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Push continues for more green infrastructure funding in the economic-stimulus package

Senate Democrats on Sunday convinced President-elect Barack Obama to add more money for clean-energy tax credits to his economic-stimulus plan, doubling available funds to at least $20 billion.

Horse-trading is sure to continue as the Obama team and congressional leaders try to agree on what should be included in a package that could cost more than $775 billion. The initial Obama plan didn't include details on how much would go toward infrastructure and didn't specifically mention mass-transit funding, though it called for doubling the production of renewable energy and retrofitting the majority of federal buildings. Some enviros and transit advocates are concerned that the stimulus plan could put massive amounts of money into traditional infrastructure without taking into account the long-term environmental impacts.

And in his Saturday radio/YouTube address, Obama said the plan would create nearly half a million jobs through clean energy investments, including doubling the amount of renenwable energy used in the country and retrofitting the majority of federal buildings. "These made-in-America jobs building solar panels and wind turbines, developing fuel-efficient cars and new energy technologies pay well, and they can’t be outsourced," said Obama (who still hasn't explained exactly why wind turbines and solar panels can't be constructed elsewhere).

More evidence that burden sharing is the same up and down stream

We can auction carbon permits or levy carbon fees/taxes upstream (at the mine mouth or well head, or on import or refining) or downstream, where fuel is actually burned. The main argument for levying downstream is that it will distribute the burden of who pays differently than levying upstream, because the fossil fuel industry won't be able to pass all of the fee or tax along. Most other arguments for downstream emissions pricing depend on that as a premise.

In my last post I pointed out that a gasoline tax, which is levied about as far upstream as possible, still ends up with about half the cost pushed back (PDF) to the producers. Since that thread has grown very long, I want to point out that general economic theory holds that where a consumption tax is levied generally does not affect tax incidence. To translate that from economic jargon: even if the store writes the check to the government, the customer still pays a lot of the cost. If the customer had to write the check to the government, the store would have to lower prices to make up for some (but not all) of the payment by the customer.

Green as in money

Wow -- somebody spent a lot of time taking notes at Grist, then found some deep, deep pockets and spent a lot of money putting up a slick corporate environmentalism-lite site called "Mother Nature Network."

It's a gagger.

The only blessing is that, given the cost structure required to keep all those beautiful people going, it's either going to be a vanity enterprise (like the Washington Times) or short-lived.

Florida PSC votes to establish a state renewable portfolio standard

My colleague Gwen Rose has spent a large part of the last two years working -- with a coalition of allies -- on a solar program for Florida. One would think solar in the sunshine state would be an easy sell, but it's been a rather tough slog.

Which is why we are pleased to report some good news. On Friday night, the Florida Public Service Commission voted unanimously to support a 20% by 2020 renewable portfolio standard.

We anticipate the program would establish about $300 million a year for solar. That's a big deal.

The fight now moves to the legislature, but for the moment, congrats to the many people who worked long and hard to put the sun in the sunshine state.

Green mideast peace

Cool video from Current about a nonprofit in Israel that brings kids together across borders to work on water problems:

Required reading for novice climate economists

Whether it's Pacific Northwest flooding or the other "strange" weather phenomena we've been seeing in the U.S. and across the globe, the present-day risks of a changing climate are real and threatening -- to say nothing about the future risks.

But the current economic downturn often drowns out calls for major spending to lower emissions or otherwise address climate change. Still, the reality is that the two -- economic and environmental revitalization -- can and should go hand in hand.

A great introduction to why is available from Frank Ackerman in Dollars & Sense magazine. "Climate Economics in Four Easy Pieces" doesn't even need five full pages of English to make a strong case for action that stands up to climate change deniers.

Another rate increase in the name of cheap coal

Duke Energy just got approval to raise rates 18 percent to cover the continued rising price tag for its 630-MW planned coal plant in southwestern Indiana.

The new price tag? $2.35 billion, or $3,730/kW.

By my highly unscientific but quixotically regular analysis, that's a new record, just topping AEP's $3,700/kW proposed facility in Virginia. Way to go, Duke!

One note: This plant will not sequester its CO2, and $2.35 billion does not represent the full cost being borne by Indiana ratepayers:

On Wednesday, the commission also approved Duke Energy's $17 million plan to study the plant's potential to capture a portion of its carbon dioxide emissions as part of the company's proposal to possibly store the gas permanently deep underground.

So not only is it expensive, but it's also environmentally dangerous. But if we throw a few million ratepayer dollars at "studying" CO2 sequestration, maybe we can put a nice report together showing that someday in the future, it will only be expensive.

This apparently was insufficient to appease the environmental community:

Environmental and government watchdog groups oppose the plant and have sued to try to halt it, calling the project a huge waste of money that would be better spent on renewable energy such as wind farms. They also warn that its price tag could go even higher if Congress acts to impose caps on carbon dioxide emissions linked to global warming.

Crazy hippies. When will they learn? We need to burn more coal and raise power prices because coal is cheap. Why is that so hard to understand?

ReadyMade: Depression posters for today

ReadyMade asked a group of graphic designers to "reimagine the populist poster art of the first Great Depression." The results are cool, and a couple of them are greenish, like this one from Nick Dewar:

So much for 'clean coal'

Originally posted at the Wonk Room.

Before Thursday's Senate hearing on the devastating Tennessee coal plant billion-gallon ash spill, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) demolished the "clean coal" myth. Alexander told Knoxville's WVLT-TV:

Coal is a dirty business.

Watch it:

China to increase coal production 30 percent by 2015

The Canberra Times/AFP has the alarming news:

China is aiming to increase its coal production by about 30 per cent by 2015 to meet its energy needs, the Government has announced, in a move likely to fuel concerns over global warming.

(Note to Canberra Times: Some statements are so obvious you can skip the journalistic hedging.)

Land and Resources Ministry chief planner Hu Cunzhi said the Government planned to increase annual output to more than 3.3 billion tonnes by 2015.

That is up from the 2.54 billion tonnes produced in 2007, according to the ministry.

In short, from 2007 to 2015, China will increase its coal production by an amount equal to two-thirds of the entire coal consumption of the United States -- an amount that surpasses all of the coal consumed today in Europe, Eurasia, the Middle East, Africa, and Central and South America.

Such is the legacy of eight years of the Bush administration blocking all national and international action on climate change, and indeed actively working to undermine international negotiations by creating a parallel do-nothing track for countries like China. As Chinese officials have told me, we gave them the cover to accelerate emissions growth.

Some might claim a different president would never have been able to get China on a different path. But if Al Gore had been elected picked by the Supreme Court in 2000, I assert that China would not be planning for its 2015 coal production to be triple that of current U.S. coal production.

Changing China's rapacious coal plans will arguably be Obama's single greatest challenge in terms of preserving a livable climate and thus the health and well-being of future generations and thus any chance at a positive legacy for his presidency.

The story continues: