Fossil Energy
Obama Establishes Enviro, Energy Targets for Federal Government
Published October 05, 2009 @ 05:48PM PT
The Obama administration today ordered federal agencies to aim for aggressive targets to reduce energy use, and incorporate environmental sustainability in federal government operations.
The executive order "Federal Leadership in Environmental, Energy, and Economic Performance," signed today by President Obama, builds off an executive order signed by President Bush in 2007, as well as momentum created by clean energy and energy-efficiency measures funded by the stimulus act.
Under this new mandate, federal agencies must set 10-year energy reduction and environmental sustainability goals within the next 90 days. Clearly identified targets in the order include:
- 30% reduction in vehicle fleet petroleum use by 2020;
- 26% improvement in water efficiency by 2020;
- 50% recycling and waste diversion by 2015;
- 95% of all applicable contracts will meet sustainability requirements;
- Implementation of the 2030 net-zero-energy building requirement;
- Implementation of the stormwater provisions of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, section 438; and
- Development of guidance for sustainable Federal building locations in alignment with the Livability Principles put forward by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Transportation, and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Obama Administration Moves to Slash Smokestack Greenhouse Pollution
Published September 30, 2009 @ 04:16PM PT
The Environmental Protection Agency has released its first major rule proposal to slash greenhouse gas pollution from large industrial facilities and power plants around the country.
It's the first federal move toward regulating heat-trapping gases from stationary sources; tougher auto emissions standards were introduced earlier in the year. According to EPA, the rule fits in with its authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate air pollutants, and will stand up to legal challenges.
Under the new rule, new or significantly modified facilities would be required to get pollution permits if they emit 25,000 tons or more of carbon dioxide and five other climate-changing pollutants. These facilities would be required to use the "best available control technologies" (called "BACT" in enviro-wonkese) to filter their emissions.
This threshold, which would affect around 14,000 heavy industry and energy-generating facilities, is around 100 times greater than the regulatory triggers for other air pollutants known to hurt human health and the environment, such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide. It is large enough to effectively remove small and medium-scale businesses from the regulation's scope.
Critics of the regulations have been spinning "doomsday scenarios, with EPA regulating everything from cows to the local Dunkin' Donuts," said EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson at a press conference this afternoon."Let's be clear: That's not going to happen. We have carefully crafted the regulation to exempt most small and medium sized businesses," while targeting emitters where it will have the greatest positive impact on curbing global warming.
Gov't Fossil Fuel Subsidies More Than Twice Those to Clean Energy
Published September 29, 2009 @ 01:20PM PT
For every dollar that the federal government spent on renewable energies between 2002 and 2008, it put about $2.43 -- nearly two and a half times as much -- into subsidies for fossil fuels.
As detailed in a new report, "Estimating U.S. Government Subsidies to Energy Sources: 2002-2008," this enormously tilted playing field gives quite a marketplace advantage to companies that are already among the most lucrative on Earth.
These figures suck a lot of the oxygen out of the argument that renewables are "just too expensive" compared to fossil fuels. And they add some frisson to the sole, rather wonkish climate action that came out of last week's G20 Summit, where the heads of state agreed (albeit with no timeline yet established) to phase out fossil fuel subsidies.
If they follow through, it will be a move with climate benefits and more. "Fossil fuel subsidies act as a drag on the whole economy," Columbia professor Scott Barrett, an expert on natural resource economics, told me last week. "Get rid of them, and you can reallocate resources across whole economy," he said, "become more efficient, and ultimately [improve] the whole economy."
This graphic tells nearly the whole story; more detail of where those monies are going after the jump.
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.
Climate at the G20: White House briefs bloggers on climate discussions
Published September 26, 2009 @ 05:25PM PT
Above: G20 Voice bloggers at a briefing by Michael Froman, Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor, at the end of the G20 Summit on Friday, Sept. 25. (Photo by Julie C. Roth; Courtesy G20 Voice.)
