Author: Grist – the Latest from Grist

by Daniel J. Weiss

Cross-posted from the Wonk Room.

The mounds of snow blackened by auto exhaust have barely melted in Washington, D.C, yet the Energy Information Administration’s Short Term Energy Outlook already predicts that average gas prices “will exceed $3 per gallon” in coming months:

Average U.S. pump prices likely will exceed $3 per gallon at times during the forthcoming spring and summer driving season.

EIA projects gasoline consumption will begin to show modest, but consistent, increases over the previous year, growing by 60,000 bbl/d in 2010 and 70,000 bbl/d in 2011.

In other words, there will be a gasoline price increase of 17 percent compared to summer 2009, even though consumption will only increase by six-tenths of a percent.  It means that American drivers will spend an additional $174 million per day on gasoline this summer compared to last year.  This could be as much as $16 billion more during the months of June, July, and August.  Total daily spending on gasoline this summer could be more than $1 billion per day.

The higher gasoline prices reflect higher oil prices.

EIA expects WTI prices to average above $80 per barrel this spring, rising to an average of about $82 per barrel by the end of the year and to $85 per barrel by the end of 2011.

This will mark a rise in crude oil prices from a $39 per barrel in February 2009 to $82 by the end of 2010 – a 110 percent increase in two years.  Oil prices have already closed above $80 this week.

Higher gasoline prices are like a tax on consumers – they pay more for the same amount of product, with the additional funds enriching big oil companies and foreign oil suppliers.

Since one of every four barrels of oil comes from nations that the State Department classifies as “dangerous or unstable,” more oil consumption and higher prices further enriches these states.  And a $1 increase in oil prices provides an additional $1 billion dollars to the Iranian government – even though the U.S. buys no oil from it.  This can only help Iran incite unrest and attacks in Iraq and elsewhere.

Short-Term Energy Outlook, March 2010:

EIA also predicts an increase in U.S. coal consumption compared to 2009.

Anticipated increases in electricity demand and higher natural gas prices will contribute to modest growth in coal-fired generation in 2010 and 2011.  Forecast coal consumption in the electric power sector increases by about 3 percent in 2010, though staying under 1 billion short tons.  EIA projects coal consumption in the electric power sector will increase by 1.6 percent in 2011.

And with more oil and coal consumption comes higher levels of carbon dioxide pollution after several years of decrease due to the 2007-2009 recession.

Projected improvements in the economy contribute to an expected 1.5-percent increase in CO2 emissions in 2010.  Increased use of coal in the electric power sector and continued economic growth, combined with the expansion of transportation-related petroleum consumption, lead to a 1.2-percent increase in CO2 emissions in 2011.  However, even with increases in 2010 and 2011, projected CO2 emissions in 2011 are lower than annual emissions from 1999 through 2008.

Carbon Dioxide Emissions Growth Chart:

Clearly, efforts to reduce oil dependence, coal burning, and global warming pollution cannot begin a moment too soon.  The bipartisan American Clean Energy and Security Act, passed by the House of Representatives last summer, would cut oil use by at least 600,000 barrels per day by 2020.  It’s the Senate’s turn to pass comprehensive bipartisan clean energy legislation that reduces oil dependence.  Senators who care about Americans’ pocket books, national security, and a healthy future must join efforts by Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) to solve these problems.  We can’t afford to wait much longer.

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A few reader comments worth highlighting from this story on envisioning a sustainable future:

davefinnigan:

We need a film, 2 hours in length, with a plot and story line, that shows the world in 2050 if we do what we know we should to solve environmental problems. Who could produce that? George Lucas, James Cameron?

Saucerman:

Well, we have the 90-minute polished film that shows the world in 2050 if we DON’T do what’s needed – it’s called the Age of Stupid http://vimeo.com/6143388

davefinnigan:

@Saucerman But it is precisely because of all the DOWNER films that we need one we can show so that kids especially can see that there is hope at the end of the tunnel. I saw Inconvenient Truth and Age of Stupid and then said, it is time somebody said “I have a dream!” not “Lets have a nightmare.”

We all know how bad it could be. Who is courageous and foresighted enough to tell us how good it can be? People work toward goals, not away from them.

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by Ted Nace

By 2030, we have to stop
emitting greenhouse gases from coal. That conclusion is most famously
associated with NASA’s climate chief James Hansen, but Hansen is not alone. In
a recent paper, nine other climate scientists—David Beerling, Robert Berner,
Pushker Kharecha, Valerie Masson-Delmotte, Mark Paganini, Maureen Raymo, Dana
Royer, Makiko Sato, and James Zachos—joined Hansen in identifying a 2030
phase-out as the “sine qua non” for avoiding dangerous climate change. The
scientists concluded:

Decision-makers
do not appreciate the gravity of the situation … Continued growth of greenhouse
gas emissions, for just another decade, practically eliminates the possibility
of near-term return of atmospheric composition beneath the tipping level for
catastrophic effects. The most difficult task, phase-out over the next 20-25
years of coal use that does not capture CO2, is Herculean, yet feasible when
compared with the efforts that went into World War II. The stakes, for all life
on the planet, surpass those of any previous crisis.

