legislation

Oval Office lights connected to mountaintop removal

When President Barack Obama's staff turns on the lights to the Oval Office this week, a signal will be sent from the Potomac Energy Company to the Chalk Point Generation Station, where the coal-handling facility service of the power plant will shovel in coal that has been strip-mined from the clear-cut, toppled-over, and exploded mountains of West Virginia.

At least, in theory.

In effect, President Obama and his administration are now connected to one of the most tragic environmental and human rights disasters in American history -- the employment of mountaintop-removal mining methods in Appalachia that have eliminated over 470 mountains and adjacent communities, 1 million acres of hardwood forests, and 1,200 miles of streams from our American maps.

This includes Coal River Mountain in West Virginia, the last great mountain in a historic range that has been on the forefront of the clean-energy movement. Citing the unique wind potential of Coal River Mountain, local citizens and coal miners have pushed for an industrial wind farm that would provide 200 jobs, enough megawatts for 150,000 homes in the area, and $1.7 million in tax revenues. Last week, however, as Obama visited a wind-turbine parts factory in Ohio, the first bulldozers arrived to clearcut the forest and open the way for the next mountaintop-removal tragedy.

Parsing Section 451 of the House stimulus package

Here are some thoughts on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act recently unveiled by House leaders -- specifically, the appropriation of Section 451 (aka "Subtitle E") from the 2007 Energy Bill.

For obvious reasons, we've been following this bill very closely, which not only provides $10 per MWh to waste heat recovery and high-efficiency cogeneration projects, but it also provides a nice suite of carrots to induce the states to reform their paleolithic electricity regulatory laws. Often these laws have long been perhaps the biggest barrier to reducing the carbon footprint of U.S. electricity generation and distribution.

For less obvious reasons, it's hard to get programs like this through the Congress. This is the result of some peculiarities of the way the federal government makes decisions to spend money:

1. Tax bills require one vote to enact (OK, technically three, since they have to be approved by both houses and then signed by the President, but it is a single vote on a single decision throughout). All other fiscal bills require two votes: the first authorizes the funding, and the second appropriates the money through the budget process. Since no vote is certain, this makes it much easier for regulators to get things done by tinkering with tax policy than through any other measure. In no small part, this is why the tax code is so full of complexity, loopholes, and social-engineering run amok. But I digress.


2. Any appropriation process must be "scored." This is the process by which the Congressional Budget Office estimates the cost of the legislation to the Treasury for the purpose of figuring out whether we can afford it. That's quite reasonable, but the nature of the process is such that it tends to ignore most of the upside because it does not readily differentiate between good and bad investments. (It is as if you made a decision to buy a stock based on the price per share without any consideration of whether it was likely to rise or sink in the future.) This becomes especially problematic when the economy sours, as the stimulative effects of investments are not readily quantified or evaluated precisely at the time when they are most needed.

Frustrating as this may be, the good news is that the limitations are well-understood by those inside the Beltway. Setting aside what the scoring rules say, here is what Section 451 will actually do for the U.S. economy ... with lessons broadly applicable to investments in all flavors of enhanced resource efficiency.

How the cap-and-trade blueprint fits into domestic and international climate action

There's been a lot of buzz lately about the U.S. Climate Action Partnership and its new blueprint for a cap on global warming pollution. Last week, the diverse group of environmental nonprofits and leading companies from every sector of the U.S. economy unveiled a detailed plan for legislation -- the consensus product of two years of intense analysis and debate.

As a consensus document, it won't satisfy everyone's design for the perfect climate bill. Instead, it bridges the gap on the most important issues in the legislative debate, giving members of Congress clear guidelines for legislation that are environmentally effective, economically smart, and politically achievable.

It's an attempt to find the "sweet spot" that can move the U.S. forward on climate change, in real, practical terms, toward a strong domestic emissions cap that reduces pollution at home and enables the U.S. to lead an effective global emissions reduction effort.

Any U.S. climate proposal needs to be examined in that context. After all, even the strongest U.S. legislation alone won't secure enough global emissions reductions to solve climate change. What we need right now is strong domestic action that drives international action and contributes effectively to a global emissions reduction path that can avert the worst impacts of climate change.

The two-degree threshold

Scientific experts say that our emissions path must keep global warming within 2° of pre-industrial levels. Beyond that, the chances of catastrophic climate impacts increase dramatically. Would the USCAP blueprint as a whole contribute effectively to the global emissions reductions we need? The chart below shows that it would.

