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Is CARB up to its old tricks?

The following post is by Earl Killian, guest blogger at Climate Progress.

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If you've seen the movie Who Killed the Electric Car? (which is ranked No. 8 on Netflix in documentary rentals), then you know the EV story up to 2003. What you might not know is that it looks like one of the players in the movie, the California Air Resources Board, is up to no good again.

In killing Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) the first time, they put off progress on this front for a decade. Now they are preparing, at their March 27 meeting, to kill BEVs a second time and probably waste another decade. We don't have another decade. In Part 2 you will find information on what you can do to let CARB know what you think.

This post provides background on the CARB's sorry zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) legacy. For background on BEVs, PHEVs (plug-in hybrid EVs), and FCVs (fuel cell vehicles) see Joe's January post on plug-in hybrids and electric cars. The major automakers are likely to produce plug-in hybrids on their own, but not ZEVs, and yet eventually we want ZEVs to be a part of the fleet to get the greenhouse gas reduction necessary in 2050.

Back in 1990, to help fix chronically unhealthy air in California cities, CARB required that 2 percent of California new vehicle sales have zero emissions by 1998. Zero Emission Vehicles (ZEVs) were then supposed to reach 3 percent by 2001, and 10 percent by 2003, and it was presumed that ZEV meant BEV. In 1996, under automaker pressure, CARB removed the 2 percent and 3 percent requirements but left the 10 percent goal in place. It also allowed low emission vehicles (misleadingly called Partial ZEVs or PZEVs) to substitute for some ZEVs.

In 2001 they tinkered again and added a new category, Advanced Technology (AT) PZEVs, which are essentially hybrids. They also changed the 10 percent goal to 2 percent ZEVs, 2 percent AT PZEVs, and 6 percent PZEVs. The program began to resemble a Rube Goldberg contraption at this point, with gold, silver, and bronze categories. The program's complexity has continued to grow since.

Alaska senators introduce legislation to open Arctic Refuge to drilling

Photo: Madhav Pai The push to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is back on. Alaska Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Ted Stevens have introduced legislation that would allow drilling in the Refuge if oil should hit $125 a barrel for five straight days. (For those keeping track at home, oil prices Thursday hit a […]

Farmers and processors organize against genetic contamination

Here in the United States, upwards of 70 percent of corn and 90 percent of soy are genetically modified. Given that corn and soy end up in just about everything — livestock rations (and thus meat, milk, and eggs), nearly all processed foods, and even our gas tanks, avoiding genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is tricky. […]

Florida Power & Light on wind power

Florida Power & Light is fairly notorious as a utility that embraces competition so long as it doesn't happen in their service territory. On the regulatory side, they have worked pretty hard to make sure that no one can build power in their state except themselves. But on the unregulated side, their sister company FPL Energy has been one of the leading installers of wind turbines. (Not coincidentally, you will find that they tend not to do projects anywhere near Florida. Mind the hand that feeds you ... )

Needless to say, there are some conflicts there. Which have recently come back to bite them.

Legalizing hemp would help environment and economy, says report

The U.S. war on non-smokable hemp hurts the environment and the economy, according to a new report from the free-market-promoting Reason Foundation. To wit: Hemp fiber requires six times less manufacturing energy on average than polyester fiber, and requires less pesticides and water than cotton. Hemp can be used to make paper, fiberglass, and cement, […]

More on B.C.’s carbon tax shift

On February 19, one of my colleagues at Sightline applauded British Columbia's new carbon tax shift. I've now had time to digest the plan. It's even better than we said, and the province could tweak it to make it better still.

This policy is the purest instance of a tax shift that I've ever seen. It's an exceptionally faithful implementation of tax shifting -- a policy innovation Sightline has been promoting since 1994 and especially since our 1998 book. (A small brag: Gordon Campbell read the book that year and told me he was going to shift taxes in his second term as premier. I didn't hold my breath, but now he has delivered.) The carbon tax shift (as opposed to the larger government budget it's wrapped in) is almost entirely untarnished by handouts to special interests. It is built on four principles:

Everything you could possibly want to know about batteries

The Economist has published a very readable history and explanation of batteries, especially ones suitable for all electric cars, called "In search of the perfect battery." In particular, it has a very extensive discussion of lithium-ion batteries, which will almost certainly be the core battery for most electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids. I highly recommend the piece, since electricity is the transportation fuel of the near- and far-future.