So what’s the best way to
accomplish the phase-out of coal? That question, with its use of the singular
“way,” may be wrongly phrased. One
mistake that activists tend to make is “marrying” a particular solution to a
problem. Not only does this result in unnecessary infighting, as factions line
up behind their favorite options, it also ignores the reality that changing the
world is always a messy endeavor, and tactics often work better in combination
than in isolation.

In researching my book Climate
Hope: On the Front Lines of the Fight Against Coal, I investigated why investor Warren Buffett decided to
cancel six new coal plants that his company PacifiCorp was planning to build as
recently as 2007. The answer turned out to be surprisingly complicated,
involving no less than 10 different causal factors working in combination,
including direct action protests, petition drives, renewable portfolio
standards, rising construction costs, competition from wind power, lawsuits,
the prospect of climate legislation, and more.

Across the country, the
Buffett story has been repeated again and again, as underdog grassroots
activists in state after state have taken on and defeated Big Coal and King
Kilowatt. As of late February, activists had derailed 97 of the 151 new plants that were in the pipeline in May 2007. Since 2001, according to the Sierra
Club, 126 coal plants have been stopped. In 2009, not a single new coal plant
broke ground. All this was accomplished even though the U.S. still lacks any
sort of comprehensive climate policy. Rather than one overarching tactic or
policy, the rush to build new coal plants was stopped by a broad, feisty
movement that inflicted a “death of a thousand cuts.”

Taking on the existing coal fleet

Now the movement against coal
is shifting its focus from blocking new plants to the second and harder part of
the task: phasing out the fleet of existing coal plants. In the Pacific
Northwest, the Sierra Club and others have targeted TransAlta’s Centralia plant. In the Southwest, Natural Capitalism Solutions this week released a
major economic study showing the economic benefits of shutting down the Navajo
Generating Station. Across the country, utilities including Xcel, Portland
General Electric, Red Hawk Energy, Georgia Power, Progress Energy, Public
Service Company of New Hampshire, DTE Energy, FirstEnergy, NRG Energy, and
Exelon have recently announced coal plant retirements or conversions, and TVA
may soon join the list. The 2030 deadline is a daunting challenge but not an
unrealistic one, since the coal fleet is the most antiquated part of America’s
energy infrastructure and alternatives abound. The median plant was built in
1966, making it older than most activists. Scores of plants pre-date the Korean
War. Almost 90 percent of existing coal-fired generating capacity dates from before
1985, which means that if we simply instituted a policy of retiring coal plants
at age 40, we’d be 90 percent of the way to the zero-coal goal by 2025.

On the CoalSwarm wiki,
traffic stats shows that climate change activists are becoming more and more
familiar with the details of the coal fleet. Of the 3,200 pages on the site,
the most frequently visited is “Existing U.S. Coal Plants,” which receives
hundreds of page views every day and links to individual pages on 679 separate
coal plants (1,445 coal-fired generators), including plants located on at least
65 college campuses. Each wiki page contains basic data, links to mines and
waste sites, and Google satellite imagery of a plant and its surrounding area.
At least 126 coal plants are located in the midst of residential areas (i.e.
with more than 10,000 people in a 3-mile radius), directly contradicting the image
of coal plants operating in isolated rural locations. These plants tend to be
of older vintage, and only 32 of them have sulfur scrubbers. The per capita
income in these high-impact communities is 14 percent below the national average; 44 percent
of the residents are persons of color. Apart from the climate benefits, phasing
out these plants will have major health benefits for 6.1 million people who
live within three miles of one of the plants, as well as the tens of millions
of other people affected by coal emissions.

In a groundbreaking 2004
study, the Clean Air Task Force put the annual health toll from power plant
particulates at 23,600 premature deaths (14 years lost per fatality), 38,200
nonfatal heart attacks, and 554,000 asthma attacks. That’s nearly 35 premature
deaths for each plant, a heavy price to pay for the 54 jobs provided by the
typical facility. It’s no wonder that studies of the “external costs” of
coal-fired power (i.e. the burden borne by society) invariably produce
startling results. An October report released by the Natural Research Council
placed the annual costs due to three types of pollutants from coal (not
including mercury emissions or climate change impacts) at $62 billion annually,
or about 3.2 cents per kilowatt hour generated by coal.

Throughout the 1990s, the
size of the coal fleet remained fairly stagnant at about 330 GW of capacity
(nameplate), with few plants built and few retired. During the past decade,
that stagnation continued, with retirements roughly equaling new plant construction.
From 2000 through 2009, about 8 GW of new coal plant capacity came online.
Meanwhile, from 2000 through 2007, 132 coal-fired generating units were retired
or converted to other fuels. Most of these were small, aging plants. The total
amount of capacity retired or converted to other fuels from 2000 to 2007 was
about 7 GW of capacity.

