Nuclear Energy
McCain's Gripe: Climate change bills don't include nuclear power
Published October 01, 2009 @ 04:25PM PT
Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) used a morning yak with NBC's David Gregory to slam the Boxer-Kerry climate and energy bill, as well as the Waxman-Markey House bill that squeaked to passage in June, for not including nuclear energy in their mandates on "renewable," "clean" power.
Neither bill allows nuclear energy to count toward fulfilling mandated renewable energy generation goals, which arguably could dampen enthusiasm for nukes by states trying to meet these "renewable energy standards," or RES.
"It’s the left-wing environmental organizations that are not allowing us to move forward with nuclear power," groused the senator, at the "First Draft of History" forum sponsored by The Atlantic and the Aspen Institute.
Videos to Watch: Climate week highlights, what's next in int'l talks
Published September 27, 2009 @ 02:43PM PT
Above: Climate advocates are striving to contain growing worries that the December climate talks in Copenhagen will be a bust. In this video made just as the G20 summit wrapped up, Kumi Naidoo, chair of the Tck Tck Tck climate mobilization campaign (and incumbent director of Greenpeace), encourages people to get active in their communities, churches, mosques, temples, and clubs. Naidoo and others believe it's crucial that citizens to contact their leaders and demand that they reach a "fair, ambitious and binding" climate treaty agreement in December.
It has been an inconclusive "Climate Week." The world's major economic powers made few significant moves on curbing global warming, and produced no major public breakthroughs in deadlocked climate treaty negotations.
On the activist side, things were a good deal more inspiring:
The Global Wake-up Call saw thousands of people worldwide performing creative, cheerful street actions and calling their political leaders to support a strong climate treaty. This "Human Countdown" in New York City last Sunday kicked off the week's activist events:
The film "The Age of Stupid" had a star-studded evening opening in New York City. The film takes a black-humored backwards look at our era, when no one acted fast enough to stave off global warming. Gillian Anderson! Moby! Heather Graham! Stephen Baldwin!
[[There, my SEO for the week is accomplished.]]
The Yes Men pranked New York City and the media with their mock "climate change edition" of the Rupert "Fox News" Murdoch-owned tabloid, The New York Post:
"SPECIAL EDITION" NEW YORK POST from The Yes Men on Vimeo.
More activist moments, and the anti-climatic policy roundup, after the jump.
Fatalistic Friday: Glaciers shrink, coal lobby spends, more
Published August 07, 2009 @ 06:03PM PT
Retreat of South Cascade Glacier, Washington, during the 20th Century and the beginning of the 21st Century. Source: U.S. Geological Survey
Scientists See Alaska, Washington Glaciers Shrinking Fast: Three major glaciers in Alaska and Washington state have thinned and shrunk dramatically, clear signs of a warming climate and signaling lower stream flows in summer months, according to a study released Thursday by the U.S. Geological Survey. (Associated Press)
Coal's biggest lobbying group is launching a $1 million campaign to win support from Senate Democrats, an effort that employs the same public relations firm ensnared by a scandal over forged letters to Congress. (Greenwire)
Climate Action May Stall in Fall: With the fight over health care reform absorbing all attention on Capitol Hill, Democrats fear climate change legislation may lose momentum. (Politico)
Realtors Get Labels Cut From Climate Bill for Older Houses: Real estate industry gets older homes exempted from energy labeling provision of energy and climate legislation, saying it threatened a lucrative corner of their industry. (Climatewire)
The Trouble With Nuclear Fuel: Nukes represent a promising bridge from fossil fuels to truly clean energy technologies. But it's really hard to prevent it from being used to make bombs. (The Economist)
Some California Amphibians May Need a Lift to Survive Climate Change:
As amphibian habitat shifts with global warming, some species will be trapped in shrinking territories, and need human interventions to survive. (Scientific American)
"Serious" Climate Talks Hinge On U.S. Bill: The success or failure of international climate treaty talks depends upon the U.S. passing a strong bill to slash carbon pollution, says American Clean Energy and Security Act co-sponsor Edward Markey (D-Mass.) (Reuters)
Tiny Prairie Grouse Native To Wind-Rich Swath Of America: If the lesser prairie chicken is listed as threatened or endangered – the species' numbers have dropped 80 percent nationally since 1963 – significant restrictions would be placed on companies hoping to plant towering turbines across a five-state region believed to have some of the nation's best wind energy potential. (The Dallas Morning News)
Climate Bill Demands Pile Up for Boxer, Kerry Headed Into Summer Break: "Liberal Democrats, for example, want stronger emission targets compared with the House-passed bill. Coal-state senators are pressing for changes to a delicately crafted House deal that would send their electric utilities a larger share of free allocations. And expanded energy production sits atop the wish list for oil patch Democrats." (Climatewire)
Nobel Halo Fades Fast for Climate Change Panel: As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change gears up for its next climate review, many specialists in climate science and policy, both inside and out of the network, are warning that it could quickly lose relevance unless it adjusts its methods and focus. (The New York Times)
Live Senate Hearing: Climate Change and Ensuring that America Leads the Clean Energy Transformation
Published August 06, 2009 @ 08:09AM PT
The full Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is meeting today to discuss how to implement successful, and largely market-driven, clean energy policies.
