Climate Politics

Confirmation hearing for Obama's EPA pick kicks off

Lisa Jackson, President-elect Obama's nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency, is appearing this morning before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee for her confirmation hearing. Jackson, 46, has been the commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection since Feb. 2006.

While she's expected to get a mostly warm reception from senators -- even climate skeptic James Inhofe (Okla.) has had nice things to say about her -- it's also likely that contentious issues like perchlorate and criticisms about Jackson from some New Jersey environmentalists will be raised.

Nancy Sutley, the nominee to head the Council on Environmental Quality, will also appear before the committee this morning, following Jackson.

Here are some key excerpts from Jackson's prepared opening remarks pertaining to her plans for the U.S. EPA:

Science must be the backbone of what EPA does. The environmental and public health laws Congress has enacted direct the EPA administrator to base decisions on the best available science. EPA's addressing of scientific decisions should reflect the expert judgment of the agency's career scientists and independent advisors.

If I am confirmed, I will administer with science as my guide. I understand that the laws leave room for policy-makers to make policy judgments. But if I am confirmed, political appointees will not compromise the integrity of EPA's technical experts to advance particular regulatory outcomes.

And here's her take on environment vs. economic development:

The president-elect strongly believes responsible stewardship of our air and water can live side-by-side with robust economic growth. Done properly, these goals can and should reinforce each other.

The president-elect's environmental initiatives are highlighted by five key objectives: reducing greenhouse-gas emissions; reducing other air pollutants; addressing toxic chemicals; cleaning up hazardous-waste sites; and protecting water. These five problems are tough, but so is our resolve to conquer them.

What Obama's picks signal for urban policy

Who are President Obama's key urban policy advisers? What do his pickes for Housing and Urban Development and Transportation say about an Obama urban policy?

No to phony clean coal credits, yes to refundable, renewable tax credits

The green stimulus is beginning to take shape with mostly good stuff in the stocking, except one big lump of coal.

The package is getting bigger -- no surprise. The Washington Post writes:

Congressional leaders and Obama advisers are looking at including as much as $25 billion of energy tax credits in the economic stimulus package in an effort to bolster renewable energy projects, fuel-efficient cars and biodiesel production, said sources familiar with the negotiations ...

The main elements under consideration include a two-year, $8.6 billion extension of the production tax credit [PTC] for renewable energy, an item that favors wind power projects. Obama advisers are considering a proposal from the wind and solar industry that would make those credits refundable or count them against past taxes because many financial firms that provided capital for those projects no longer have taxable income and can't use the credits.

I understand why only a two-year PTC extension is being floated from a narrow stimulus perspective, but seriously, people, it's time for a much longer extension to give the industry firmer ground. The solar investment tax credit got an eight-year extension last year! Is there any possibility that an Obama administration with a Democratic Congress won't eventually extend the PTC that long? So don't play games with the industry. The idea of making the credits refundable is an important one I will elaborate on in part 2.

The bill could also include tax credits for service stations that install high-ethanol-content fuel pumps, a $7,500 tax credit for plug-in vehicles, an extension of the biodiesel credit, and one for coal-fired power plants that capture more than half of their carbon emissions or that could be retrofitted to do so later. There could also be clean-energy credits for rural cooperatives.

Apparently someone missed the memo that plug-ins already have a $7,500 tax credit -- which in any case won't be doing much stimulating since there aren't any plug-ins to stimulate!

Memo to Dems: Please, please, please, do not give a tax credit to any coal-fired plants "that could be retrofitted" for capturing carbon. So-called "capture ready" coal plants are nothing but snake oil, just like clean coal itself.

Congress does not want to be in the business of trying to pass regulations to determine how many angels are dancing on the head of a pin whether it might be easier or harder for some new climate-destroying coal plant to some day integrate carbon capture. Either a new coal plant captures and permanently sequesters the vast majority (not just half) of its carbon emissions now, or it should not be permitted in the first place. Stop trying to fool the public into thinking we can risk building any more new coal plants with unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions. We cannot.

One of the most exciting stimulus proposals is aimed at boosting clean-energy financing during this credit crunch:

Landrieu serves up monologue on oil during DOE confirmation hearing

Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu (D) made two of the more aggressively pro-drilling arguments during Tuesday's confirmation hearing for Energy Secretary-nominee Steven Chu. Neither was totally related to Chu's testimony, but both were, er, colorful.

