Climate Climate & Energy

Conventional energy vs. renewable energy

This post is by ClimateProgress guest blogger Bill Becker, executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project.

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As all eyes turn toward Texas this week in advance of the Democratic primary, we will see a state that is beginning its transition to a new energy economy. Texas is grappling with a shift the entire nation faces -- and as usual, it's doing it on a big scale.

When it comes to energy and to carbon emissions, Texas is a place of superlatives and contrasts. It has more solar, wind, and biomass resources that any other state; but it's also No. 1 in total carbon emissions.

It is the ancestral home of Big Oil, but it also hosts the world's largest wind farms. It has a very successful renewable energy portfolio standard, but it also has two nuclear power plants in the pipeline to provide power to its rapidly growing population.

A year ago in a watershed deal, a private equity firm working with environmentalists arranged a $45 billion buyout of the state's largest power producer, TXU. As part of the deal, eight of 11 planned new coal-fired power plants were cancelled. However, as many as nine new coal plants remain in the pipeline.

In Texas, we see a contest between conventional and renewable energy resources, and between the past and the future.

Solar photovoltaic cells are quite eco-friendly, says research

Are photovoltaic cells truly easy on the earth when manufacturing is factored in? If the question’s been keeping you up at night, rest easy: According to a solar-cell life-cycle analysis to be published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, they are.

South Fla. power outage

There’s seems to be some confusion out there about exactly what happened in South Florida today, but as far as I can tell, some power lines went out at a substation, which caused a nuclear plant to automatically shut down, which caused power outages for upwards of 3 million people. Nice grid. I liked this […]

Notable quotable

“I have the same feelings about wind as I had about the best oil field I ever found.” — financier and oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens

EU-27 emissions down 8 percent since 1990

The European Environment Agency (EEA) reports:

Total greenhouse gas emissions in the EU-27, excluding emission and removals from land-use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF), decreased by 0.7% between 2004 and 2005 and by 7.9% between 1990 and 2005.

Over the same period, 1990 to 2005, U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions are up an alarming 17 percent (PDF). The EEA report underscores a point I have made repeatedly -- the transportation sector remains the toughest nut to crack:

Notable quotable

“Anybody can talk and beat up coal: They don’t like it; it’s dirty; it does this and this. But I can assure you, they’re not going to turn their lights or their demand for energy off.” — Gov. Joe Manchin of West Virginia

EPA staffers warned Johnson he might have to resign if he denied Cali’s waiver

Stephen Johnson. Lordy. Not only did Stephen Johnson’s staff at the EPA oppose his decision to deny California’s waiver, but they warned him that if he denied the waiver he might have to resign in shame. Boxer’s EPW committee has gotten ahold of some internal memos and briefings from the EPA. To pick just one […]

Exxon will try to convince Supreme Court it’s paid enough for oil spill

On Wednesday, Exxon Mobil Corp. will try to convince the U.S. Supreme Court that it should not have to pay $2.5 billion in punitive damages to Alaskan folk affected by the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. Exxon, which earlier this month posted an annual profit of $40.6 billion, will argue that the $3.4 billion or […]

Climate change myth debunked: scientists did not predict new ice age

Over on his blog, John Fleck dispatches one of the most ridiculous urban legends of climate change: that scientists in the 1970s were predicting that an ice age was impending.

John and his colleagues, Thomas Peterson and William Connolly, point out that, even in the 1970s, most scientists thought that global warming was the dominant problem.

It should also be pointed out that those worried about global cooling did not necessarily dispute the fact that carbon dioxide causes warming. Rather, the global cooling theory was based on the idea the dust and other stuff people were putting into the atmosphere would reduce sunlight by more than enough to overwhelm the heating from carbon dioxide. The net result would be cooling.

There is in fact no credible dissent to the argument that carbon dioxide warms the climate. Even the Dean of Skeptics, Dick Lindzen, admits that (although he predicts less warming than the IPCC).

So, two things to remember:

1. The consensus that an ice age was coming in the 1970s didn't actually exist.
2. The theory that an ice age was coming does not contradict the theory that carbon dioxide warms the climate.

‘Doomsday’ seed vault opens in Arctic, awaits doom

A so-called “doomsday” seed vault opened in the Arctic today that’s designed to store up to 4.5 million seeds as a backup for the world’s food crops (and other seed banks) just in case something ultra-tragic happens. The $9.1 million Svalbard Global Seed Vault was built into the side of a mountain some 620 miles […]