Articles by Sean Casten

A Pollan-esque energy objective in six words … and then some

Perhaps the single most important thing we can do to drive up our energy efficiency, lower energy costs, and bolster the overall reliability of our energy infrastructure is to overhaul our electric sector's regulatory model to move generation away from big, remote plants and toward local generation.

From solar to CHP, we have a panoply of technologies, fuels, and companies who would participate in such a shift. Less understood is that our regulatory model creates obstacles to all of these options, unwittingly causing us to burn too much fossil fuel and pay too much for energy.

Back in January, David challenged us all to follow Michael Pollan's lead and summarize our objectives in seven words or less. Here's mine:

Generate energy locally. Recycle whenever possible.

Like Pollan, it takes a book to explain the detail underlying that summary. This particular explanation is limited to a blog post below the fold.

A REDtime story

Recycled Energy Development is in The Atlantic this month, as a part of a larger story by Lisa Margonelli about the potential for waste energy recycling at U.S. industrials.

Americans for Balanced Energy Choices gets new name, t-shirts

ABEC has re-branded themselves the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. See here for an interview with President Stephen Miller, who does an admirably media-savvy job of laying out their talking points and PR strategy.

His key points:

1. "If we push too hard, too fast, we will force fuel switching away from coal."
2. "The president and the congress have a role to play to make sure the public sector invests in coal-fired power."
3. We've spent a lot of money on t-shirts, trucks, and advertising to affect the primary campaign, and it's working.

In other words: We need to burn more coal. We need taxpayers to pay for the cost of that coal. And we've got enough money to make sure it happens.

Here's the creepy new 60-second ad they're running nationwide:

Greenpeace and FOE call Climate Security Act too limited; too slow

It's time to call the Lieberman-Warner love train back to the station. This is not to say that we don't urgently need to immediately start reducing atmospheric GHG concentrations and get policies in place that price carbon. It is instead simply the observation that as L-W morphs into ever greater complexity, it becomes an ever-worse way to meet that goal. Like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, I rather doubt that L-W will go anywhere close to far enough to cure AGW. But I am quite certain that the side effects of this purported cure are worse than the disease.

Herewith, a few rather simple distinctions to prove the point. Consider each of the following either/or propositions, and ask yourself which would be a hallmark of good GHG policy.

(Hint 1: the right answer is always A. Hint 2: the Lieberman-Warner answer is always B.)