Climate activists were underwhelmed by what came out of this week's Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh in the way of formal climate change commitments.
True, the heads of state of the 20 leading developed and developing economies agreed to phase out fossil fuel subsidies "in the medium term." But they couldn't come to a consensus on climate finance -- aid from richer nations to poorer, directed at adapting to and mitigating the impacts of global warming.-- which is what it takes for something to make it onto the summit's final statement.
Stronger pledges on climate had been part of a leaked draft of the summit communique earlier in the week, and climate activists from Oxfam, Greenpeace, US Climate Action Network and other groups were aggravated that they vanished from the final version.
The G20 are asking their finance czars to keep digging into the issue when they meet in Scotland, in November, according Michael Froman, Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor. Froman met with bloggers covering the G20 for a briefing, soon after President Obama's press conference late Friday afternoon.
The G20 "felt it is important that climate financing stays primarily in the UN context," said Froman -- the context of the UN's international climate treaty negotiations in Copenhagen in December -- where all developing as well as poorer nations will also be at the table to help forge the agreement. Although the G20 nations represent about 85% of the globe's economic output, there are over 160 additional countries involved in the Kyoto Protocol climate treaty.
According to Froman, there has been no decision made on whether President Obama will attend December's international climate treaty talks in Copenhagen.
Climate at the G20: Fossil fuel subsidy phase-out is go in "medium term"
Published September 25, 2009 @ 06:03AM PT
Above: Silver sheen and black streamers of oil on Mississippi River, following the collision of a 600-foot chemical tanker and 200-foot fuel barge just north of the Crescent City Connector Bridge in New Orleans, La., July 2008. Credit: NOAA.
The Group of 20 will announce today that there is overall agreement on phasing out subsidies on oil and other fossil fuels -- which would cut emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gas pollution by around 10% by 2050.
The major wealthy and up-and-coming world economies will not set a firm schedule for the phase-out at this meeting, however. Advance word has it that they're looking to do it in "the medium term," and will come up with a more definitive schedule at the next G20 summit. The nations are also committing to more transparency in energy market data reporting, including oil production, consumption, refining, and reserves.
Still, the move is seen as a major win for President Obama, host of the Pittsburgh edition of this confab, and could bolster opinions that he's got the mojo to move an international climate agreement forward as well.
"Inefficient fossil fuel subsidies encourage wasteful consumption, distort markets, impede investment in clean energy sources and undermine efforts to deal with climate change," says the statement leaked from the G20.
The nations also commit to "intensify our efforts" to achieve an agreement at December's international climate talks in Copenhagen, Denmark: "We underscore anew our resolve to take strong action to address the threat of dangerous climate change."
Fatalistic Friday: GOP Senator may protect polluters from greenhouse gas curbs
Published September 18, 2009 @ 06:10PM PT
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) wants to slice and dice the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate greenhouse gas pollution. Cars and trucks: okay. Power plants and factories: not so much.
Murkowski has said she hopes to introduce an amendment to the $32.1 billion fiscal 2010 appropriations legislation for the Department of the Interior, the EPA, and the Forest Service (part of the Dept. of Agriculture).
Murkowski's rider would limit EPA to creating rules to regulate greenhouse gas pollution from mobile sources only -- that is, automobiles -- while preventing the agency from devising regulations for stationary sources like factories and power plants off-limits until after September, 2010:
Effective during the 1-year period beginning on the date of enactment of this Act, none of the funds made available for the Environmental Protection Agency under this Act may be expended to regulate or control carbon dioxide from any sources other than a mobile source as described in section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act or to treat carbon dioxide as a pollutant subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act except for purposes of section 10 202(a) of that Act.
Murkowski, the top-ranked Republican member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, is opposed to creating a cap-and-trade system for lowering greenhouse gas pollution. She supports drilling for oil and gas on the Outer Continental Shelf off Alaska's coast.
