New Energy Economy, Part 2: Tough Questions, Tough Answers
by Bill Becker - Nov 19th, 2008
in
To lead America into a post-carbon economy, President Obama and the 111th Congress will have to revolutionize the biggest and most heavily lobbied of the government’s programs. That means taking on the armies of the status quo, who have money and inertia on their side.
It’s a battle that must be fought and won. Today, our public policy is riddled with crisis-inducing, self-defeating contradictions. The next Congress will have to resolve some tough questions that past Congresses avoided. For example:
1.) What action will Congress take to prove to the world that the United States is serious about addressing climate action?
This isn’t only an issue of perception. Unless the U.S. goes to Copenhagen at the end of 2009 with a strong domestic program to cut greenhouse gas emissions, it will have little influence at the international negotiating table.
Half-hearted legislation won’t do. Barack Obama’s election has fueled hopes in the European Union and the developing world that the United States – the nation most responsible for the emissions in the atmosphere today -- will lead the global climate effort.
The approach endorsed by Obama and by members of Congress is a “market-based” cap and auction program. Congress would put a cap on U.S. emissions. The federal government would auction “emission allowances” to polluters, who would be allowed to buy and sell the allowances to one another.
But the latest scuttlebutt in Washington is that Congress probably will not pass a cap-and-auction bill next year. The reasons: There is no agreement on the architecture of a program; a carbon cap will increase the price of fossil fuels and politicians won’t vote for that in the middle of a recession; and lawmakers are concerned that if they approve a carbon-trading system before the rest of the world does, the U.S. program won’t fit and will have to be legislated all over again.
But some observers predict that if the United States doesn’t approve cap-and-auction before, there’s little prospect that other nations will agree on one in Copenhagen. Thomas Becker, Denmark’s chief climate negotiator, warns that no action by the U.S. Congress could derail international progress and result in years of more inaction.
So, if not cap-and-auction, then what will Congress do?
2.) Can the U.S. have credibility in international negotiations without adopting a much higher carbon-cutting goal?
The European Union and many developing nations say that to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, industrialized economies should reduce their greenhouse gas emissions 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. That’s far more ambitious than any legislation in Congress or the target Obama proposed during the presidential campaign (1990 levels by 2020).
3.) How will Congress reconcile the contradictory goals of subsidizing and producing more dirty fuels while rapidly reducing U.S. carbon emissions?
While estimates vary widely, the federal government sends the oil, coal and natural gas industries about $30 billion in taxpayer money every year to subsidize the production of carbon-intensive fuels. Earlier this year, intimidated by record high gasoline prices, politicians from both parties jumped aboard the "drill, baby, drill" bandwagon and endorsed more domestic oil production. And in the economic rescue package it passed in October, Congress approved billions of dollars in new subsidies for "dirty fuels" – liquid fuels from coal, oil shale and tar sands that are even more harmful to the climate than conventional petroleum.
In the same legislation, Congress extended tax incentives for solar and wind energy development in the United States. It’s likely that the carbon pollution from subsidized dirty fuels will cancel all or part of the carbon savings from subsidized solar and wind energy.
In addition, can a cap-and-auction regime intended to engage the marketplace in emission reductions by correcting price signals do a good job while fossil energy subsidies are distorting the same price signals?
The reality is that fossil energy subsidies cannot coexist with sane and effective climate policy. It’s time to stand up to the fossil energy lobby.
4.) When will we stop investing in Futurama?
The biggest near-term opportunity for the White House and Congress to begin shaping a new energy economy will come next year when the surface transportation program comes up for reauthorization. Today, our transportation policies are still funding the vision of the car-centered society that General Motors unveiled at its Futurama pavilion at the 1939 New York World’s Fair.
As a result of current national policy, our cities are designed to move cars rather than people; transportation uses two-thirds of all the oil consumed in the United States and accounts for nearly 30 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions. The largest source of those emissions is passenger vehicles averaging 19.6 miles per gallon.
Federal transportation funding is biased toward roads and cars. Money is allocated in large part based on how many miles of road lanes are located in each city, how much fuel is consumed and how many miles vehicles travel. The federal share of capital investment in new highways is 80 percent, but it’s only 50 percent for public transit projects.
Congress should seize the opportunity next year to shift the emphasis from building roads to building mass transit systems, high speed rail, and transit-oriented communities.
5.) How do we close the gap between what scientists say is necessary and what politicians say is possible?
This is the biggest question of all. Congress responded to the economic meltdown with an intervention in the financial world that most of us never thought we’d see. Will Congress intervene as boldly in the carbon economy to prevent the uncontrolled growth of carbon debt?
Perverse, contradictory, entrenched, crisis-producing public policies are the norm in the government that Barack Obama will soon lead. Here, more than anywhere, we need change we can believe in.
Bill Becker is the Executive Director of the Presidential Climate Action Project (www.climateactionproject.com).
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4 birds with one stone
Gina
I have to disagree with you on the economy coming first. Energy is the key to the economy. Oil is killing our economy. Two wars in Iraq, terrorist threats, $700 billion trade deficit this year. One study estimated the annual tax credits and subsidies to the fossil fuel industry at $84 billion, military costs of protecting oil and it's shipping $100 billion. Health and environmental costs in the hundreds of millions, oil spills in the ocean and bays, global warming.
By investing in the technology that will create a clean electric grid and clean cars we kill 4 birds with one stone.