12:30: Hearing adjourned!
12:15: Sen. Whitehouse, to Krupp: You've said in your testimony that CCS is ready to roll? Can you elaborate on that?
Krupp: I was quoting an official at British Petroleum, noting that in Norway there are enormous amts of CCS going on. Because there's a price on carbon in Norway, so they're avoiding that cost by keeping it out of the atmosphere.
Until there's a driver, there's no reason to capture carbon.
Our nation does burn a lot of coal -- half our electricity generated from burning coal. We should leave a path open to cleaning up the carbon dioxide from that, the same as we have a path to cleaning out the sulfur dioxide.
12:12: Sen. Whitehouse: Saying technologies aren't ready is a self-fulfilling prophesy.
12:00 noon: Sen. Boxer: Specuation issue. As former stockbroker, I understand what happens with speculation, there's cause for concern. In ACES, there's a floor of $11 on price. Some utilities have said to me, what about a collar?
Fehrman: Collar would help protect ratepayers, would still impose a second cost on customers however.
Sen Boxer: Some utilities, like Duke, which is heavily dependent on coal, support ACES. Supreme Court says carbon emissions are covered by the Clean Air Act. So it's unusual that a business person would rather choose a hard cap, with no ability to get allocations, offsets. Won't that put costs thru roof?
Krupp: Mid-America is in unique position. Made some decisions that were in retrospect bad: big new coal-fired plant online in 2007. Wholesale a lot of their energy. Under Waxman-Markey, the allocations follow the electrons.
Certainly the proposition, a cap but no trade, would be extraordinarily expensive to consumers. Trading promotes lowest-cost options, allows utilities and customers to switch energy generation sources.
Price collar: Just another world for a safety valve, which busts the integrity of the cap. Wont' guarantee emissions reductions, we won't be able to say to other nations, we're reducing emissions, we want you to as well.
Many things in ACES control costs -- cap and trade mechanism; allocation directly to consumers. In terms of market manipulation, whatever comes out of this committee has to have jail time for those who game the maket.
Sen. Boxer: Look at a collar in slightly different way. If we know that $11 is the floor, and that's sending a price signal, not sure why we can't use this to create regulatory certainty.
Sen. Inhofe: I read a whole long list of House Democrats, as well as James Hansen, who oppose cap and trade, in my opening statement. Ralph Nader opposes it. You have stated that "make polluters pay" slogan is wrong; that consumers will pay.
Fehrman: At Mid-American, we haven't had a base rate increase since 1975, and are a leader in renewable energy generation. This bill creates unreasonable costs for our customers, fees for allowances. We'd be better off taking those dollars and investing in renewables and nuclear, actually reducing our emissions to meet those caps.
Inhofe: How will purchasing allowances not reduce GHGs?
Fehrman: Waxman-Markey takes 2005 emissions and applies sliding cap to that level. There's cost of compliance -- driving emissions down -- and there's buying allowances from first emission of CO2 up to the cap. That latter cost doesn't reduce CO2 emissions.
Sen Inhofe: Your view on carbon capture and storage? When would be be commercially scalable?
Fehrman: We find that there is execptional work going on in industry, pilot projects, in a number of years, be it five or ten years, there will be CCS tech available. We will say that sequestration of carbon hasn't been studied, don't know all the issues involved. Need more study to fully understand the impacts.
Inhofe: "Majority of people believe" that tech isn't here on renewables and all sorts of these things. If we have these resources, and are only country that doesn't develop them, we need to use them as a bridge to the future.
11:50 ET: Second panel is introduced: Fred Krupp, President, Environmental Defense Fund; and Bill Fehrman, President and CEO, MidAmerican Energy Company.
Krupp: My message is simple: We can achieve strong emissions targets by 2020, at low cost, and create millions of new jobs in the process. Begins to cite a number of non-partisan studies on both costs and technologies -- see his formal statement to the committee for the details.
Fehrman: We oppose trade part of cap and trade: Customers will pay for emissions, plus the structures to reduce those emissions. Free allowances based on retail sales will favor utilities that rely largely on hydro and nuclear power, not allow coal-dependent utilities to receive enough allowances. Shortfall of 11 million allowances in just the first compliance year; and ratepayers will foot the bill.
