Latest Articles

Obama administration puts halt to Bush-era oil and gas policies

In a rebuke of the Bush administration’s oil and gas policies, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Tuesday announced that his department is shelving a plan to open new areas of the outer continental shelf to oil and gas drilling. The agency will gather more public input before deciding how to proceed on offshore drilling, and […]

Vilsack continues to lay the groundwork for reform

There was some curiosity as to what stance U.S. Department of Agriculture chief Tom Vilsack would take in his speech this week before the National Association of Wheat Growers. Surprisingly, he came as the bearer of bad tidings. According to this report:

Vilsack called on farmers to accept the political reality that U.S. farm program direct payments are under fire both at home and abroad and therefore farmers should develop other sources of income. In his remarks to the groups he said he intends to promote a far more diversified income base for the farm sector, saying that windmills and biofuels should definitely be part of the income mix and that organic agriculture will also play an increasing role.

Um, what? Leave aside the "prepare for a pay cut" thing for a moment. Did Vilsack just use the O-word in front of a bunch of large-scale industrial farmers? Once they stopped laughing, I wonder if they starting thinking about the implications of what he was saying. Maybe this guy is for real.

Vilsack's comments certainly jibe with his plans for the new USDA Office for Ecosystem Services and Markets -- an entity that is charged with cataloging the climate impacts of forestry and farming practices. The Christian Science Monitor characterized it thusly:

Syncrude faces fines for duck deaths

OTTAWA — Canadian environmental authorities on Monday charged Syncrude in the death of 500 migrating ducks that landed in its oil sands sewage ponds in western Canada. The waterfowl died after being coated in April 2008 with toxic oil residue from an Alberta mine left behind in the ponds by Syncrude Canada Limited, the world’s […]

In Virginia, Big Coal beats efficiency by one vote

At the beginning of the week, I wrote over at Huffington Post about how the State of Virginia could be poised to take significant action to bolster the economy and help the climate by passing an energy efficiency bill introduced by State Senator Donald McEachin.

Psych!

As reported by Lauren Glickman at the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Democratic Majority Leader Dick Saslaw from the Northern Virginia suburbs cast the tie-breaking vote to keep green jobs out of his state. For Saslaw, Virginia is apparently for unemployment ... and pollution.

Not surprisingly, Saslaw has received more money from Dominion Power, the state's leading burner of coal fired energy, than any other legislator since 2004.

Perhaps if these were normal times, this would be just another story of polluter influence. But in these extraordinary -- and extraordinarily tough -- times, it's something more. Article XI, a great new Virginia blog, reports that the bill would "save Virginians approximately $15 billion on electric bills by the year 2025," creating thousands of jobs. Investing in energy efficiency produces more than two and a half times the number of jobs as investments in coal.

Opposing energy efficiency means killing jobs -- something that Saslaw will have to take home to his constituents -- and everybody in Virginia who was hoping the Democratic leadership would actually stand up for jobs and an end to polluter corruption. You can call Saslaw and let him know how you feel about his vote at 804-698-7535.

ITC to build $12B in wind farm power lines, JCSP study finds $50B savings from wind

Wind power is coming of age as the U.S. becomes the global wind leader and probably the biggest source of new jobs in the energy industry.

ITC Holdings announced Monday plans to build a $10 to $12 billion power transmission network to move 12,000 megawatts of electricity from the Dakotas, Minnesota, and Iowa to the Chicago area.

ITC called the plan, depicted above, the Green Power Express, saying it could:

result in a reduction of up to 34 million metric tons of carbon emissions, which is equivalent to the annual emissions of about seven to nine 600 MW coal plants.

ITC made its announcement the same day a major study, the Joint Coordinated System Plan, was released by the Midwest grid operator and other U.S. regional grid managers was released. It concluded that to increase wind power to 20 percent of electricity production by 2024 (requiring some 230 GW of wind) would require some 15,000 miles of new transmission costing $80 billion. The total cost of the wind would be some $1 trillion.

