Climate Climate & Energy

Skeptical climate-change documentary found unfair, but not misleading

A British documentary that declared climate change to be a willful and conspiratorial hoax broke impartiality rules and misrepresented the views of some participants, British broadcasting regulator Ofcom said Monday. The not-so-subtly named The Great Global Warming Swindle, which aired on Britain’s Channel 4 in March 2007, said at one point in its narration, “Everywhere, […]

Kentucky to build new coal-to-liquids plant

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

Kentucky has selected a site to build a $4 billion coal-to-liquids plant in Pike County that would produce 50,000 barrels of liquid coal a day. According to Kentucky's Lexington Herald-Leader:

... The county would use federal and state grant money to put the basic infrastructure in place, including water and sewer, and the company chosen to operate the facility would pay for the rest.

County officials have not yet secured funding, but Ruther­ford said he has received support from Gov. Steve Beshear, as well as several others, including state Rep. Rocky Adkins, D-Sandy Hook.

Joe has written often about the climate dangers of coal-to-liquids, and recently about the health dangers of living near coal plants. There are also other consequences.

An Op-Ed in the Lexington Herald-Leader serves as a stark reminder that coal will never be clean. Robert Richardson, a former coal miner, writes passionately about the death of Kentucky's streams under the onslaught from mountain-top removal. On revisiting a favorite spot, he writes:

Forget a carbon cap; try guilt instead!

This is quite possibly the most idiotic argument I've ever heard against cap-and-trade. Why is it bad?

By turning carbon emissions into commodities that can be bought and sold, cap-and-trade policies could remove the stigma from producing such emissions ... the purchase of the right to emit greenhouse gases would likely reduce any stigma associated with doing so. Emission levels, consequently, could rise.

Oh, lordy, that's a good one. But that's from an op-ed in yesterday's Christian Science Monitor written by Justin Danhof from The National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative D.C. think-tank.

Could he be right? Could it be that the only thing standing between us and a climate crisis is stigma? We need more guilt!

Time to stop using the phrase ‘renewable energy’

This is the first in an occasional series on reframing the energy and climate debate. I welcome all ideas on how we can improve our language in what is now the central front in the war to protect the health and well-being of American families and all future generations.

The phrase "renewable energy" is often used by the media and conservatives to give lip service to clean energy sources -- by lumping them all together in order to trivialize them or diminish their individual potential. For instance, the "bunch of bland old guys" had just one bullet for renewables (and one for efficiency), thereby making them equivalent to expanded domestic oil and gas production, expanded nuclear production, and "clean coal."

Progressives, I think, should stop using the phrase "renewable energy" entirely. It is lazy and fits into the conservative frame of renewable energy sources as individually insignificant. We should go out of our way to specify them, since several of them have come of age.

We can do more than he calls for, but I would settle for Gore’s objective

Everyone is talking about Gore's proposal to decarbonize electricity over the course of 10 years.

Without considering transmission and storage losses, Gore's estimate of $1.5 to 3 trillion would require capital costs of under 37 to 74 cents per annual kWh. Taking those losses into consideration, cost would have to be more in the 28 to 56 cents per kWh range. (Note again these are not cost per watt of capacity. These are costs per annual kWh. They are levelized costs translated into capital numbers.) Jon Rynn and I have a worksheet in process on costs to 95 percent decarbonize economy, rather than 100 percent decarbonizing the grid. But it does include 99 percent decarbonizing the Grid, including a 30 percent redundancy to handle annual variations. The bottom price with the most aggressive improvements we looked at came to 66 cents per annual kWh. That comes out to $3.54 trillion, about $540 billion more than Gore budgets. But because biomass has proven so devastating ecologically, and so disastrous to the poor we assume very little use of biomass. Also we phase out nuclear as well as fossil fuels, something I'm pretty sure Gore does not. More nuclear and biomass not only reduce the amount electricity that needs to be generated, but it also reduces the need for storage losses. So Gore's plan does pencil out at the high end with 100 percent fossil-fuel free electricity at under $3 trillion.

