INAUGURAL ANNIVERSARY/REMEMBERING WE CAN

Yes He Can; How President Obama Can Solve the Energy Crisis,
Help Reverse Climate Change and Rescue the Economy
December 2009 (Greenpeace)

SUMMARY
Tuesday’s game changing election in Massachusetts offers a dramatic moment from which to look back on President Obama’s first year in office and consider what a huge difference a year makes.

At this time last year there was uncertainty over which way the economy and the housing market were going to go, the Iraq war was winding down, the Afghanistan war was getting complicated and everybody was wondering about the passage of health insurance reform legislation and energy and climate legislation.

A year later...Wait a minute! IS it a year later? Or was all of 2009 just one of those nightmares where the dreamer is trying to do something but just can’t?

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Greenpeace isn’t especially happy about what DIDN'T get done in the way of energy and climate action in 2009. In Yes He Can; How President Obama Can Solve the Energy Crisis, Help Reverse Climate Change and Rescue the Economy, it offers President Obama some thoughts on how he might turn things around.

The concept is simple: More New Energy and more Energy Efficiency.

The Greenpeace paper was written before the Copenhagen climate change summit and called on the President to lead the world to a strong and binding agreement to cut emissions. Leaving Copenhagen without an agreement, the paper predicted, would risk “…locking the planet into catastrophic, irreversible climate change.” That the President would leave Copenhagen with a tentative outline of a roadmap to a plan to an agreement to a deal to a treaty to a law was not part of Greenpeace’s 2-dimensional assessment.

The paper recognized 2009 as a not entirely lost year, thanks to incremental progress in funding New Energy and Energy Efficiency and putting in place stronger auto fuel efficiency standards. But incremental change is not the transformation to a New Energy economy the U.S. needs to meet the urgency of this moment and lead the fight to dramatically cut greenhouse gas emissions (GhGs) and hold the global average temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius. It is also not the transformational change promised in the President’s campaign rhetoric.

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Greenpeace should be applauded for noticing that the strategy of the Obama administration is incremental. Greenpeace has every right to be concerned that the President may not be achieving the big changes that are urgently needed but it cannot fail to see that the President IS getting the change that is possible in the face of a dreadful economy, a disputatiously hostile and obstructionist minority opposition in the Senate and a violently disruptive and insidiously deadly international criminal network aimed at nothing less than the paralyzing of all modernity.

In the face of all that, the New Energies are finding funding and growing, thanks in large part to the administration’s spending. There is a groundswell of Energy Efficiency in new building and retrofitting, thanks largely to the administration’s initiatives and spending. And EPA legal activity is swirling around emissions reductions and fossil fuel controls, thanks in part to the administration’s response to activist initiatives.

The real questions aren’t why and how the President failed but how and why he ever got this far?

Still, with President Obama’s once idealistic voice reduced to the terms of practicality and incrementalism, it is deeply gratifying to be reminded of the important policy work still to be achieved. Perhaps the quaking election in Massachusetts will shake the President out of his hesitation. Or perhaps it merely makes more vivid why the President has been forced to tread so cautiously.

The U.S. surely needs a national Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) that establishes a long term market for New Energy by requiring all regulated U.S. utilities to obtain 20%-to-25% of their power from New Energy sources and Energy Efficiency by 2020-to-2025. And the nation urgently needs to put a price on greenhouse gas emissions (GhGs) so that emitters will find it less expensive to turn to New Energy and Energy Efficiency than to go on spewing.

So it is great to hear a clarion call from Greenpeace reminding us what might be if we can remember to believe we can. And if we add courage to our conviction and go on working to achieve a New Energy future.

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COMMENTARY
Greenpeace described President Obama’s first year performance as especially disappointing because he seemed to come into office acknowledging the moral imperative of transformation, the willingness to act and the power to do so by exercising command and control authority to regulate GhGs under the Clean Air Act (CAA).

Greenpeace acknowledges the administration’s success at getting the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) through the House of Representatives and getting the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (CEJAPA) through several committees in the Senate. But the legislation, Greenpeace says, fails to effectively address climate change and control the fossil fuel emitters that are driving it.