First, Landrieu disputed Chu's citation of the fact that the United States contains only three percent of the world's oil supply, arguing that she believes there is more oil available domestically:

I listened with interest to your comments to Senator Murkowski about the known inventory in the United States of oil and gas and just wanted to point out that the emphasis is on the word known because we believe, many of us, that there are great resources that have yet to be discovered based on the fact that there's never been a comprehensive technology-driven inventory taken of oil and gas resources.

So one of the things that our chairman has been leading the effort and to some degree of success with my support and others, has been to push the United States government on behalf of the taxpayers who might be interested to actually know how much oil and gas they have. And so with so much off limit in the past and with limited access to just look, I would just urge you to be careful about the comment about four percent. It is true. We have four percent of the known reserves, but there is great evidence to suggest that there are lots of reserves that are unknown.

Her second remark pertained to pirates:

EPA nominee to be asked about regulating perchlorate in drinking water

This story originally appeared on ProPublica.org. It was written by Joaquin Sapien.

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In the latest volley of a years-long battle involving the Environmental Protection Agency, the military and the White House, the EPA announced last week that it will delay its decision on whether to set a drinking water standard for perchlorate, a chemical in rocket fuel that has been found at harmful levels in drinking water across the country. The announcement that the EPA won't act until it receives advice from the National Academy of Sciences puts the contentious decision onto the already-heavy regulatory agenda awaiting Lisa Jackson, President-elect Barack Obama's pick to head the EPA.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, chair of the Environment and Public Works committee, has promised to raise the issue of perchlorate at Jackson's confirmation hearing tomorrow. Boxer has called the EPA's decision "to walk away from this problem and shrug off this danger...immoral."

The EPA estimates that as many as 16.6 million Americans are exposed to unsafe levels of perchlorate, which studies link to thyroid damage that can slow brain development in children.

Jackson, former head of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, is no stranger to the perchlorate controversy. New Jersey was urged to regulate [PDF] the chemical in October 2005 by a panel of state scientists, environmental activists and industry leaders. But three years later, the DEP still hasn't completed a draft of the rule.

The panel made its recommendation after a statewide study revealed that unsafe levels of perchlorate had been found in six of 123 public water systems the state sampled in 2004. Each of those water systems serves more than 10,000 people [ PDF, p. 41].

Jackson's predecessor, Bradley Campbell, promised to propose a perchlorate standard for drinking water by Jan. 31, 2006. But when Jackson moved from assistant commissioner to commissioner in February 2006, that deadline had passed. Standards were still being discussed last month, when Jackson left the DEP to become chief of staff for New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine.

New Jersey DEP spokeswoman Elaine Makatura said the three years it has taken the DEP to develop a perchlorate regulation is not "atypical" and that the rule is now being reviewed by DEP's legal department and by the state's attorney general.

Renewable energy industries lobby for more flexible tax credits

Renewable energy advocates are enthused by Barack Obama's call to double the production of clean, domestic energy and create three million jobs in the sector, but they don't think he'll be able to pull it off unless he backs two changes to the tax code -- changes they say will help spur millions more jobs in the wind and solar industries.

Right now, the tax credits for solar and wind energy (yes, the much-beleaguered credits that were finally slipped into the October bailout of the financial markets) are not refundable -- that is to say, a producer only gets the money back if it makes a profit. Problem is, given the economic downturn, not many renewable energy companies are making money. That means the tax credits aren't helping them. The solar and wind industries would like the renewable tax credits to become refundable, which would offer rebates even to companies that aren't making money.

Obama has said his stimulus plan would create nearly half a million jobs through clean energy investments, but neither the investors nor the lenders who would normally provide the upfront funding for start-up renewable projects are feeling confident enough to do so right now. It also doesn't help that some major financial backers of renewable projects -- like Lehman Brothers -- have gone under in recent months.

"Lehman goes away, and many other banks have suffered major losses because of the sub-prime crisis, and because they're suffering these huge losses they don't have much tax liability," Chris O'Brien, head of market development and government relations for North America at the Swiss company Oerlikon Solar, told Grist. "They don't need more losses, so their appetite for investing in solar projects has gone way down at a point in time where the interest in and the need for tax equity has gone way up."

Another idea floating around the Hill is for the stimulus plan to put $10 billion into a "National Clean Energy Lending Authority" that could lend to renewable projects and help support homeowners who want to retrofit. Reps. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.) wrote a letter to Obama this week asking him to support something like this. "The current financial crisis has not only thrown us into recession, it has significantly derailed or killed off virtually every alternative energy project in the pipeline, making renewable energy yet another victim of the economic fallout," they wrote.