In its most recent survey,
the Energy Information Agency lists 54 generating units totaling about 4 GW of
capacity as scheduled for retirement or conversion in the period 2008 to 2014.
News sources report an additional 27 units totaling about 6 GW as scheduled or
under study for retirement or conversion to other fuels, mainly biomass and
natural gas. New additions are expected to exceed retirements and conversions,
with about 17 GW of new coal-fired generation capacity under construction, near
construction, or permitted, according to the latest NETL report.

To summarize: during the
entire period from 2000 to 2014, about 17 GW of capacity is expected to be
removed from the coal fleet and 25 GW of capacity is expected to be added, for
a net increase of 8 GW. While that may sound sizeable, it amounts to only a 2
to 3 percent increase in coal capacity during the entire 15-year period. Overall, the
fleet continues to age, and by 2016 over half the coal plants in the U.S. will
be more than 50 years old.

Coal’s share of the overall
electricity mix has been on the decline since 1987, when it hit an all-time
high of 57 percent. In 2004, coal’s share dropped below 50 percent for the first time in four
decades. In the most recently reported 12-month period (December 2008 –
November 2009), coal’s share in U.S. electricity generation dropped to 45 percent. The
decline in coal is mostly due to an increase in the share of electricity
generated by natural gas, especially in the Southeast, where coal prices are
relatively high and natural gas prices are relatively low. Going forward the 35
GW in new wind power capacity that has come online since 2000 (including over
18 GW in 2008 and 2009 alone) will further cut into coal’s share of the
electricity mix.

Scenarios such as Google’s
Clean Energy 2030 plan, the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Climate 2030 study,
and Scientific American’s Solar Grand Plan show that it is feasible to replace
coal with cleaner alternatives by 2030. What’s missing from such studies is the
specific policies to drive the transition. Merely having sufficient
alternatives isn’t enough. The reason is simple: amortized coal plants are
cheap to run, and generally they can stay in operation almost indefinitely.
It’s a fantasy to think that power companies will shut down existing coal
plants and replace them with alternatives, unless they are compelled to do so
or unless the current economic advantages of legacy plants change radically.
(Note: For an example of innovative thinking on making the economics work, see
the newly released report “Coal Plants in Transition: An Economic Case Study” [PDF].)

Frontal assault or death
of a thousand cuts?

So how do you get rid of a
bunch of old coal plants? For that matter, how do you get rid of any chunk of
old infrastructure that is standing in the way of progress? If it weren’t for
the vested interests at stake, the answer would be simple: a scheduled
phase-out administered by federal regulators. Legislatively, this could
probably be accomplished with a simple five-page bill that authorized the EPA
to create and implement a phase-out schedule for the legacy coal fleet. The
phase-out of CFCs and related compounds provides an analog. After scientists
discovered the Antarctic ozone hole in 1985, 24 countries agreed on the
Montreal Protocol in 1987 to phase out their use of CFCs. When subsequent
research showed the situation to be worse than previously thought, the pace of
the phase-out was accelerated. In the United States, production of CFCs and
most other ozone-harming compounds was ended on Jan. 1, 1996.

Note what wasn’t done. Though some excise taxes were imposed on
ozone-depleting compounds, market signals were not relied on. With the planet
itself at stake, policy makers saw the need for a more decisive approach: a
scheduled phase-out.

Outside the world of
environmental policy, an example of a staged phase-out of key infrastructure
can be found in the Base Realignment and Closure Program (BRAC), which
successfully shuttered over 350 military installations between 1989 and
1995.  BRAC created mechanisms for
depoliticizing the process, for aiding the economies of impacted communities,
and for managing workforce transitions.

Recently, T. Boone Pickens and
Ted Turner proposed a “cash for clunkers” plan that would pay utilities, plant
by plant, for shutting down old coal facilities, starting with the “oldest,
least efficient and most polluting.” The beauty of the plan is that it would
aim directly at the legacy fleet and, if the “cash” side of the proposition
were attractive enough, might elicit the willing participation of utilities.
Moreover, given that the existing coal fleet is responsible for over 34 percent of
U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, a “cash for clunkers” program could provide a
straightforward way for the U.S. to meet the promises made at Copenhagen.

Is such a sensible solution
likely? Realistically, a coordinated phase-out of coal is not in the cards, at
least within the next few years. Instead, what’s likely to happen is a “death
of a thousand cuts” attack on the coal fleet via a swarm of activist pressure
points and institutional policy measures. It’s a messy solution, but what makes
it promising is the fact that most of the coal fleet is already well into middle
age. Like the rusting car that falls apart one fender, one muffler, one tail
light at a time, the idea is to make each coal clunker more trouble than it’s
worth, so that the operator eventually throws in the towel.