If you follow our plan you would probably see the grid more like 90 percent decarbonized in first 10 years. But you would also see 85 percent of truck freight shifted to mostly electrified trains, construction of light rail, and massive reductions of emissions in residences, commercial buildings, and industrial use. So we reduce emissions by more than Gore's proposal, and reduce oil use significantly too, something Gore's plan would not do. So not only is Gore's plan feasible over a 10 year period, much greater reductions are feasible than Gore calls for over a 10 year period. Gore remains, as he as always has been, a mainstream centrist. That so much of the environmental community and netroots chooses to back away from it as "almost feasible" or "a moonshot," that is, as too radical, says something about their timidity.

Progressives discover there is no coherent energy movement to take advantage of this moment

I talked with lots of people inside and outside the green movement at Netroots Nation, and one theme arose again and again. Everyone agrees that the energy issue is more salient every day, in virtually every area of politics (economy, foreign policy, etc.). Lots of people are now being pushed to address it. They’re looking […]

Feds note electric rate increases and high construction costs for nuclear and coal

An interesting new report [PDF] from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission seeks to explain why electric prices are currently increasing so dramatically.

They lay most of the blame on rising fuel costs and rising commodity costs (copper, steel, etc.), which is certainly contributory, but in my opinion deceptive, since it suggests that -- but for commodity volatility -- things could be hunky-dory again. This implicitly diminishes the fact that we're entering a build-cycle in the power fleet, and thus fails to understand all the chickens now coming home to roost in the power sector.

That said, it still makes for an interesting read -- even if one disagrees with the causes. The reality of rising power prices and even higher prices on forward markets is something that we must understand -- and for which we must start thinking through the consequences.

A big addition to the Western Climate Initiative

Ontario officially joins the Western Climate Initiative as a full partner. Sweet.

Some Americans may not fully realize the significance of this. So for my fellow Yankees (and with apologies to readers north of the border) ... Ontario is the California of Canada in the sense that it has more people and economic activity than any other province. On the other hand, Ontario is the Michigan of Canada in the sense that it has a huge auto manufacturing base. And yet Ontario is also the New York of Canada in the sense that it is the seat of the country's biggest city, major banks, and cultural headquarters. And finally, Ontario is the Washington, D.C. of Canada in the sense that it is home to the nation's capitol.

So it's a big deal.

Ontario adds nearly 12.9 million people to the Western Climate Initiative. In combination with British Columbia, Manitoba, and Quebec -- already members of WCI -- nearly 80 percent of Canada is now under a hard carbon cap. In political terms, this means that prime minister Stephen Harper and the province of Alberta (the Texas of Canada) will now have to go off and play by themselves. It's a giant poke in the eye to Canada's lax federal leadership on climate change.

And it's terrific news for the WCI states too. Ontario has a GDP comparable to the combined economies of Washington, Oregon, Montana, and Utah. And it means that the WCI is now home to nearly 85 million North Americans.

Bloggers weigh Gore’s plan in advance of ‘Meet the Press’

Liberals love Gore's gall. Conservatives hate that he drove a gas-guzzler to the big speech. Politicians grumble over his timing. Climate policy wonks and science geeks admire the inititive, but want something a little more ... feasible ... say, 50 to 90 percent renewable electricity by 2020 with a little natural gas for good measure?

Across the blogosphere, however, certain questions about Gore's plan remain unanswered. What practical measures will we take to get to zero emission electricity in 10 years? Who will lead the charge? From where will the requisite funds come to finance this energy operation? Will Tom Brokaw grill Gore on "Meet the Press" this Sunday? Or will the Goracle leave the details to those in the political trenches and dodge the pragmatic bullet?

The remaining voices:

Ontario joins up with Western carbon cutters

Ontario has joined the Western Climate Initiative, a regional carbon-trading agreement with a goal of cutting greenhouse-gas emissions 15 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. The province joins seven U.S. states (Arizona, California, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, and Washington) and three Canadian counterparts (British Columbia, Manitoba, and Quebec). For those folks not up on […]