Corn hits a new record — $6 a bushel

At the end of February, I blogged on a Fortune article that had the subhead "The ethanol boom is running out of gas as corn prices spike." That article noted:

Spurred by an ethanol plant construction binge, corn prices have gone stratospheric, soaring from below $2 a bushel in 2006 to over $5.25 a bushel today. As a result, it's become difficult for ethanol plants to make a healthy profit, even with oil at $100 a barrel.

Just six weeks later, we have an AP article with the subhead "Corn Prices Jump to Record $6 a Bushel, Driving Up Costs for Food, Alternative Energy."

And it gets better worse:

Delayers and doomsayers receive a chilly reception from pragmatic business leaders

There was a lot going on at the conference, but one underlying dynamic is particularly notable. I mentioned it in...

Australia military will kill hundreds of kangaroos

Australia’s military will cull up to 500 wild kangaroos on a military base in the capital city of Canberra after...

Green building may be quickest path to decreased emissions

Reuters has the skinny on a new report on green building. The report concluded that building green would reduce greenhouse emissions more quickly than any other approach.

According to the article:

North America's buildings release more than 2,200 megatonnes, or about 35 percent of the continent's total, of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. If the construction market quickly adopted current and emerging energy-saving technologies, that number could be cut by 1,700 megatonnes by 2030, the report said.

Alas, there are "obstacles" preventing the rapid adoption of green building techniques:

One is the so-called split incentive policy, where those who construct environmentally-friendly buildings do not necessarily reap the benefits of using them.

Also, governments and other institutions separate capital and operating budgets instead of budgeting for the lifetime of a construction project, creating a disincentive to build "green," the report found.

Oh well, I guess I'll have to make do with a nice cozy place on the Street of Dreams until green building catches on. Uh, scratch that.

Carbon policy is close to getting the macro right, but plenty of smaller decisions remain

My recent exchange with Gar has made it clear that there is a wide gulf between those details of carbon policy that are theoretically optimal and those which actually impact carbon reductions. Or, to be blunt, those that come up in our weekly staff meetings as actually affecting our decision to consider potential carbon reduction projects and those which simply elicit groans around the conference room of the "great intent, why did they screw up the execution?" variety.*

From our perspective, the good news is that our policy does finally appear to be moving not only toward putting a price on CO2 emissions, but getting the really important details (like auction vs. allocation) right. The bad news is that most of the other details are still wrong.

The newsweekly uncorks a whopper in defense of crop-based fuels

The massive biofuel mandate embedded in the 2007 Energy Act, signed amid much bipartisan hoopla, is coming under heavy fire....

Lovins and Sheikh defend definition and record of micropower

This is a guest essay from Amory B. Lovins and Imran Sheikh of the Rocky Mountain Institute. It is part two of a series; see part one here.

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Part two of David Bradish's critical look at "The Nuclear Illusion" (PDF) raises two additional issues to which we respond here. As in his first critique, it appears that, unable to rebut and hence unwilling to address our paper's data and logic, Mr. Bradish must content himself with trying to manufacture an illusion of confusion.

Does RMI's data fit their definition [of micropower]?

Yes, precisely; it just doesn't fit various other definitions that Mr. Bradish has invented on his own. We clearly defines micropower (an Economist magazine term) thus at pp. 11-12:

1. onsite generation of electricity (at the customer, not at a remote utility plant) -- usually cogeneration of electricity plus recovered waste heat (outside the U.S. this is usually called CHP -- combined-heat-and-power): this is about half gas-fired, and saves at least half the carbon and much of the cost of the separate power plants and boilers it displaces; [and] 2. distributed renewables -- all renewable power sources except big hydro plants, which are defined here as dams larger than 10 megawatts (MW).

Mr. Bradish arbitrarily and wrongly assumes "that the size of 'micropower' plants is 10 MW or less," then claims this is our definition and contradicts our data. It's not and it doesn't. Our 10 MW limit applies only to small hydro, distinguishing it from big hydro using the most conservative criterion. Any power source except small hydro can be larger than 10 MW but still meet our micropower definition: WADE's onsite-fueled-generator definition, which we've adopted, includes onsite units up to somewhat over 180 MWe for gas turbines (though few actual units are over 120 MWe) and up to 60 MWe for engines, as well as onsite (nearly always cogenerating) steam turbines of any size if they're in China and India; however, WADE's database excludes steam turbines elsewhere, and all units below 1 MWe.

Coal gets emBiggered

Righteous anger from author Jeff Biggers about the notion of "clean coal" — or as I call it, "clean enemy...

Spots vs. strips

This is the fourth post in five-part series on the details required to get carbon policy right. See also parts one, two, and three.

We now get into an issue that will seem a bit arcane, because no one's talking about it, at least not explicitly. But it's a real choice, and in many conversations about carbon policy we are implicitly getting it wrong.

Should we price carbon in spots, or strips? Or, to take it out of financial jargon, should we:

1. set up markets such that people who are selling or buying emissions credits have to go to the market with each incremental ton to determine what the price will be (a "spot" market), or
2. set up markets such that buyers and sellers can enter into long-term contracts for the emissions they will produce/reduce (a "strip" market)?