Nine “knives” that could pare down the coal fleet

Here, then, is a list of
measures—some existing, some proposed—that could play a role in whittling down
the coal fleet. None of these measures, considered in isolation, will have an
overwhelming impact; what’s important is their ability to work in concert
together.

Knife #1: Efficiency
measures. The numbers are staggering:
about 40 percent of U.S. electricity consumption is pure waste that could be
eliminated via tighter building and appliance standards, sensible retrofits,
etc. Since 45 percent of electricity generation comes from coal, efficiency alone
could largely do the job of displacing the coal fleet. In reality, it won’t be
that simple, because the complicated logic of utility “dispatch order” may
favor displacing natural gas instead. Nevertheless, weakening demand is the
necessary condition that makes other efforts to diminish the coal fleet
possible, and it’s far and away the cheapest.

Knife #2: Direct actions
and other protests. Protest makes
people uncomfortable. Mainstream environmentalists often fret that it alienates
“regular people.” But the fact of the matter, as documented by sociologist Jon
Agnone, is that protest produces results, though nobody knows exactly how or
why. Think of it as “movement caffeine”: a way of defining a moral edge, of
underlining the urgency of what’s at stake. Taken in isolation, protests
against power plants will not cause those power plants to be shut down. But
urgent, repeated, dramatic protest aimed at utilities, mines, railroads, ports,
banks, regulators, elected officials, and the media are indeed essential within
the overall mix of tactics. Note too that a mere two dozen executives control
70 percent of the coal-fired generating capacity in the U.S. So far, these “old white
guys” haven’t been the direct target of much campaigning or pressure. That
could change in the future.

Knife #3: Renewable
portfolio standards. At least 33
states accounting for 73 percent of U.S. electrical generating capacity have renewable
portfolio standards, with goals ranging from 8 percent by 2020 in Pennsylvania to 40 percent
by 2017 in Maine. Including the states that have no standards, the weighted
average of all these programs amounts to a requirement that 13 percent of all
generating capacity be from renewable sources at by around 2020. Assuming that
efficiency improvements keep overall demand growth to a minimum, renewable
portfolio standards currently in effect will result in as much as 72 GW of
renewable capacity and will undoubtedly serve to inhibit the building of new
coal capacity. In fact, some companies (e.g. PacifiCorp, Tampa Electric,
Sunflower Electric) have already cited the effect of renewable portfolio
standards in canceling new coal plants. As with efficiency improvements, the
effect on the existing coal fleet depends to some extent on the relative fuel
costs of natural gas versus coal, which have experienced rapid shifts in both
directions over the past two years. Significantly, renewable portfolio
standards are backed by increasingly effective lobbying groups like the RES
Alliance for Jobs, which includes wind, biofuels, and geothermal companies. A
recent study for the RES Alliance by Navigant Consulting looked at the effect
of a nationwide renewable portfolio standard of 25 percent in the year 2025. According
to the study, a 25 percent RPS would displace 2,000 GWh of electricity, a figure equal
to the entire yearly output of the current coal fleet. There are serious
problems with renewable portfolio standards: biofuels plants, for example, are
often worse polluters than coal plants. Nevertheless, state and federal
renewable portfolio standards may be the most effective single item in the
toolkit for phasing out coal.

Knife #4: Criteria
pollutant regulation. As regulation
under the Clean Air Act of “criteria pollutants” such as sulfur dioxide,
nitrous oxides, ozone, mercury, and particulates continues to tighten, utility
planners and state regulators have to choose between authorizing hundreds of
millions of dollars in pollution control retrofits, or shutting down aging
plants and investing in clean technologies. For example, in 2008 the EPA
released a list of scrubber retrofits expected at 56 coal-fired generating
units in 2010 and 20 coal-fired generating units in 2011. Since scrubbers
actually increase carbon dioxide emissions, many climate activists are regrouping
around a position of “don’t retrofit: shut it down.” So far, that position has
not been able to slow the momentum of retrofits. Last year’s showdown in New
Hampshire over the future of the 459 MW Merrimack Station highlighted the
charged politics of the issue. When the price tag for a scrubber retrofit for
the plant jumped from $250 million to $457 million, the ad hoc business
coalition 21st Century New Hampshire, along with groups such as the
Sierra Club, pressed the state to consider shutting the station down rather
than undertaking the retrofit. That effort was defeated by a combination of
power company and union lobbying; consequently, Merrimack Station, which
consists of a 42-year-old unit and a 50-year-old unit, is now likely to run for
several more decades. Meanwhile, in a similar fight in Oregon, a plan to
retrofit the 601 MW Boardman Plant was defeated in favor of a smaller retrofit
and a shut-down by 2020, though activists continue to push for an earlier date.
Look for the retrofits-versus-shutdown issue to be a major preoccupation for
groups like the Sierra Club during the coming decade. Since less than a third
of coal-fired generating capacity (101 GW out of 329 GW in 2005) currently is
equipped with sulfur scrubbers, even a partial victory for the “don’t retrofit:
shut it down” side of the issue could carve a big chunk out of the existing
coal fleet.

Knife #5: Coal waste
regulation. The problem of
unregulated coal waste at over 1,300 surface impoundments entered the national
consciousness in the the wake of the Tennessee mega-spill of December 2008. In
January 2009, an AP study found that 156 coal-fired power plants store ash in
surface ponds similar to one that ruptured at Kingston Fossil Plant. Currently,
groups like Earthjustice are pushing hard for coal waste to be designated a
hazardous pollutant. On Dec. 10, 2009, Ken Ladwig of the Electric Power
Research Institute told Congress that tighter regulation of coal combustion
by-products could result in the closure of 190 to 411 older coal-fired
generating units totaling 40 GW to 97 GW. Even if Ladwig is grandstanding,
there’s no question that fixing defective waste disposal systems at aging coal
plants will be expensive. When added to other costs such as scrubber retrofits
(see above) and rising coal costs (see below), the waste issue—and the
liability risks that go along with it—- may be one headache too many for a lot of
harried utility executives.

Knife #6: Holding industry
to its “clean coal” promises. Rather
than getting rid of coal plants, let’s simply retrofit plants for carbon
capture and storage (CCS)—that’s the message that groups like American
Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity have spent tens of millions of dollars
selling. So why not force utilities to live up to the rhetoric? One approach to
turning clean coal rhetoric into reality has been proposed by soon-to-depart
Sierra Club chief Carl Pope, who proposes that new plants meet strict carbon
emissions standards and that existing coal plants be required to meet the same
emissions standards once they reach the age of 50—or else be retired. Do regulators
have the nerve to require such a standard? In three states, Washington, Maine,
and California, the standard already exists, prohibiting utilities from
entering into electricity contracts for power from coal plants whose emissions
exceed 1,100 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour, a level that cannot be
met by coal plants that lack carbon capture. Note that California’s carbon
standards apply to existing plants when they receive capital upgrades, and
Washington’s standard applies to both new and renewed contracts for
electricity. Under the Bush administration, the EPA in July 2008 outlined an
approach that would require merely marginal improvements at existing
plants, such as enhancements to boiler efficiency. But what if the EPA
developed a more serious standard? For example, if EPA were to apply the 1,100-pounds-of-CO2-per-megawatt-hour standard to existing plants, what
would the effect be on the coal fleet? The answer is that most plants would
have to be phased out. Although researchers continue to investigate the CCS
retrofit option, there are some practical obstacles that stand in the way of
retrofitting most existing coal plants. First, because carbon capture requires
large amounts of energy, it imposes a heavy parasitic power burden on an
existing plant. To be able to shoulder this burden and still have a reasonable
amount of power left over, eligible plants need to be those that employ the
more efficient supercritical technology rather than the less efficient
subcritical technology. Currently, about 80 GW of the coal fleet employs
supercritical technology. A second criterion is that candidate plants be no
older than 20 or 25 years, so that enough lifetime remains for expensive CCS
retrofits to be worthwhile. That’s a serious obstacle, since most supercritical
plants in the United States were built between 1965 and 1980 and therefore are
already 30 to 45 years old. Only a handful of existing plants meet both criteria: supercritical technology and recent
vintage. As if those two obstacles weren’t enough, there are others, including
availability of water, sufficient vacant space to build the CCS facilities, and
proximity to geological formations suitable for carbon sequestration. The
upshot is that any CCS retrofits that may be mandated (e.g. by greenhouse gas
regulations) could not be economically undertaken by utilities. In effect,
holding utilities to the promise of “clean coal” amounts to a de facto shutdown
requirement, at least for the vast majority of existing plants.

Knife #7: Squeezing coal
supplies. In 2007, the National
Research Council released a report challenging the common assertion that the
United States has a 250-year supply of coal. The NRC study suggested that 100
years was a more reasonable estimate. Despite the downgrade, supplies of coal
appear to be adequate on a general basis. Nevertheless, in some regions,
especially the Southeast, coal supplies may become a factor. Also, close
examination of Wyoming’s Power River Basin by the U.S. Geological Survey
suggests that future coal supplies from that key region, which accounts for
about 40 percent of U.S. production, are more constrained than commonly assumed.
Meanwhile, the EIA reports that production in both the Interior and Appalachian
regions is declining. As resistance to mountaintop-removal mining practices
continues to intensify, that decline will only steepen. By themselves, coal
supply issues are unlikely to shutter any existing plants; however, higher coal
prices will augment the effectiveness of other shut-down measures, especially
if they alter the “dispatch order” such that gas-fired generation moves ahead
of coal-fired generation. In fact, a recent report by the EIA concludes that rising coal prices and falling natural gas prices
have already caused a shift in generation patterns in the South and to a lesser
extent along the South Atlantic states.

Knife
#8: Carbon taxes. Carbon taxes are
likely to be a much more effective measure for stopping new coal plants than
for phasing out existing ones. Since new coal plants are expensive, even a
modest tax on carbon dioxide would serve to tip the balance toward competing
generation options such as wind. But for existing plants, a study for the
American Public Power Association shows that carbon taxes of less than about $50 per
ton of carbon dioxide won’t do the trick. Under $50 per ton, it will still be
more economical for utilities to simply pay the tax and continue running
existing coal plants than to dispatch sequestering-coal or natural-gas units. It’s not until the tax reaches $80
per ton that production from existing
coal plants finally takes a nose dive, falling by 85 percent in 2030. Still,
that doesn’t mean carbon taxes are meaningless in tackling the legacy coal
fleet. Applying the principle that combinations of measures may work where
individual measures fail, a smaller carbon tax could combine with other factors
like expensive scrubber retrofits and expensive coal waste reengineering to
drive more plants into the “not worth the hassle” column.

Knife #9: Cap-and-trade,
cap-and-dividend. Even before the
legislation was weakened in the summer of 2009, an EPA analysis of the
Waxman-Markey climate bill (ACES) showed that the legislation would have only a
minimal effect on the legacy coal fleet. According to the analysis, passage of
Waxman-Markey would cause 22 GW of the existing coal fleet to be retired
by 2015 (in addition to 5 GW predicted to be retired in the absence of the
legislation). From 2015 through 2025, Waxman-Markey would force no further
retirements. Waxman-Markey would also block EPA from regulating greenhouse
gases, removing a potentially useful tool for closing coal plants. Another
federal cap-and-trade bill, the Cantwell/Collins CLEAR Act, has been analyzed
by World Resources Institute, but the analysis failed to provide any specific
conclusions about the effect of the bill on the existing coal fleet. As for the
three regional cap-and-trade programs currently under development (the
Northeast’s RGGI, the Midwest’s MGGA, and the West’s WCI), only the RGGI has a
track record of fees for carbon dioxide. At the current level of about $2 per
ton, those fees are not sizeable enough to result in the closure of legacy coal
plants. As with carbon taxes, cap-and-trade laws could tip the economics away
from coal and might prove useful in combination with other measures. But that
principle only applies if the cap-and-trade regulation does not preempt other
measures—e.g. the preemption of EPA greenhouse gas regulation by ACES.

Conclusion

When added together, are the
measures outlined above sufficient to phase out coal? Not yet. But the process
is just beginning. As Bill Gates once observed, “We always overestimate the
change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that
will occur in the next ten.” The anti-coal movement is still gaining strength,
and it has an important ally in the renewables industry. Increasingly these
companies, along with the tens of thousands of people they employ, will recognize that
40- and 50-year-old coal plants are blocking their growth, and they’ll add their
weight to the pressure to retire more plants. 

Assemble any group of
anti-coal activists, and you’ll soon hear more and more ideas for ways to shut
down dirty old coal plants. An important principle to guide this discussion is
that in a messy war of attrition, a host of small measures can add up to
victory. As Gandhi said, “Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it’s very
important that you do it.”

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Citizens gather in Washington to end ‘mountain bombing’ of Appalachia

by Tom Laskawy

Here’s object lesson No. 452 in the ongoing corrosive handover of government power to corporate interests. And no, I don’t think I’m exaggerating. Over at Mother Jones, Kate Sheppard details the high-speed revolving door permanently located between the offices of Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, and several top energy lobbying outfits. But Sheppard also drops in this little-noticed fact:

The door to Lincoln’s office also spins the other direction … In December she hired Julie Anna Potts to serve as her chief counsel for the Senate Committee on Agriculture,
Nutrition and Forestry, which Lincoln chairs. Potts most recently
served as general counsel for the American Farm Bureau Federation. The farm lobby in general and AFB in particular have vehemently opposed climate legislation—going so far as to deny that emissions are even a problem.

Sheppard puts this in the context of Lincoln’s position on climate change, which I’ve also discussed in the past. Lincoln’s decision to draw the Ag Committee’s chief counsel from the group that, despite its rhetoric, acts almost exclusively in the interests of the largest corporate commodity farmers, should tell you the direction she intends to take the re-authorization of the Farm Bill, scheduled for 2012.

If there’s any good news on this front, it’s that Lincoln faces a primary in her 2010 re-election campaign and, should she win it, is looking at bad poll numbers against her likely GOP opponent. The better news? Next in line for the Ag Committee chairmanship is the far more progressive Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.). And with Detroit now on the cutting edge of urban agriculture, Stabenow has a whole new constituency in favor of broadening definitions of and government support for farming.

Still, for the moment, Lincoln’s in charge, and she’s doing what she can to douse already-dim hopes of real farm-policy reform.