NRDC responds to criticism of USCAP's Blueprint

This is a guest post from David Hawkins, director of the climate program at NRDC, in response to Joe Romm's post "CAP and degrade," which criticized the U.S. Climate Action Partnership's Blueprint for Legislative Action.

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Joe,

You are and will remain a respected friend. As an author and blogger, you call it as you see it on what needs to happen to emissions and our energy system if we are to avoid a climate catastrophe. And you do a great job at it.

We at NRDC have another job. We must do what has to be done to move this Congress to enact climate protection legislation that will change overnight the kinds of energy and other investments that are made, start the innovation engine spinning, bend our emissions down without further delay, and show the world that the U.S. has emerged from its cave of inaction.

We are buoyed by President-elect Obama's commitment to act but we will need action from Congress as well. The new Congress contains a growing number of climate protection champions but it also contains a core of obstructionists bent on using every tactic to block any action, other members who think global warming is not enough of a problem to warrant any real change, and members who are inclined to be helpful but not if it involves spending much political capital as they see it. We don't have time to change who the members of Congress are; we need to change the way current members think about this issue.

There are a number of ways to move Congress to act and NRDC is pursuing all that we believe will help. One important way is to engage deeper and broader support for action from the U.S. business community -- a community that until recently was dominated by outspoken opponents of any action to cut global warming pollution. The USCAP Blueprint you attack is an effort to get major American business leaders, joined with a number of U.S. NGOs, firmly committed to working to get this Congress to pass climate protection legislation. It is part of a process designed to make good legislation possible.

This past Thursday, the business members of USCAP testified to Congress that action by Congress is urgent, not only to protect the climate but to provide a foundation for economic recovery. Their testimony powerfully challenged those members of Congress whose mindset is still that we cannot afford to act now because they think climate protection means economic sacrifice. The business leaders' testimony was "yes we can" take action to protect the climate and it will help the economy, not hurt it. The members of USCAP will be a strong force and voice for action in the weeks and months ahead. Without those voices NRDC believes action in Congress would be slower and less effective than it has to be to protect the climate.

Did the Obama team ax funding for mass transit in the stimulus bill?

When the House rolled out its stimulus plan on Thursday, the set-aside for mass transit had fallen significantly from the proposal outlined last week by House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair James Oberstar (D-Minn.).

Oberstar had called for $30 billion for roads and bridges and $17 billion for mass transit, which would give mass transit 36 percent of all the transportation funding in the stimulus package. But in the plan unveiled yesterday, while the road money stayed the same, the public transit portion was reduced by 25 percent, which includes cutting operation assistance funds entirely. As for intercity rail, for which Oberstar wanted $5 billion, its funding was reduced to $1.1 billion -- a 78 percent cut.

Whose decision was it to ax so much mass-transit funding, considering that the House committee chair responsible for it has been so pro-public-transit? Sources on the Hill say that the incoming administration's economic team was very involved in the drafting of this final proposal. Are they responsible for reducing transit so significantly, despite repeated claims that reducing oil use and investing in public transit is going to be top priority?

Oberstar's office says the cuts were the product of the House speaker's office, the Senate majority leader, and the Obama transition team. "How those decisions were made, I don't know," Jim Berard, communications director for the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, told Grist. "It's disappointing that our recommendation was not accepted on the whole, but at the same time we got a good deal for transportation infrastructure and we want to keep the momentum going for this bill."

Berard says that at this point it's not likely transit advocates in Congress will make too big a deal out of the cuts. "We don't want to get into a family squabble at this point. I think the imperative is to get a bill going and get it going fast, and get it enacted quickly," he continued. "I think there's a lot of arguments to be made for more funding in every category on there. So to slow the process down by lobbying for more money for one particular sector or another may not be productive."

Transit activists, of course, are not happy.

NRDC and EDF endorse the weak, coal-friendly, rip-offset-heavy USCAP climate plan

The U.S. Climate Action Partnership -- a coalition of businesses and enviros once thought to be important -- have released their wimpy Blueprint for Legislative Action.

I can sort of understand why, say, Duke Energy, signed on to this, but NRDC, EDF, and WRI have a lot of explaining to do. As we will see, this proposal would be wholly inadequate as a final piece of legislation. As a starting point it is unilateral disarmament to the conservative politicians and big fossil fuel companies who will be working hard to gut any bill. Kudos to the National Wildlife Federation for withdrawing from USCAP rather than signing on.

