Articles by Joseph Romm

House Ways and Means embraces refundable renewable tax credits

As Kate reported, the House Ways and Means Committee on Friday passed the energy tax portions of the stimulus package, including:

Investment Tax Credit Refundability. For alternative energy property put into service in 2009 and 2010, companies may apply for a cash grant equal to the value of the investment tax credit from the Department of Energy. DOE must make these grant payments within 60 days of receipt of the application and may not in its discretion deny any such applications that qualify for the credit. Companies may apply for the payments through September 30, 2011. The amount of the ITCs equal 30 percent of the base investment amount for solar, winds, and fuel cell property and equal 10 percent for geothermal and micro-turbine property.

Election of ITC over PTC. For property placed in service in 2009 and 2010, alternative energy companies entitled to the Production Tax Credit can elect to receive the Investment Tax Credit instead. This election would allow them to qualify for the refundability provisions of the DOE grant program.

Awesome! (See "Note to Obama, Congress on green stimulus: No to phony clean coal credits, yes to refundable renewable tax credits, Part 1.")

Why exactly does it matter so much that tax credits for renewable projects can be refundable? That was well explained by a recent Washington Post article:

Nature: Antarctica has warmed significantly over past 50 years

The rest of the media is finally catching up to my post from last month.

That's because Nature published the peer-reviewed paper that was first reported at the American Geophysical Union meeting and Nature's own blog (!), "Warming of the Antarctic ice-sheet surface since the 1957 International Geophysical Year" ($ub. req'd, abstract below).

Scientists know the Antarctic ice sheet is losing mass "100 years ahead of schedule."

It is really only the warming of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet that you should worry about (at least for this century) because it's going to disintegrate long before the East Antarctic Ice Sheet does -- since WAIS appears to be melting from underneath (i.e. the water is warming, too), and since, as I wrote in the "high water" part of my book, the WAIS is inherently less stable:

Sue Tierney for deputy, names for under sec., and stuff I leaned at DOE, part 2

The Environmental and Clean Energy Ball may be a party, a once-in-four-years chance to wear my tux, but it is also a source of news about names. Everybody is buzzing over who is going to fill out the organization chart at the Energy Department under Secretary Chu.

Sue Tierney is widely expected to be nominated for deputy (as WaPo first reported here). Dr. Tierney would be a first rate deputy -- and I can say that with some confidence since not only is Sue a colleague and friend, but also my first job at the department in 1993 was special assistant for policy and planning to then Deputy Secretary Bill White (now mayor of Houston).

Deputy is a very demanding job. You are the DOE's chief operating officer. You have to make the trains run on time, and these are big, messy trains -- the nuclear weapons laboratories, the energy labs, the physics labs, and the "cleanup sites" like Hanford, which are the toxic legacy of the U.S. nuclear weapons program. If the secretary doesn't have prior experience as part of a senior leadership team managing a federal agency, the COO should. Dr. Tierney was assistant secretary of policy at DOE when I worked there.

Tierney has a unique set of qualifications at a time when we must redesign our entire energy system, change utility regulations to foster energy efficiency, and quickly site tens (and then hundreds) of gigawatts of renewable energy, along with a new, smart power grid to enable both the efficiency and the renewables (and plug-in hybrids):

Air Force to announce the fate of a synthetic fuel plant

President Barack Obama gave a powerful call to action on energy and climate, and he has given the order to halt Bush's final rules. But if he really wants to send a quick, strong signal that he intends to preserve a livable climate, he should intervene immediately to stop the Pentagon's toxic dalliance with liquid coal.

As reported by Air Force Times on Tuesday:

The future of a synthetic fuel plant that would power fighters and cargo planes with processed coal will be announced this week.

The Air Force decided on Friday whether to move ahead with a plan to build a synthetic fuel plant at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont.

Due to the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and the inauguration, Air Force spokesman Gary Strasburg said the decision will not be released until Wednesday.

(Note: I can't find any notice of this decision on Google News or Montana newspapers.)

UPDATE: My sources say the decision "has been delayed."

This is simply a terrible idea (see here), especially since clean alternatives are on the way "Boeing: Jet biofuel in three years").

Obama said in his powerful inaugural address: "we will work tirelessly to ... roll back the specter of a warming planet." That can't be done running your Air Force on liquid coal: