Climate Climate & Energy

Drifting toward disaster

Eleven years ago, I wrote an article for the Atlantic Monthly with various predictions and warnings on oil and energy technology and climate. Since those subjects remain hot today -- concern over oil prices and peak oil is at a three-decade-high, and Shellenberger and Nordhaus have reignited the technology debate with a variety of historically inaccurate claims about the clean energy R&D message -- and since this is probably the best thing I wrote in the 1990s, I am going to reprint it here. It is a long piece so I will divide it up into several posts.

"MidEast Oil Forever?" (subs. req'd), coauthored by then deputy energy secretary Charles Curtis, became the cover story for the April 1996 issue (click on picture to enlarge -- yes, that is a lightbulb, the sun, and a windmill about to go over the edge of a sea of oil).

The backstory is that the Gingrich Congress had come in with its passionate hatred of all applied energy research, and the Clinton administration was desperately trying to save the entire clean energy budget from being zeroed out. I wrote most of the piece in the summer of 1995 and revised it in January 1996. The title was a warning that the U.S. would be stuck with its dependence on Middle Eastern oil if that happened. Hence the subhead for the article:

Congressional budget-cutters threaten to end America's leadership in new energy technologies that could generate hundreds of thousands of high-wage jobs, reduce damage to the environment, and limit our costly, dangerous dependency on oil from the unstable Persian Gulf region.

Mayors gather in Seattle to discuss climate

Today I’m heading down to the [deep breath] United States Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Summit, taking place in my hometown of Seattle. Around 100 mayors from across the nation will be there, discussing how to green their cities. NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg is giving the keynote today, Al Gore will make a special appearance […]

CPR for the electric car

Project Better Place has a new take on jumpstarting the electrification of transportation: they've raised $200 million (about enough to buy, what, three fuel cell vehicles?) to start building infrastructure for charging and battery exchange stations.

That's just a down payment. If you play Internet Nancy Drew for a sec you will quickly find out that Israel Corp, a major investor, also has a stake in oil refineries, and 45 percent of Chery, the Chinese car company that keeps threatening to build electric cars. These guys are invested in the full value chain, and dollars to donuts they're leveraging much more value from partner companies than the measly $200 million. We are talking about a $6-10 trillion industry, after all, which tends to focus the mind and get people working together.

Do yourself a favor and check out the video. The vision is a transportation system powered by wind and sun. And a software exec (CEO and founder Shai Aggassi comes from SAP) is exactly the right person for the job.

We don't have an energy problem, we have an energy storage problem. When I listen to Agassi talk about developing software to manage the charging strategies of EV's flexible and mobile loads in a way that enhances integration of intermittent resources like solar and wind into the grid, I get a little weak in the knees.

Combine that with REC's announcement that it was building a 1.5 GW fully integrated solar manufacturing plant in Singapore, and the future seems much brighter indeed. Note that 1.5 GW was about the size of the entire world market in 2006.

The combination of cheap solar and millions of big batteries on the grid can mean only good things.

Can urban planners save the earth?

A couple of weeks ago I was in Vancouver, B.C., at a conference where it seemed like everyone was talking about a new book called Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change.

Reviewing dozens of empirical studies, the book's central argument is that urban form is inextricably linked to climate. Low-density sprawl has been a principal contributor to North American climate emissions. And by the same token, smart compact development -- the kind that fosters less driving -- is essential to curbing climate change.

From the executive summary:

Nuclear plants require lots of water in an increasingly dry world

No, I don't mean cost, safety, waste, or proliferation -- though those are all serious problems. I mean the Achilles heel of nuclear power in the context of climate change: water.

Climate change means water shortages in many places and hotter water everywhere. Both are big problems for nukes:

... nuclear power is the most water-hungry of all energy sources, with a single reactor consuming 35-65 million litres of water each day.

The Australians, stuck in a once-in-a-1000-years drought, understandably worry about this a lot:

CBPP launches a climate equity program

You'll be glad to know The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has launched a major climate program whose goals are to ensure that:

• the increased energy prices that are an essential part of climate-change legislation do not drive more households into poverty or make poor households poorer; and
• climate-change legislation generates sufficient revenue both to protect low-income households and to address other needs related to the fight against global warming, so that it does not increase the deficit.

CBPP is a great group. But they need to understand that a central strategy for fighting the impact of higher energy prices on low-income consumers is an aggressive energy efficiency strategy to keep overall bills from rising, which I don't see in their work so far.

Research panel discourages presidential plan for U.S. nuclear-waste reprocessing

A 17-member panel of researchers from the National Academy of Sciences released a report yesterday discouraging President Bush from continuing on his quest to resume U.S. nuclear waste reprocessing. The researchers said the president’s proposed Global Nuclear Energy Partnership plan has not been adequately peer reviewed and relies on unproven technology. Instead, the panel suggested […]

Notable quotable

“I’ve been a Republican my whole life, but I’ll be doggoned if Al Gore isn’t right. Is it fair for you and me — this generation — to pollute for all the generations to come when we’re already seeing the effects — global warming, mercury, particulate matter?” — newly minted environmentalist Sammy Prim

Race to make the Earth look like the Moon

What with drought threatening large sections of the American West and South, perhaps it should not be surprising to see this article from the Chicago Tribune, "Great Lakes key front in water wars; Western, Southern states covet Midwest resource," in which the reporter warns:

With fresh water supplies dwindling in the West and South, the Great Lakes are the natural-resource equivalent of the fat pension fund, and some politicians are eager to raid it. The lakes contain nearly 20 percent of the world's surface fresh water ... Water levels of the Great Lakes are down substantially, and while that may be part of the historic cycle of ups and downs, water managers argue the region must jealously guard what is here

Even New Mexico Governor and Presidential candidate Bill Richardson couldn't resist the temptation to speculate on using the lakes. Fortunately, there is a concerted attempt to protect them:

Eight Great Lakes-area states, from Minnesota to New York, and two Canadian provinces have proposed a regional water compact that would, among other things, strengthen an existing ban on major water diversions outside the Great Lakes Basin, home to 40 million Americans and Canadians

The many ways big money seeks to avoid reducing fossil fuel use

The following is a guest essay from Peter Montague, executive director of the Environmental Research Foundation. —– It now seems clear that the coal and oil industries are not going to allow the United States to curb global warming by making major investments in renewable sources of energy. These fossil fuel corporations simply have too […]