energy efficiency

Energy stocks are looking attractive

The following essay is a guest post by Kari Manlove, fellows assistant at the Center for American Progress.

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CNNmoney.com just released a summary outlook on the solar, wind, biofuel (mainly ethanol), and efficiency industry financial sectors. The two looking most optimistic are wind and efficiency, and thus both sectors are overflowing with opportunity.

According to one investment portfolio manager, efficiency investments are reliable and essentially fundamental. In his words, investing in efficiency is like putting your money on the arms dealer in a war or conflict -- no matter which side wins (or which sector), the arms dealer simply can't lose.

An effective climate plans needs to incorporate intelligently regulated energy efficiency standards

Andy Revkin at the NY Times has given a lot of ink to the cap-and-dividend plan (see here and here) by Peter Barnes, a founder of Working Assets. Revkin says Barnes "has long studied various bills and proposals for cutting emissions of carbon dioxide to limit global warming. He sees fatal flaws in every one."

I don't see any fatal flaws in either Obama's plan or Mrs. Clinton's -- they are both terrific and comprehensive, unlike Barnes'. His goal is the same as theirs -- to reduce emissions 80 percent by 2050. But his solution is fatally incomplete:

He proposes a "cap and dividend" system that charges a rising fee on sources of greenhouse-gas emissions (to propel a long-term shift away from such pollution) and returns the revenue to citizens, rich or poor, through a direct payment not unlike the checks that Alaska residents get every year from fees paid to the state by oil companies.

That's pretty much it. What caught my attention in Revkin's piece is Barnes' answer to the last question posed:

What about laws such as better efficiency standards? (Nancy Anderson)
N.Y. Times columnist Tom Friedman has made a crucial distinction between incremental policies and transformative ones. Cap-and-dividend is transformative. It will get us to 80% emission reductions and create a clean energy infrastructure in the process. Raising efficiency standards for autos, appliances and buildings is a good thing to do, but it won't transform our economy or cut emissions 80%.

That is, ironically, almost exactly backwards. Barnes apparently thinks plans like Obama's and Clinton's are loaded up with things like much tougher fuel economy standards and utility decoupling and federal clean-tech programs because the senators just love regulations and government spending (I know many of you conservatives out there think that). In fact, trying to stabilize at 450 ppm only using a price for carbon, as Barnes proposes, is wildly impractical and a political non-starter.

That's because, at its most basic level, a price for carbon most directly encourages fuel-switching (especially from coal), but does not particularly encourage efficiency. That's why most traditional economic models require a very high (read "unduly brutal" and "politically unacceptable") price for carbon to get deep reductions.

Two thirds of likely caucus voters in Iowa think conservation more important than coal

Iowa Interfaith Power & Light, the Iowa Farmers Union, and Plains Justice have just completed a survey (PDF) in advance of tomorrow's caucuses.

Short version: Iowans think that we've squandered chances to do something meaningful about energy, and that it's time we started to do so before building new coal plants.

The executive summary is below the fold, but it's worth having a look at the whole presentation.

Safe, energy-efficient holiday lights

I hope you've all bought LED lighting for your trees -- they are much more efficient and safer, too, because they generate less heat! We have, and so has the White House and Rockefeller Center (see below).

Here is an Electric Power Research Institute fact sheet (PDF) to answer all your questions on LED vs. conventional Christmas lights (PDF).

Happy Holidays!

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

California looks for yet more clean energy

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

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The California Energy Commission (CEC) has released its biennial integrated energy policy report (PDF). The 301-page report looks at various issues confronting California and makes recommendations on how to address them. The issues include:

• Rising population leading to greater demand for energy (natural gas, petroleum, and electric power).
• Rising natural gas demand while production remains flat, leading to a tight market and higher prices.
• Increasing population away from the coast, increasing peak electric demand from air conditioning.
• Increasing vehicle travel from population and sprawl.
• Expected petroleum supply constraints (e.g. port facilities for increase imports) making it difficult to fuel future vehicle travel conventionally.
• California's AB32 cap on greenhouse-gas emissions, requiring 1990 levels by 2020 (despite the population increase -- a 30 percent decrease in absolute emissions).

Even though California is already one of the most efficient users of energy, the CEC is looking for further efficiency improvements, and although a 2006 legislative act mandates 20 percent renewable electricity by 2010, the report looks to 33 percent by 2020 to support California's population growth. A few of the numerous specific recommendations from the report include:

The economic benefits of going green

Earlier this week, senior fellow and director of climate strategy at the Center for American Progress, Dan Weiss, went on CNBC to discuss "the economic benefits of going green" as it relates to the energy bill currently in Congress. Weiss, a strong advocate of the clean energy provisions, went head to head with Max Schultz of the Manhattan Institute, whose sole platform was costs.

How many Texas mayors does it take … ?

... to change the lightbulbs Texans use?

The answer turns out to be ... five:

Umbra on reheating coffee

Dear Umbra, As a web developer for a certain respectable online magazine somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, I drink a lot of coffee to keep me alert and my very demanding employers happy. However, in my constant imbibing of the dark elixir, I’m concerned about the energy use involved. Specifically, I can only drink coffee […]

RED positioned to fund $1.5 billion of recycled energy projects

While humility makes it awkward for me to be posting this, David said it would be OK. (I swear!)

More seriously, this is a day of great pride at RED and I wanted to share a bit with you -- and perhaps explain the lack of time I've had for more insightful posts lately.

We've just completed a pretty substantial equity raise, with funds available to invest in recycled energy projects that convert waste heat to power. The target for our investments are places where we can simultaneously generate profits, lower energy costs, and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions - in other words, all the things I've blogged about here before. But now instead of just being an academic idea, we have the financial resources to go out and prove the concept. And, it bears noting, quite a bit of financial pressure to do so.

More important than that, though, is that we have a platform to change the way the world makes power.

Lots of good press today in Bloomberg, the Chicago Tribune, and The International Herald Tribune, among others. (Or, if you're a stickler for original source material, our press release is here.)

But perhaps the best piece -- and the one that really gets what we're out to do -- is on the Dow Jones newswire, printed below the fold ($ub req'd, or else I'd give the link).