Under acid rain program, allowances went to emitters who needed them to comply with new regs. Under Waxman-Markey as currently written, will be huge windfall to utilities that don't need them; also, penalizes utilities that have already made big investments in renewables.
11:49: Sen. Whitehouse to Sandalow: Over time, a lot of objection has risen to nuclear power, primarily around safety. But US Navy and European power agencies have demonstrated that it can be used safely. Around cost -- it appears that as we move toward modular systems, can better control costs. And disposal: we don't have a means for getting rid of horribly dangeous waste.
Traveling wave technologies: Create power off current stocks of waste. Are you following that?
Sandalow: I'm not personally following that; we'll get back to you, Senator.
11: 43: Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse: Wildlife adapation amendments related to climate legislation are gathering broad, bipartisan and multi-regional support. Is that true?
Strickland: True. Adaptation challenges with public lands, protecting wildlife, and dealing with real world impacts of climate change are vitally important.
11:39: Sen. Benjamin Cardin: Where are we at on using public lands to develop renewables?
Strickland: We're at the very early stages. Regulations are being put in place to develop offshore wind. We're moving quickly to put infrastructure in place with solar also; now we have a huge backlog of private sector interest in dev. solar on public lands. We've used some of Recovery Act dollars to create four offices in the West to deal with that backlog. We're in early stages, but there's huge potential.
Wants Boxer to organize committee letter to get documentation on how much public land is available to use for generation of renewable energy vs. extraction of mineral resources.
Sen. John Barasso says that 138,000 acres of land would be needed to build a wind farm with capacity to replace one coal-fired power plant. That's three times the size of the District of Colombia. Are we willing to set aside enough land to replace hundreds of coal-fired power plants?
Wellinghoff: Starts by countering some misquotes on his positions that Barasso has just read into the record, to the overall point that he does not believe that renewables will completely replace fossil energy sources, but that there is enormous capacity for different kinds of renewables, combined with energy efficiency and nat'l gas. Spurred by a market-based carbon control system, says all this could allow nation to transition successfully (and implication is with minimal pain and gnashing of teeth) to low-carbon energy economy. "There's plenty of land out there in the ocean" to create millions of gigawatts of wind power.
11:24: Sen. George Voinovich brings up energy security. Concerned we have not harmonized energy, environment, economic, national security policies. "If nation knew how vulnerable we were today in terms of oil, they'd be shaking in their boots." Cites billions of dollars sent overseas for oil, with no idea of environmental impacts that it's having.
Tells Strickland we should take advantage of all resources we have, including domestic oil, but be the most aggressive in reducing use of oil as well (such as upgrading the energy grid to enable growth of EV use.) Wishes the president would talk about using less oil and also going after more domestic oil production.
11:21: Sandalow says the $2.4 billion being allocated to next-gen electric vehicle battery development, announced yesterday by President Obama, has the potential to be transformational in cutting the nation's dependency on foreign oil.
1 Video to Watch This Week: Stewart Brand's 4 environmental heresies
Published July 21, 2009 @ 08:14PM PT
One of the founders of the modern environmental movement, Stewart Brand, has been reconsidering his positions on a few mundane matters related to preserving the environment, feeding the exploding human population, and stabilizing the climate.
Brand has been incalculably influential in American environmental and internet cultures. In just a few examples: Brand helped catalyze the early years of the sustainable communities and DIY movements in the late Sixties and early Seventies with the Whole Earth Catalog, a compendium of tools, reviews, and information. Brand uttered his famous aphorism, "Information wants to be free. Information also wants to be expensive," at the inaugural Hackers Conference in 1984, an event he co-founded to gather together the early pioneers of the computer revolution. And he co-founded one of the earliest of influential online communities, The WELL, way back in 1985.
So if he now thinks slums will be drivers of green innovation, and micronuclear reactors and geo-engineering are crucial to stopping global warming, it's worth paying attention.
Suggest a story to Stop Global Warming
Published July 10, 2009 @ 08:01AM PT
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State your case on #ACES: Climate Pass or Climate Fail?
Published June 26, 2009 @ 08:51AM PT
Okay kids, get your ya-yas out: What's your opinion of the clean energy and climate change bill that's being debated in the House today?
Should it pass, or will it do more harm than good in stopping global warming? Will its' cap-and-trade provisions curb greenhouse gas emissions effectively, or have concessions to fossil energy and agriculture industry interests fatally weakened the legislation?
Note: As ever, courtesy toward fellow commenters is strongly encouraged. References to Nazis, or denials of the reality of global warming, will be deleted as troll posts.
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Image: View of the Sun from Baja California, during an eclipse on July 11, 1991. Source: NASA Earth Observatory