Greenpeace blames the inclination of corporate interests and Washington insiders toward “pollution-as-usual” as one of the 2 reasons for the Obama administration’s legislative failure on energy and climate change legislation.

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The other reason the Obama administration’s initiatives were compromised was the enormous power of the ~1150 lobbying interests they ran headlong into. In the first half of 2009, according to the Center for Public Integrity, American Electric Power spent $4.79 million lobbying, the American Petroleum Institute spent $4.10 million lobbying and the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity spent $1.22 million lobbying.

The defeat of the Democratic candidate in the race for Ted Kennedy’s Massachusetts Senate seat makes even more vivid how difficult the political circumstances facing the President really are.

As a result, the House bill may be so compromised that it will only cut U.S. GhGs 4%-to-7% below the 1990 level by 2020 and it contains billions of dollars in free emissions allowances for the biggest emitting power producers, utilities and fossil fuel energy-intensive industries.

The U.S. 2020 emissions reduction commitment of 4%-to-7% is especially inadequate compared to Japan’s 25% commitment and the European Union’s 20%-to-30% commitment.

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There is, however, some good news. The Obama administration’s laser accurate revisions of subsidies to New Energy and Energy Efficiency sustained growth even while the economy at large stumbled in the 2007-to-09 period. As a result, U.S. consumption of coal fell off, its consumption of New Energy grew, its installation of Energy Efficiency measures grew and its emissions declined ~9%.

This all points to needs and possibilities lying ahead.

The needs are, first and foremost, comprehensive energy and climate policy that most especially provides (1) a national RES requiring all regulated U.S. utilities to obtain 20%-to-25% of their power from New Energy sources and Energy Efficieny by 2020-to-2025 and (2) a price on GhGs, in the form of a federal tax or in the form of a cap&trade system or both, so that emitters will find it less expensive to turn to New Energy and Energy Efficiency than to keep spewing.

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The possibilities are best expressed in Clean Energy and Climate Policy for U.S. Growth and Job Creation from the University of California, Berkley. It shows that the policy will create 918,000-to-1.9 million jobs and grow household income $488-to-$1,176 per year by 2020. (See 1.9 MILLION JOBS IN NEW ENERGY)

Beyond Congressional initiatives, Greenpeace is adamant that the Obama administration fulfill the dictates of the Clean Air Act (CAA) that require the federal government to control dangerous pollutants. It wants the administration to put a price on emissions through EPA lawsuits. Greenpeace believes such action will make the recalcitrants in Congress and their corporate sponsors see legislation as an appealing alternative.

One possibility is that the Obama EPA will indeed take legal action against domestic spewers.

The other less happy possibility is that by making such a “command and control” style move the Obama administration would alienate support in Congress for legislative action, only to find itself tied up in court indefinitely by legalistic maneuvering. Spewers have lawyers, too, the best lawyers money can pay for.

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Greenpeace suggests the President use the authority of the CAA to enter into an international agreement to cut GhGs, thereby bringing the bulk of the developed world to his side. Why? Because Europe’s opinions have always had such a big impact on the Republicans who back the fossil fuels and nuclear industries?

Perhaps the most important part of the Greenpeace paper is its call for the administration to redeem its 2009 accomplishments with much greater investment in New Energy.

As documented in ASIA, THE U.S. AND THE NEW ENERGY RACE, Asian nations have commited $509 billion over the next 5 years to New Energy research, development and deployment (RD&D) whereas U.S. planned spending for the same 5 years is $172 billion. The inequity and lack of U.S. ambition this suggests is little short of galling.

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Wind, as Greenpeace reminds, is less than 2% of the U.S. power mix but could be, according to an unbiased U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) assessment, 20% by 2030 if federal policies support it. This would mean a CO2 reduction of 7.6 gigatons.

Solar in the U.S. Southwest could provide more than 7 million megawatts of electricity generating capacity, 10 times what the U.S. presently generates with spew. A 2007 American Solar Energy Society (ASES) study estimated that U.S. concentrated solar power and photovoltaic capacity could cut CO2 emissions as much as 466 million tons per year by 2030.

By 2025, U.S. geothermal resources, a dependable baseload power source with a stable, competitive cost, could provide 30,000+ megawatts of electricity, 6% of present U.S. power demand.