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Job Creation Begins at Home

by Jonathan Hiskes

These California designers and their imaginations. Steve Price shows people what their towns might look like if they were rebuilt along Smart Growth principles. At Narrow Streets: Los Angeles, David Yoon takes comically overbuilt streets in L.A. and Photoshops them down to a human scale. Here’s his reinvention of Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park:

On Yoon’s site, when you click the fat version of a street the skinny image pops out alongside. It’s fun. He also takes location requests.

“I’m not saying that Narrow Streets is meant to be taken literally,” Yoon says. “I think of it as concept art, and like all concept art it’s meant to provoke discussion about the city, not as a foregone conclusion, but as a series of design choices. Sure, it’s a do-over fantasy. But hopefully it sparks the imagination to also wonder: are the rules of the city really set in concrete? We’re accustomed to our age of extreme makeovers when it comes to faces, bodies, and homes, but not our own urban environments. Time to ask: how can we re-invent what we have now?”

What we need now is some sort of giant street-squoosher to mash these monstrosities down to size. And a permit. Then again, if you have a squoosher, nobody’s gonna hassle you about permits.

Here’s the intersection of Van Nuys Street and Oxnard Boulevard:

Here’s First Street in Japantown:

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Hand-made electric cars serve a niche market in Japan

by Lou Bendrick

Photos: Jason Houston

To say that I love coffee is
a big, fat lie. I need coffee in a chemically dependent way. Its effect upon
me is essentially the reverse of those faces-of-meth photos.

There are two things that can
really screw up a good coffee buzz (OK, three if you count skim milk). First
is the fact that conventionally grown coffee is an environmental bummer. To
quote Umbra Fisk,
“Conventional coffee production involves chemicals, deforestation, and
mistreated workers and dead birds.”

So to avoid songbird blood on your
hands first thing in the morning, buy coffee with organic, fair trade, and shade-grown certifications.
(Super-extra bonus points for triple-cert!) You’ll pay a premium for this
coffee, but it’s worth it.

But just because a coffee is
principled doesn’t mean it tastes heavenly. The second thing that can ruin a
good cup of coffee? Bad taste. I don’t know about you, but bad coffee makes me
feel like this. In order to
spare you such an experience (AHHAIAHH! So many coffees! Why is there no good
coffee? I want good coffee!), I assembled a panel of four other coffee lovers
and headed to my neighborhood roaster, Barrington Coffee. There, founders Barth
Anderson and Gregg Charbonneau hosted—but, in the interests of strict
neutrality, did not participate in—my tasting in their chic “cupping room.” 

This blind tasting provided a
“sensorial analysis” of five organic French roasts. Under Gregg and Barth’s
careful tutelage, we evaluated the dry grounds for appearance and aroma. Then,
after hot water was poured over each, we waited two minutes and then noted an
aromatic impression at “crust break”—you break up surface grounds with spoon
and sniff “dangerously close.” Next, Gregg skimmed the floating grounds, and we
tasted by aspirating a spoonful over the palate: a procedure that allows
grownups to make the very fun, loud slurping sound we’re always telling our
kids to stop making. Lastly, we let the coffee cool down and tasted it again.
(More slurping.)

And now, the results …

Full Circle French Roast
Price: $7.49 per pound
Eco cred: USDA Organic and Fair Trade certified. A portion of every
sale is donated to Coffee Kids.
Feedback: Despite the slogan for Price Chopper’s in-store brand of
French roast—“Deep, Dark, A Perfect Ending”—  this joe was described as “mellow” by one taster and “thin”
by a few. One said it was like “truck stop coffee that’s been sitting for an
hour.” (Had this taster, who was stylishly dressed and sporting pearl earrings,
ever been to a truck stop? We’ll never know.) One comment could be have been
construed as both praise or criticism: “It’s like Starbucks.” Kindest comment:
“I could almost drink this without
cream.”

Jim’s Organic Coffee French Roast
Price: $11.95 per pound, purchased in bulk
Eco cred: Certified Organic by Quality Assurance International.
Feedback: The Web marketing copy describes this coffee as “Big,
full flavor with slightly carbonized taste.” OK, I know “carbonized” means
scorched, but the Internet also defines it as a “Swedish avant garde death
metal band.” I like “Swedish death metal band taste” much better!

One taster particularly liked
the chocolaty smell of this coffee, which he also described as “winy.”
Unfortunately, no one liked the taste. “It’s sweet but not a good sweet”
scowled one lady, while another noted its “synthetic flavor.” If you like your
French roasts real smoky, this coffee might be the one for you. One taster,
struggling for words, sipped and mused, “If you take a flip-flop and put it in
the fire … ” The damning comments continued: “Reminds me of robusta!”—straight to a coffee snob’s heart. And, even worse: “Like instant.”

