Climate Technology

If 100 percent auctioning is done right, the trade component will be trivial

If all permits are auctioned, where is the need for large-scale trading? With modern electronics, there is no reason most permits can't be bought directly by those using them.

Yes, there will be some trading: people will buy too many and need to resell, or engage in hedging, or use a broker for convenience's sake. But if the auctioning process is not made a major pain, these should be trivial in scale compared to direct purchase. Our short name should not emphasize the role of trade.

Why is the terminology important? If you refer to support for 100 percent auctioning as a variation on cap-and-trade, you make political judo easy for giveaway advocates. They can take all the political effort that was put into building support for 100 percent auctioning and use it to win support for giving free permits to large corporations. After all, it is all cap-and-trade, the giveaway advocates will say. Only extremists, the gifts-for-Big-Coal supporters will say, would make a fuss about the exact form cap-and-trade takes. Seriously, brand differentiation is important in politics. If you think 100 percent auctioning is important, don't use a term that lets your opponents pretend there is little daylight between you and them.

The Kansas City Star: New coal plants are expensive

The Kansas City Star reports:

Electric bills are poised to soar for customers of utilities building coal-fired power plants.

Coal-based electric utility executive responds:

We're moving forward regardless of what you namby-pamby, cheap-energy-loving hippies think.*

Michael Dworkin then raises the obvious question:

You've got to ask: "Do you think we have reached a point where it economically doesn't make sense?"

It will be interesting to see how this affects the Sunflower Electric debate, since the state does now seem to be getting beyond the false belief that coal is cheap.

*Italicized text implied but entirely fabricated by the author.

To survive, producers wanly import feedstock and export fuel

At this point, serious greens still promoting biofuels are in a tight corner. Global grain stocks are at all-time lows and prices at all-time highs. That means heavy incentives to clear new land to plant crops — in precious rainforest regions in South America and Southeast Asia that sustain indigenous peoples and store titanic amounts […]

CEO charged with seeking profit

In the course of an off-the-shelf rant about Wal-Mart, Z.P. Heller says this: While Wal-Mart may be working to reduce their carbon footprint, it became clear that to Scott, reducing waste means making money, not fulfilling an environmental promise. The mind boggles.

One last word from the National Green Jobs Conference

I’ll soon be tackling new eco-job and career issues, but I’ve got one last piece of business related to my time at the Good Jobs, Green Jobs conference last week. I’ve recounted what happened and who was there, and explained how we might define green jobs. Now, I’ll address one final question from Grist readers: […]

As coal prices rise, U.S. coal exports boom

Environmentalists have helped scuttle more than 50 coal-fired power plants in the U.S. in the past year. That’s fantastic. But the movement to stop coal won’t help the climate unless it can globalize; for the climate, coal burned in China traps just as much warmth as coal burned in Texas. Nor will stopping more U.S. […]

ECO:nomics: More evidence of Exxon’s evil genius

ExxonMobil sent one representative to the conference: a beautiful, smart, well-spoken, wryly funny young woman with long blond hair. Next thing I know, there I am talking to her over cocktails, thinking, yeah, Exxon does spend a lot on energy R&D! They really are leading the search for alternatives to oil! Gol she’s purty! Damn […]

Meyerson on the need for a new New Deal

Harold Meyerson has a lucid, insightful column in the Washington Post today about the recent financial mess: The key lesson Americans need to learn from today’s troubles is how to distinguish faux prosperity from the genuine article. Over the past hundred years, we’ve experienced both. In the three decades after World War II we had […]

Industry launches campaign against Lieberman-Warner climate bill

Energy industry and business trade groups have launched a concerted campaign against the Lieberman-Warner climate bill. The bill, which would establish a cap-and-trade system to reduce U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions, is much less stringent than some other climate bills in Congress, but Lieberman-Warner is so far the only one to pass out of committee; it’s scheduled […]

More from the National Green Jobs Conference

Welcome back to the Grist review of the Good Jobs, Green Jobs conference last week in Pittsburgh. In my last post, I gave it two thumbs up and noted that Van Jones was particularly outstanding in one of the lead roles. Let’s continue this conversation with a particularly hot topic these days. Based on your […]