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As detailed in 700,000 JOBS, 60,000 MW IN THE WATER, U.S. hydropower, though already 7% of the U.S. energy mix, has barely begun to make its full contribution. According to the DOE, improving existing hydroelectric projects and installing generators at dams could add 21,000 megawatts of new U.S. electricity generating capacity. And the hydrokinetic portion of hydropower (wave, tidal and current energies) has yet to mature.

All that New Energy could, according to the 2007 ASES study, cut 15% (1.9 gigatons) of U.S. GhG emissions by 2030.

Intermittency, Greenpeace stressed, is no longer an issue. A certain energy supply is merely a matter of integrating the right combination of resources. In addition, large-scale storage of New Energy is already a reality and rapidly becoming bigger and more affordable. Nations like Norway, Denmark and New Zealand are demonstrating that getting 15%-to-20% of power from New Energy is practical and 80%-to-100% could be possible.

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One thing is still lacking to accomplish such achievements: The political will to tame the special interests blocking New Energy’s access to funding. A Pathway To Sustainable Energy By 2030, by Stanford University’s Mark Z. Jacobson and Mark Delucci, demonstrates there is no question of the technical feasibility of powering the world with 100% New Energy by 2030.

Improvements in Energy Efficiency could also have a powerful impact in cutting U.S. emissions. Authoritative 2009 articles by the American Council for an Energy Efficent Economy (ACEEE) and McKinsey & Company found tremendous untapped potential in Energy Efficiency investments in buildings and transportation, investments that would likely pay for themselves in energy savings.

Greenpeace adds up the factors that create the lack of political will blocking climate change action like this: The President has failed to fulfill his campaign promise to lead. That's 1. Congress is incapable of acting. That's + 1. The President has the legal authority under the CAA to break the deadlock. That's a 0 so far. So 1 + 1 = 0.

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New Energy and Energy Efficiency, it is beyond question, can add up to something much, much greater. They can solve the emissions problem with emissions-free domestic power sources while creating new jobs, growing the economy and saving consumers money.

As the President begins his second year in office, Greenpeace says he needs to redeem himself. NewEnergyNews thinks it is a minor miracle, given what the President has had to face, that the smile muscles in his face still work.

Nevertheless, both Greenpeace and NewEnergyNews are in complete agreement about the urgency and very real feasibility of bringing New Energy and Energy Efficiency to bear to solve many of the dilemmas that have stymied the President.

New Energy can turn back the worst impacts of climate change, rejuvenate the economy, end dependency on foreign energy and, by doing so, enrich the nation enough to treat every citizen (and anybody visiting) to the best health care an enriched and balanced national budget can buy.

Especially in light of the outcome of the Massachusetts election, the burden of turning back the worst impacts of climate change now falls directly on the shoulders of New Energy entrepreneurs. They are going to need a little help from their friends at the polls.

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QUOTES
- From Greenpeace’s Yes He Can: “Historically, no nation has emitted more global warming pollution than the United States…The US response to climate change will continue to lack credibility as long as the country shirks its moral responsibility to step up to the plate and deliver. Considering the commitments that other countries have put on the table…the 4–7% in the US climate legislation simply fails to pass muster. Obama must deliver more than 4–7%
emission reductions by 2020… The President has the legal authority to cut emissions and sign on to an international climate agreement, and he has the tools and technologies Needed to get the job done…As the world’s largest historical emitter, the US must do more.”

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- From Greenpeace’s Yes He Can: “The studies cited in this briefing demonstrate that the US has tremendous potential to cut emissions with greater use of renewable energy and energy efficiency. These same studies also show that by enacting strong climate legislation at the federal level that the US will in fact grow its economy, create new jobs, and save American consumers money. By fully harnessing the potential inherent in currently available renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies, the US could deliver emission reductions that beat the climate bills several times over…”

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- From Greenpeace’s Yes He Can: “Earlier this year, President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, in part for his work on climate change. Hopefully, that award has given him the courage of his convictions on climate change. For the President to be a true Nobel Peace Laureate, he must commit to more than what Congress has proposed. Obama must reverse the United States’ blocking role in the climate negotiations to secure a fair, ambitious and binding deal for the climate…Yes he can commit the US to clean energy future, and yes he must.”