I think it is absurd for any serious environmental group to support permitting new coal plants that don't capture and store the vast majority of their emissions. Yet as the WashPost reports:

The plan would also require any coal plant permitted after Jan. 1, 2015, to emit no more than half the carbon dioxide emissions now considered normal and require any newly permitted plant today to have the ability to be retrofitted to meet that standard.

These are bogus provisions. Nobody really knows what a capture-ready plant design is -- this is the climate equivalent of "the check is in the mail." Any significant number of such new coal plants will simply make it much harder to meet the 2020 target, at a time when we have more than enough low carbon technologies today to meet any such target affordably.

But it is the 2020 target and the issue of rip-offsets that make this proposal truly untenable. The Blueprint calls for requiring that U.S. greenhouse gases (GHGs) return to "80%‐86% of 2005 levels by 2020." That is essentially returning to 1990 levels, which the science clearly says is inadequate to stabilizing at 450 ppm, let alone the 350 ppm target that environmental groups should be seriously considering.

Worse, the science makes clear that you need a target below 1990 levels without allowing fossil fuel companies to offset their emissions -- i.e. continue releasing CO2 into the atmosphere where it will linger with a mean atmospheric lifetime of 30,000 years.

But the already-lame USCAP proposal shoots itself in the (other) foot with its embrace of a staggering amount of rip-offsets.

Coal group wants climate bill to build more coal plants

News from the Super-Shoddy Climate Change Reporting desk: The Bemidji Pioneer broke this story on Tuesday:

Partners for Affordable Energy, which describes itself as "a broad-based coalition of organizations and businesses that support coal-based electricity as a low-cost, reliable, and increasingly clean energy source for consumers, farms and businesses in the Upper Midwest," is lamenting the fact that Minnesota's Next Generation Energy Act, particularly its standards for CO2 emissions, would put a stop to coal-fired power plant construction.

Setting any moral judgments aside, that's what you would expect them to say. It's not especially noteworthy, but check out how the group justifies their argument:

Waxman calls for climate bill by May, despite grumbling from Energy Committee members

In his first hearing as chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) on Thursday pledged to act "quickly and decisively" on climate change, and said he wants a bill ready to go by Memorial Day recess in May.

"Our environment and our economy depend on congressional action to confront the threat of climate change and secure our energy independence," Waxman said. "U.S. industries want to invest in a clean energy future, but uncertainties about whether, when, and how greenhouse-gas emissions will be reduced is deterring these vital investments."

But not everyone is on board. Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said there are "many different views on this committee" as to whether climate change is caused by humans.

The committee heard from representatives of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership about its new blueprint for a cap-and-trade climate bill. President-elect Barack Obama and Waxman have both called for cap-and-trade programs, though considerably stronger ones than USCAP proposed.

But some committee member suggested that cap-and-trade is not the way to go. Rep. Gene Green (D-Texas) said he prefers a carbon tax, though it may not be as politically palatable. "It's probably the cleanest and most transparent thing Congress can do is to put a tax on something we shouldn't be putting in our atmosphere," said Green. His fellow Texan, Republican ranking member Joe Barton, also indicated that a carbon tax might be preferable to cap-and-trade.

Today's hearing illustrated that despite the leadership change in the committee -- climate advocate Waxman replacing automaker-friendly John Dingell -- it's going to be a tussle to move climate legislation this year. "Be prepared for a battle," warned Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.).

Even renewable energy should be used and produced efficiently

There's an old saying in biology that poison is dose-dependent, recognizing that everything is poisonous at the right dosage. Drinking a glass of crude oil will make you sick ... but so will drinking 50 gallons of water. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations of 600 ppm would radically change life as we know it on the earth ... but so would atmospheric oxygen concentrations of 500,000 ppm O2.

This isn't meant to suggest that all poisons are equal, but simply to recognize that there is nothing so good that it won't kill you at a high enough concentration. And what is true for chemicals we may ingest is no less true for public policies we may embrace. From police budgets to formal education, what's good in moderation is problematic in abundance.

And yet when it comes to energy and environmental policy, we continue to presume that our generation is smart enough to know the silver bullets, even while we lambaste our predecessors for failing to comprehend the full scope of the silver bullets of their day.