The WSJ reports this as "New Grid for Renewable Energy Could Be Costly." But in fact the study found that "increasing wind's share to 20 percent of U.S. power production would yield annual net savings of $12 billion annually by 2024 based on wind's low production cost compared to the fossil plants the turbines would replace," as Energy Daily (sub. req'd) explained.

Moreover, JCSP projects that the 20 percent scenario would save 3 billion tons of carbon over the next 16 years, which would generate in 2024 an annual value of some $40 billion a year at carbon prices comparable to that which the European Union has seen over the past year -- and several times that if the price of carbon to reaches levels needed to stabilize at 450 ppm.

One reason I say wind power has come of age is because the announcement and the study don't come from your traditional pro-wind trade groups or think tanks. Far from it.

FCC and FTC need to hold 'clean coal' ads accountable to reality

As viewers of PBS and the major network and cable channels know too well, the onslaught of "clean coal" advertisements over the past year has reached a tipping point. In the face of the actual news headlines, the relentless barrage of television daydreams about coal's zero carbon dioxide emissions and the coal industry's fanciful role in environmental protection and job security seem more like bad reruns from the era of "Father Knows Best" than any hope for a clean energy future.

"Clean" coal? How about a little truth in advertising? Perhaps it's time for the Federal Trade Commission or Federal Communications Commission to hold the coal industry's public relations campaign to acceptable standards.

Don't they watch the news?

In the last month alone, viewers have had to juggle the reality of news reports on toxic coal ash spills in Tennessee and Alabama, coal waste-polluted watersheds in West Virginia and Illinois, mining accidents and coal dust explosions in Kentucky and Wisconsin, mountaintop removal and devastated communities throughout Appalachia, tragic strip mining on Native lands in Arizona, and several state initiatives to halt the construction of carbon dioxide and mercury emission-spewing coal-fired plants. And the state of Montana, like the U.S. Air Force, just shot down proposals for the coal-to-liquid boondoggle.

The news ain't over.

Northern Ireland environment minister bans climate change ads

BELFAST — Northern Ireland’s environment minister came under fire Monday after he banned a climate change ad campaign, saying it was “nonsense” to suggest people could save the world by turning off their lights. Sammy Wilson, a member of the Democratic Unionist Party which shares power with Sinn Fein in the British-ruled province, believes mankind […]

The players: Business, labor, advocates, and the public

Big business It was once accurate to speak of the business lobby in the U.S. as a monolithic and implacable opponent of government action to restrict carbon or disturb the dominance of dirty energy and carbon-intensive manufacturing. That’s no longer quite true. A number of things have changed. For one thing, the country has been […]

Canada loves ducks, fines oil company

"We are protective of our environment, of ducks, of conservation in this country. We have laws. We expect them to be abided by and there will be consequences for people who don't live up to the full extent of the Canadian conservation environmental laws."

-- Canadian Environment Minister Jim Prentice on the effort to fine Syncrude for tar-sands duck deaths

What are the prospects for climate legislation in the House?

I think Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Waxman (D-Calif.) may be making both a strategic and a tactical mistake in pushing to get a climate bill out of committee by Memorial Day. I say this as someone who was delighted that Waxman defeated Dingell for the chairmanship.

Strategically, as an extended must-read analysis in E&E Daily ($ub. req'd, reprinted below) explains:

... in the Energy and Commerce Committee, it is often stated that a legislative victory there foretells success when the bill reaches the entire House. "If you do it in committee, I think you do a huge amount of what you need to do for the floor," said Manik Roy, vice president of federal outreach at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

Obama isn't going to see a climate bill on his desk this year (see here). Even Speaker Pelosi was originally skeptical the House would pass cap-and-trade this year.

Obama certainly isn't going to devote a lot of time and political effort to raising the issue's profile in the next three months -- nor should he.

So why push such an important and difficult vote before the ground has been laid for it, when you will be operating with one hand tied behind your back? At a time when the administration, public, and media are focused squarely on the greatest economic mess since the Great Depression? Even if Waxman succeeds under such circumstances, he may be stuck with a weaker bill than he otherwise could have gotten.

I will explore what I see as Waxman's tactical mistake -- trying to put energy legislation into his climate bill -- in a later post.

Here is the full E&E Daily story: