2.9 trillion in 2008 and the Iraq war alone burning through an estimated $12 billion per month, there is clearly money to be spent if we decide to reprioritize. A plan floated by Democrats to eliminate $18 billion worth of tax breaks for the oil industry and use the money to support research into renewable fuels would be a smart place to start…”

And as change starts showing fruit, attitudes and perspectives will change.

Time: "Forget precedents like the Manhattan Project, which developed the atom bomb, or the Apollo program that put men on the moon—single-focus programs both, however hard they were to pull off. Think instead of the overnight conversion of the World War II era industrial sector into a vast machine capable of churning out 60,000 tanks and 300,000 planes, an effort that not only didn't bankrupt the nation but instead made it rich and powerful beyond its imagining and—oh, yes—won the war in the process. Halting climate change will be far harder than even that..."

It is a challenge any generation, and especially the many times blessed baby boom generation, should be proud to step up to.



How to Win the War on Global Warming
Bryan Walsh (w/Kristin Kloberdanz, Massimo Calabresi, Mark Thompson and Adam Zagorin), April 16, 2008 (Time Magazine)

WHO
Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala of Princeton University; Fred Krupp, president, Environmental Defense Fund/co-author, Earth: The Sequel; Senators John Warner (R-Vir) and Joseph Liebermann (I-Conn), co-authors, climate change legislation implementing a national cap-and-trade system; McKinsey Global Institute (MGI); University of California at Berkeley (UC Berkeley);



WHAT
The piece focuses on the opportunities the U.S. has in the efforts to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and stabilize global climate change. It offers a 4-step program: (1) Put a price on carbon; (2) Maximize efficiency; (3) Build New Energy technologies; (4) Take the long view.

WHEN
- 1997 Kyoto Protocol and worldwide cap-and-trade system: Developed nations to cut emissions 5% below 1990 levels by 2012.
- 2001: Bush administration dropped all advocacy of U.S. participation in Kyoto pact
- 2006: California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signs AB32, the most aggressive emission regulation in the U.S., cutting CA’s greenhouse-gas emissions 25% to 1990 levels by 2020.
- 2006: UC Berkeley study shows AB32 will boost the California economy, not retard it.
- 2007: Venture-capital funding in New Energy was up 44% from 2006 to $5.18 billion.
- 2008 Lieberman-Warner climate change legislation and U.S. national cap-and-trade: cuts most emission to 2005 levels by 2012 and 70% below 2005 levels by 2050.

Cap-and-share might make cap-and-trade even better. (click to enlarge)

WHERE
- The U.S. produces ~25% of world annual greenhouse gases but the Bush administration has given little more than nodding acknowledgement to doing anything about it.
- Western states, New England states and Midwestern states have formed regional cap-and-trade systems.
- Western Europe and Japan are way ahead of the U.S. on energy efficiency because (one big reason) energy is more expensive there.
- Silicon Valley is rapidly becoming the capital of U.S. New Energy innovation.

WHY
- Putting a cost on greenhouse gas emissions via a cap-and-trade system will make fossil fuel-generated energy more expensive and drive the market toward New Energy.
McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) research shows world energy demand growth can be cut in half by 2020 with efficiency measures.
- Room for improvement in efficiency: The U.S.' recent auto mileage requirement increase to 35 m.p.g. by 2020 is far below Europe's 40 m.p.g. requirement. Household appliances and lighting could match Japan's Top Runner program that sets the best model in the marketplace as the required industry standard. Building standards can be more exacting as well.
- Utilities must institute variable pricing, charging higher prices during periods of peak demand and less during off periods, to change users’ behaviors.
- Only a New Energy infrastructure will lead to a “post-carbon” world.
- The Time essay touts the efforts of Amyris Biotechnologies in cutting edge biomass and Spanish energy producer Acciona in solar power plant development. It also calls for the development of wind energy storage technology and more work on “fringe alternatives” (ex: tidal power, geothermal energy, nuclear fusion) to concretely determine their potential.

click to enlarge

QUOTES
- Time: “Ultimately, global warming is not a battle that will be fought fiscal year by fiscal year; it's a fight that will occupy us for generations. Our policies have to operate on the same time frame, even if our politics run on election cycles… The U.S. has enjoyed an awfully good run since the middle of the 20th century, a sudden ascendancy that no nation before or since has matched. We could give it up in the early years of the 21st, or we could recognize—as we have before—when a leader is needed and step into that breach ourselves. Going green: What could be redder, whiter and bluer than that?”
- Kevin Surace, CEO of Serious Materials: "Until recently, using more energy was a way to get more productive…That doesn't change until energy costs go substantially up."
- Nicholas Parker, chairman, Cleantech Group: "What we need to do over the next 10 to 20 years is redesign our relationship with nature and energy…"
- Julie Blunden, vice president of public policy, SunPower, on vital New Energy tax credits expiring at the end of 2008: "If it expires, it will take out all the good work that's been done on the state and commercial level…We could watch our business essentially evaporate by the end of the year."
- John Berger, CEO, Standard Renewable Energy, on shifting incentives from fossil fuel industries to New Energy: "How can the oil industry need a dollar in the days of $100 crude oil?"