(h/t to my brother Dave for sending this to me.)

The history of the ‘safety valve’ debate

The new publication from E&E News, ClimateWire, ($ub. req'd), has a long article on the "safety valve" debate and its history. I will reprint it in its entirety below because

1. The issue is important and not going away.
2. It is the most thorough piece I've seen.
3. I was interviewed at length for it.
4. One of my quotes they used is not something I would have said in a short interview.

First, some background: I have blogged repeatedly on why a safety valve is a bad idea. However, the reporter called me because he said that a number of people in the Clinton administration said I was a key player in the discussions leading up to Kyoto, in which the administration ultimately rejected a safety valve (or price ceiling on carbon emissions permits).

The No. 1 highlight of my time in the administration was at the October 6, 1997, "White House Conference on Climate Change," during my brief tenure as acting assistant secretary of energy for energy efficiency and renewable energy. At 12:40 p.m. [I kept the ticket and wrote the time and the quote on the back], the president said, "I'm convinced the people in my Energy Department labs are absolutely right." He was talking about the 5-Lab study that I oversaw, which found that the United States could return to 1990 levels of carbon dioxide emissions by 2010 without raising the nation's overall energy bill -- if we had an aggressive technology deployment effort.

Rather than me giving a solipsistic explanation of what happened, you can read an account by Art Rosenfeld (the first article, his autobiography), now California energy commissioner, then science adviser to the assistant secretary. Or not.

I was certainly proud of my role in the administration. Economic agencies like the Treasury Department and Council of Economic Advisers rarely lose policy debates. But they did this time. That said, I was hardly the main reason they lost.

In fact, as I recall, President Clinton explained at the Georgetown conference that the main reason he didn't believe his economic agencies' gloomy predictions for the economic impact of Kyoto was this: They had made similarly gloomy predictions about the impact of his balanced budget bill, which, instead of causing an economic slowdown as predicted, created millions of jobs.

That said, the subsequent incident described in the ClimateWire article is the No. 2 highlight of my time in the administration, although I foolishly didn't keep the piece of paper. Anyway, here is the article (for ease of reading, I won't bother indenting it):

E.U. likely to cut subsidies for farmers

With crop prices through the roof and scientific concerns being raised about the greenness of biofuels, various European countries have cut back tax breaks and subsidies for farmers — and now the European Union as a whole is planning to follow suit.

The SOZEV/train combo commute

Pete has the coolest-looking SOZEV (Single-Occupant Zero-Carbon Emission Vehicle) in Seattle. (Click the photo to the right for a larger view.) It has turned a sweat-inducing, 45-minute slog up a killer hill into a comfortable 10-minute cruise. He rides to the Sounder commuter train station from his house and then from downtown to his office east of Seattle. Surfing the net while commuting by train is a concept that appeals to me. I wonder how well the free wi-fi concept is actually working out ...

Pete said he would let me test-ride it, so I jumped at the chance and met him downtown. A hybrid bike's top speed, like its weight, is not a very relevant indicator of overall performance. This one can go a lot faster than it should, but I suppose that's true for every motorcycle and car in the world as well. The windscreen (which reminds me of the canopy on an F-16) makes it a little too aerodynamically clean, especially when going downhill.

Some bike seats can be, ah, "sucky for your sex organs," but this one feels like you're sitting in a BarcaLounger, and a laptop fits nicely behind it. If there were such things as protected bike lanes, we would all be riding rigs similar to this, replete with over-the-head fairings, turn signals, and electrically heated clothing. Entrepreneurs have not realized it yet, but with that much battery power, all kinds of things become feasible. Heated clothing could keep you warm and toasty in the coldest weather, negating the need to bundle up for the start of a ride and strip down toward the end of it. Turn signals would negate the need to take a hand off your brakes to signal (as cars race toward you from behind). With this much power, you can also light a bike up like a Christmas tree.