Clean Energy
Fatalistic Friday: Reality bites. Chu bites back.
Published June 19, 2009 @ 02:00PM PT
This week's installment of Fatalistic Friday is devoted wholly to one tour-de-force item: "The Secretary of Saving the Planet," Rolling Stone's profile of Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu.
Chu, a physicist, was a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and the director of the Energy Department's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory before joining the Obama administration. He is a clean energy visionary, as reporter Jeff Goodell makes clear right at the top of the piece:
Chu envisions a world powered almost entirely by the sun, with photovoltaic cells painted on the surface of buildings, deserts covered with solar panels, and superconducting transmission lines crisscrossing the country. Cars would be powered by smart batteries and genetically engineered biofuels. You might see a few next-generation nukes, as well as fields of wind turbines, but the one thing you won't see in Chu's perfect world is much oil, gas or coal. Chu is an unabashed crusader for the renewable future, a man whose most basic assumption about energy is that the age of fossil fuels is coming to a close.
This description alone should tell any astute observer what Chu is up against, and perhaps make some wonder if he's just going to spin his wheels in Washington, DC. But Chu's scientist enthusiasm for transformative projects, promising discoveries and new technologies, which is chased by a big dose of Silicon Valley-style entrepreneurial thinking, is not bracketed by naiveté about our failure thus far to take sufficient, significant action to curb the causes of global warming.
At an MIT reception in May, Goodell writes, Chu is asked for his views on using geoengineering to mitigate the worst climate change, if current efforts to slash greenhouse gas emissions don't pan out. This section is worth excerpting at length:
If Chu were a conventional politician, he would dismiss geoengineering as a sci-fi fantasy and move on. Not only is the whole idea anathema to environmentalists, it suggests that we are not going to cut pollution fast enough to stave off disaster. Thisis a particularly delicate topic right now, as Congress wrangles over climate legislation that sets specific targets for carbon emissions. Today, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is roughly 385 parts per million. Most climate scientists agree that the threshold for irreversible climate change is 450 parts per million. If we go much above that, we risk melting the polar ice sheets, turning the oceans into acid baths and causing extreme droughts.
Chu is certainly aware of all this. But instead of evading the question, he takes it a step further. "The fact is, we're not going to level out at 450 ppm," he says. "We're going to go over 450 ppm. So what will we do? I'm not in favor of deploying geoengineering. But thinking about it is OK." For a moment, the room goes quiet. In effect, the United States secretary of energy has just told an elite group of scientists and politicians that, no matter what happens with climate legislation this summer in Congress, no matter what China does or does not do, no matter what targets are set at climate negotiations in Copenhagen later this year, our future as a species is likely a grim one.
Chu has uttered the politically unthinkable: that his own administration’s efforts to halt global warming might not be enough to avert a catastrophe. John Holdren, President Obama’s chief science adviser, would never be so frank. (“I’m not going to talk about targets,” he tells me, before noting that he has said on previous occasions that he “hopes and expects” we can hold the line at 450 ppm.)
The Nuclear Alternative to Coal
Published June 15, 2009 @ 02:44PM PT
At least one voice close-ish to President Obama's ear believes nuclear power ought to be part of the nation's energy mix: Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson, a physicist, educator, former nuclear regulator, and newly-appointed member of the Obama adminstration's President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
I interviewed Dr. Jackson last week for Grist, and came away intrigued by her sophisticated take on energy policy. What energy policy, you ask? Well, that's part of the issue: the U.S. has not approached meeting our energy needs with a comprehensive strategy for some time.
I asked her if, to slash the nation's climate-disrupting greenhouse gas emissions as far and fast as possible, we ought to plan on substituting nuclear power for coal-fired power. "You have to think about it as, the country has a certain overall need for energy," Dr. Jackson told me,
And depending upon choices in areas like transportation, there could be a need for greater electrical generation, both if we have hybrid vehicles or plug-in hybrids, that kind of thing, where you have batteries that need to be recharged. That could drive an increase...Depending on overall economic growth, a mix of things that drive the economy could drive the need for energy.
And so really it is a function of what the overall energy needs are, and how the mix plays out among the various sectors, from the commercial and industrial, to home heating and cooling, to transportation.
I appreciated Dr. Jackson's subtle answer to a complicated question, even though it didn't make for a convenient sound bite. Too often, the debate about energy in this country gets reduced to the muddled concept of "energy independence." How we use oil versus how we use coal, and the different tactics needed to reduce use of each for the sake of the climate, are seldom made clear; not by most government officials, and not by many activist campaigns that I observe, either.
"Where I come at it is, we need a comprehensive energy security roadmap that has to be a combination of options," Dr. Jackson told me. "Nuclear should be part of that.
But in order for us to get to where we need to be will require a couple of things. One is innovation. Innovation in the energy arena broadly, but innovation as well with respect to new designs for reactors; innovation with respect to fuel cycle management, et cetera. There are ... some things we know how to do today. There are things we know in terms of the science, what to do. But to do these things at scale requires some innovation.
The questions for climate action advocates are tough ones: Is nuclear power the lesser harm to global warming? Would the trade off in expense and radioactive waste be worth it?
And how could we ensure that if we expand nuclear power over the next two decades, we'll really follow through with shutting it off two decades after that?
The Clean Energy Economy Is Already Booming
Published June 11, 2009 @ 08:46PM PT
Without much attention from policymakers, or funding from the public trough, a low-carbon economy has already taken off in the United States. The jobs being created nationwide in clean energy are helping to bolster the nation's environmental sustainability and cut greenhouse gas emissions -- and expanding at a faster rate than the U.S. economy overall.
Research by The Pew Charitable Trusts, published in a new report titled "The Clean Energy Economy," found that:
- Between 1998 and 2007, jobs in clean energy grew at a faster rate than overall jobs.
- By 2007, more than 68,200 businesses across all 50 states and the District of Columbia accounted for about 770,000 jobs.
- Jobs in clean energy, both white-collar and blue-collar, grew at a rate of 9.1 percent, while total jobs grew at a rate of 3.7 percent.
- Clean tech has not been immune to the economic meltdown, but it's proving to be an especially resilient sector: Although venture capital investment in clean tech dropped by 48 percent in the first three months of 2009 (compared to the same period in 2008), investment across the board was down 61 percent during the same period.
- Employment in clean energy covers a broad swath of blue-collar and white-collar jobs, including plumbers, machinists, scientists, engineers, bankers and marketing consultants. Annual incomes ranging from around $21,000 to $111,000.
Imagine how clean energy jobs would have grown if the sector had received the enormous public policy support, government subsidies and private investment of, say, biotechnology? Despite the hype and money poured into biotech for the past twenty years, Pew reports that the sector employed fewer than 200,000 workers, around one tenth of one percent of total U.S. jobs in 2007. That's less than third of the number employed in clean tech.
Tomorrow: House Progressive Caucus Q&A on Energy-Climate Bill
Published June 10, 2009 @ 01:15PM PT
Today: Ask your questions about the the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), and vote on the questions already in play.
Tomorrow: Members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives will offer up answers.
The questions currently in the top five are:
- Why is EPA oversight of the coal industry being gutted?
- Why can't we create better tax incentives to businesses and consumers to use alternative energy?
- WHEN WILL CONGRESS GROW UP AND WORK FOR THE PEOPLE NOT SPECIAL INTERESTS [sic]
- What can we do to make it easier for home owners to become self sufficient with wind or solar power?
- Why are we expanding highways when rail transportation would provide a greener alternative to commut[ing?]
Think you can do better? Get on over there and make it so.
Ocean Garbage: The next big fuel source?
Published June 10, 2009 @ 05:38AM PT
Seen in the comments on Haute*Nature:
Develop a ship to harvest the trash and process it into fuel to run the ship. Plastics can be a good fuel source. This may not be a perfect solution but it’s better than doing nothing.
What's this about? Generally, it's about the astonishingly enormous flotilla of plastic trash floating on the surface of the ocean, such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Some debris ends up in the ocean after being dumped overboard (or off land) intentionally. Trash is carried into the ocean by stormwater runoff and wind, or flows out with the tide from littered beaches.
Specifically, it's about how this marine debris has complicated the search for the remains of Air France 447, the passenger jet that crashed into the ocean near Brazil last week. Navel crew from at least three nations are working hard now to find the wreckage, and recover the bodies of the victims (which would be some solace, however small, for their survivors). But the "massive amount of garbage in the ocean" is making this open-ocean search even harder.
Could turning this trash into an energy resource make cleaning the garbage off the ocean more of a priority?
US, China Kick Off Crucial Global Warming Talks
Published June 08, 2009 @ 08:19AM PT
As the world's two top producers of greenhouse pollution, the US and China have special roles to play in stopping global warming. If they don't slash greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), and quickly replace the bulk of their coal-fired power with clean energy, no one else's efforts will be enough.
Worse, if the US and China, which between them put out nearly 50% of all human-caused GHGs, don't do it, other nations are that much less likely to take strong action, on the reasoning that "if they don't do it, why should we?"
Unfortunately, for around a decade and a half, the US and China have pretty much been in a global warming standoff. Each claims it's been waiting for the other to act first before it will commit.
So this week's climate and energy talks between we two greenhouse giants are an important prelude to December's "son of Kyoto" international climate treaty negotiations in Copenhagen.
Climate-Energy Bill Seems Poised to Move
Published June 04, 2009 @ 08:26AM PT
The Waxman-Markey clean energy-and-climate action bill, which was voted out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on May 21, may have gotten some wind under its wings.
Although the bill seemed destined to become mired in eight other House committees with some say over its provisions, yesterday Environment & Energy Daily ($ req'd) reporter Darren Samuelsohn reported that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave the committtee chairs a June 19 deadline to move the legislation:
Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) and Education and Labor Chairman George Miller (D-Calif.) both confirmed that Pelosi wants them to act within the next 15 days on the comprehensive measure.
"We're under the hammer," Rangel told reporters following an hourlong meeting in the Capitol with more than two dozen of his Democratic committee members.
Pelosi yesterday told reporters that she had not set a schedule for the committee leaders. "I'm not putting any deadline on it," she said. "It'll go to the floor when we are ready. They will pass bills out of their committees when they are ready."
But Rangel, Miller and other Democrats said that the speaker has indeed established a very small window for any changes to the 946-page bill (H.R. 2454) ...
..."I think the speaker's trip to China made her a little more interested in moving it," said Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.). "So we'll hear a little bit more talk about it. Maybe some shifting away from health care for a moment."
On Tuesday, a report emerged that President Barack Obama "is prepared to stake his own political prestige on getting climate change legislation through Congress, and would be willing to intervene directly to ensure passage of America's first law to reduce the carbon emissions that cause global warming."
This according to Suzanne Goldenberg, a US reporter for the UK's Guardian newspaper, who interviewed Nancy Sutley, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality:
The house energy committee, which is weighed heavily towards coal and oil state Democrats, was the first major obstacle for the climate change bill, and Obama drew on his political capital help get it passed.
The president invited key members of Congress to the White House to make a personal appeal for the bill. Those at the meeting say the pitch was crucial to securing the support of wavering Democrats.
Obama would be ready to take further gambles on his personal popularity, Sutley said.
She said he was unlikely to intervene in the near future to shore up targets for emission reductions - already criticised by some environmentalists as failing to go as far as dictated by the science to prevent a catastrophic rise in temperature. However, the president may feel compelled to step in to shield consumers from higher electricity bills. "He has talked about the idea that we have to think about consumers," she said.
Of all the House players, both articles identify the House Agriculture Committee and its chair Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), as a key figure in the bill's fate. Mr. Peterson met for 45 minutes with Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) yesterday, according to E&E Daily,
...to run through his issues with the legislation, which include oversight of the offset market, free emission allowances for rural electric cooperatives and the definition of biomass in a renewable fuel standard.
"We're not trying to stop this bill," Peterson told reporters. "We're trying to make it so we believe it's workable. That's where we're coming from. We're going to have a bill, something from the standpoint of agriculture, that's going to work. That makes sense. That's what we're trying to accomplish here."