Economy Jobs
Ecology
Energy crisis and Energy independence
National Security (see energy independence)
We can put an end to all these hidden costs when we have energy that uses no fuel. No fuel to prospect for, mine, transport, store, refine, burn or use in fission, clean up the waste from, or fight wars over.
Someone here had a number of about $30 billion for fossil fuel subsidies. My numbers are from Set America Free
http://www.setamericafree.org/blueprint.pdf
The oil industry has gotten so many tax credits and subsidies, often as earmarks, over the years that it takes a detective to round them all up.
At any rate, they get a lot more than renewables get.
One energy source that we need to make a priority is solar thermal power plants in the southwest sunbelt. Solar thermal plants with heat storage can put out steady power all day, peaking in output just as the grid's energy demand peaks, and continuing to generate into the night.
Solar thermal plants concentrate the heat of the sun and boil water to drive a steam turbine generator. There are also systems that use a stirling engine instead of a turbine.
Molten salts are the best medium for holding heat. Water and oils are also used to store heat. Solar thermal is low tech, uses ordinary building materials and can be air or water cooled.
Solar panels on roofs etc, wind farms, biomass to methane, and such are all great. But we still need something to take the place of coal fired plants which provide base load power to the grid. Solar thermal with heat storage can do that cleanly, economically, can be built quicker than coal or nuclear. Joseph Romm has an excellent article on solar thermal at: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/04/14/solar_electric_thermal/inde...
Using 1% of the desert land in the southwest, less land than now used for coal mining and coal plants, solar thermal power plants would power the whole country. That's 2% of the available and suitable land.
The total area would be 92 miles by 92 miles, spread out over California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, perhaps Utah.
These plants need to be in very sunny areas to be cost effective. Photovoltaics are useful in a broader range of sunlight, hence are better for distributed energy. Concentrating PV plants could be part of the scenario too. They and solar thermal use parabolic mirrors and such to concentrate sunlight. PV converts it directly into electricity.
This link is also about solar thermal power.
http://solarsouthwest.org/
Solar Southwest Initiative
And there's the proposal published by Scientific American
which emphasizes concentrating PV power plants more than the solar thermal, which make more sense due to their energy storage ability.
Nonetheless it shows what we can do with solar and how to pay for it.
"A Solar Grand Plan"
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan
Repower America's energy plan also includes a lot of solar thermal power.
http://www.repoweramerica.org/
One thing you'll notice is how similar these plans and the ideas of Joseph Romm at Climate Progress are. They all talk about using plug in hybrids PHEVs and eventually all electric EV cars. And they all talk about building a HVDC transmission network to get power from windfarms in the midwest and western Texas, and from solar power plants in the southwest to the rest of the country.
High voltage DC has far less line loss over long distances. And doesn't have the big electromagnetic field that people are afraid of with AC.
Combine large scale solar power in the deserts with windfarms, photovoltaics all over the country and all the other forms of renewable energy and we can meet our energy needs. Phase out coal plants first.
Transportation will largely be powered by the clean grid as well.
Phasing out coal will free up huge amounts of rail freight capacity.
That will be a bonus, becuase rail is much more efficient at long distance shipping than trucks.
One idea I like, is parasails for ships. No kidding. The Skysail can put out 6800 hp and save a ship 10-25% of fuel costs. It can save 50% on runs with idea wind speed and direction. They can sail on any point of sail, or motorsail I should say. A ship can be retrofitted with one for about $250,000. Considering that cape horn size bulk carrier ships were leasing for about $125,000 a day last year, that's pretty cheap.
(The lease rate is much lower now) surprise surprise
Another company, Kite Ship, based in California is doing this too.
This is a simple contribution to saving energy with a lot of bang for the buck.
We need more passenger rail transportation, and high speed trains. We should improve our rail infrastructure to accomadate more freight.
Commercial airliners are big polluters and they do it at high altitudes which is believed to be particularly bad, but we have no current alternative to jet engines. Biofuels are being tested by Virgin airlines.
High speed rail would cut down on air traffic.
The American Wind Energy Association expects installed capacity to grow from 11,603 MW now to about 100,000 MW by 2020.
That's an increase of nearly 90 gigawatts. McCain was talking about building 45 new nuclear power plants by 2020. A medium size nuclear plant is about 2 gigawatts, some are 1 gigawatt. Hoover Dam is 2 gigawatts. So in the same time span, wind could equal the output of the proposed nuclear power plants, but cheaper and safer and without ever having to worry about running out of wind. And uranium supply is already running low, according to
The Lean Guide to Nuclear Power
http://www.theleaneconomyconnection.net/downloads.html#Nuclear
One of nuclear's biggest negatives is the enormous amounts of water necessary to cool the plants.
more on nuclear here:
http://www.cleanwisconsin.org/campaigns/NuclearPower/unsustainable_cost....
Wind and solar are faster to get up and running than nuclear or coal.
And since they are modular in design, you don't even have to wait for the wind or solar farms to be complete before getting power from them.
Climate
Obama won because people wanted a change, especially because we were fed up with how the economy was going. People have lost jobs and homes. We can't pay our bills. How much this kind of policy is going to cost the American people? Will we be able to afford the utilities? Will any more Americans lose their jobs because of this policy - like for ex, the coal industry? Lets fix the economy first, give it first priority which is what we want, then go and do changes that we might later afford.
Deja Vu
It wouldn't be wise to fix the economy so that it does what it did before. We need to re-establish it upon new foundations, not upon the corpse of business as usual.
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