Senators prod DOE pick Chu for his thoughts on various energy sources

Barack Obama's pick to head the Energy Department, Steven Chu, got his turn in the confirmation spotlight this morning, with senators asking him to clarify some of his previous statements on contentious energy issues like coal and nuclear power.

The hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee was, for the most part, amiable, with the lawmakers warmly welcoming the Nobel Laureate physicist. But when the subject turned to Chu's previous assertion that "Coal is my worst nightmare," some coal-state senators got a little touchy. Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) inquired directly about the remark that's been "ricocheting around the internet," while others asked more in-depth questions about what coal-related policies Chu supports.

By equating coal to a nightmare, Chu said his point was, "If the world continues to use coal the way we are using it today, and the world -- I mean in particular not only the United States but China, India and Russia -- then it is a pretty bad dream." He continued, "That is to say in China, for example, they have not yet begun to even trap the sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxides. There's mercury. There's particulate matter, as well as carbon dioxide."

If anything, though, Chu's remarks at the hearing likely eased the lawmakers' fears, as he asserted that nuclear and coal will remain crucial components in the energy mix. On coal, Chu had previously said, "It's not guaranteed that we have a solution for coal" -- meaning that there is currently no proven technology to offset the C02 emissions resulting from burning coal. In today's hearing, he softened, saying he's "very hopeful" that carbon capture and sequester (CCS) technology is possible on a commercial scale. "I am optimistic we can figure out how to use those resources in a clean way. I'm very hopeful that this will occur and I think that we will be using that great natural resource."

Father of 'deep ecology' dies at 96

OSLO — Norway’s perhaps most famous philosopher Arne Naess, who invented the concept of “deep ecology,” has died at the age of 96, his publisher said Tuesday. “Arne was a very open-minded person, not very orthodox, and interested in many fields,” his editor Erling Kagge told AFP, confirming that Norway’s foremost philosopher of the 20th […]

British PM eyes 'historic opportunities' for change with Obama

LONDON — The arrival of Barack Obama in the White House presents the world with “historic opportunities” on key issues including climate change and terrorism, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Tuesday. Brown told The Sun newspaper that he and the US president-elect, who takes office next Tuesday, had a “historic chance to move the […]

Kerry and Clinton note action on climate change as key diplomatic concern

The hot news in foreign relations on Tuesday was, of course, the confirmation hearing for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) to be the next secretary of state. But also noteworthy is the new head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's declaration that the panel's attention will soon turn to global warming, which he plans to be the subject of the panel's first hearing this year.

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who takes over the committee with Joe Biden's ascension to the vice presidency, tells the New York Times that he wants to use his committee to urge the Obama administration to act fast on climate change. "I think we are standing on the threshold of a huge opportunity to actually get something done," he said. "The Obama administration is going to have to get up to speed very, very quickly."

The Times described Kerry's new role as "a gold-plated consolation prize," considering he ran for the presidency in 2004 and was rumored to be a top contender for secretary of state post under Obama. But Kerry seems to be ramping up to use his chairmanship for big things, not least of which is climate change. Shortly after it became clear that he wasn't going to the Department of State, he pledged that his committee would "pick up the baton and really run with it" on climate.

His first action as chair of the committee, though, was to preside over Tuesday morning's confirmation hearing for Clinton. His made a nod to climate change in his prepared opening remarks:

Before turning to Senator Lugar, let me say one thing about global climate change: Many today do not see it as a national security threat. But it is -- and the consequences of our inaction grow more serious by the day. In Copenhagen this December we have a chance to forge a treaty that will profoundly affect the conditions of life on our planet. The resounding message from the recent Climate Change Conference in Poland was that the global community is looking to our leadership. This Committee will be deeply involved in crafting a solution that the world can agree to and the Senate can ratify. And as we proceed, the lesson of Kyoto must remain clear in our minds: all countries must be part of the solution.

In her own opening remarks, Clinton recognized Kerry's work on climate and pledged to focus on the issue in her new role as the country's top diplomat:

You, Mr. Chairman, were among the very first in a growing chorus from both parties to recognize that climate change is an unambiguous security threat. At the extreme, it threatens our very existence but well before that point it could well incite new wars of an old kind over basic resources like food, water and arable land.

President-elect Obama has said America must be a leader in developing and implementing a global and coordinated response to climate change. We will participate in the upcoming UN Copenhagen Climate Conference and a global energy forum; and we'll pursue an energy policy that reduces our carbon emissions while reducing our dependence on foreign oil and gas; fighting climate change and enhancing our economic and energy security.