Newman’s Own Organics French
Roast
Price: $7.99 for 10 oz
Eco cred: This coffee is sourced and roasted by Green Mountain Coffee,
a Vermont roaster with a corporate ethic that includes fighting climate change,
which is good because some coffee growers are going to get hosed by it. It
is also USDA & QAI Organic and Fair Trade certified; while it’s not
certified bird friendly, it “typically is grown under a shade
canopy,” emailed a spokesperson.
Feedback: It seems wrong to speak critically of the dead, especially when the late Mr.
Newman has given $250 million to charities worldwide. But technically, only the
dead’s coffee got dissed badly. The kindest comment for this java—billed as
“a dignified dark roast with a passionate French undercurrent”—came at the
cool-down: “It gets worse with time, but this one would be OK by me.” Disparate
comments: “sourish”  … “funny tongue-feel”
… “dirty.” The most damning comment was from a cranky taster who skipped her
morning coffee in order to participate in the tasting: “I wouldn’t even drink
this after a hangover. It’s bitter and shitty.”

Sun Coffee Roasters Organic
French Roast
Price: $5.99 per 10 oz (on sale! regularly $7.49)
Eco cred: USDA Organic, Fair Trade certified, and Bird Friendly,
which is good considering that the term “sun coffee” means coffee that is the
opposite of shade-grown. For those of us in southwestern Massachusetts, this is
regional coffee roasted in nearby Connecticut, 55 miles away.
Feedback: “It has chocolate in the nose! I’d drink it!” exclaimed
one participant, who said this coffee was the “richest.” The cranky taster (see
“shitty” comment, above) said, “It’s the only one I’d drink.” Another said,
“Nice chocolaty flavor.” But its noirish-ness may have been too much for one
detractor, who said it “desperately needs cream.”

Equal Exchange
Price: $9.19 per 10 oz
Eco cred: Organic certification by Oregon Tilth and
Fair Trade certified. Not shade grown, 
but Web FAQ says the company is “currently exploring the range of
options for shade-grown certification that are now available to us.”
Feedback: This coffee, according to a wine-loving taster, “had more
structure.” Another concurred that it had “some depth.” More than one panelist
described it as “rich,” and its smell offended no one.  Cranky lady pronounced it “ashy.”
Strangest comment of the day: “Skunky smell, but in a really good way!”

The bottom line

After the tasting the above
coffees, we tried Barrington Coffee’s in-house
organic French roast, which had been roasted the prior day. The
results were quite shocking: The panel unanimously found it to be delicious.

And it wasn’t because Barth and
Gregg were our gracious hosts. (Trust me—this group had Tourette’s-like
honesty.) This fresh stuff was straight-to-your-brainstem yummy: smooth, rich,
chocolaty.

The point worth remembering here is that coffee is perishable;
freshly roasted stuff is best. So, if you are able and lucky, find yourself a
small, local roaster. The coffee will not only be fresher, but your direct
relationship with them will allow to you ask questions to determine whether or
not its production is sustainable. Some smaller roasters such as Barrington may
source their beans from small growers who lack certifications, but whose
practices are nonetheless praiseworthy.

Short of that, reach for Equal
Exchange, which our panel ranked the highest. (Although, strangely enough, the
comments toward Sun were kinder. So, gas up your morning tank with that one, too.) And despite the
grumpiness of this panel, it should be noted that the ranked coffees were more
alike than different—so much so that one taster gave up and essentially
dropped out of the tasting, declaring “I can’t make heads or tails of any of
these, and I’m wearing gay* coffee shoes.”

But really, no matter what your
taste, you’re off to great start by choosing environmentally principled coffee.

*This
comment was in no way meant to offend the gay community. Trust me; I
pinkie-swear that this particular Massachusetts panel fully supports gay
marriage. And while we’re at it, we’re all really sorry about Scott Brown. And apropos
of nothing but the spirit of fending off potentially pissy comments: This
tasting was vegan. We didn’t oppress a cow by taking her cream.

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Coffee hit by global warming, growers say

by Umbra Fisk

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Ask Umbra on Annie Leonard and The Story of Stuff

by Fast Company

Photo: Fast CompanyShopping malls, those bastions of American consumerism, have not been immune to the recent economic downturn. In a recent piece by our own Greg Lindsay, we looked at the impending decline of the
mall, which is part of the “single-use environment” category of real
estate development that will slowly disappear over the next thirty
years, according to one developer. But what will replace these
environments, and more importantly, what will happen to the massive
malls of today?

 

One possible solution can be seen in Cleveland’s Galleria mall. The
mall lost many of its retail shops over the past few years, leaving
gaping holes in the greenhouse-like space. So employees of the Galleria
came up with the idea for the Gardens Under Glass project, a so-called
urban ecovillage inside the mall that features carts of fruits and
vegetables grown on-site. The project was recently given a $30,000
start-up grant from Cleveland’s Civic Innovation Lab.

Get the rest of the story from our friends at Fast Company.

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Garden Girl TV: indoor gardening, part four

by Grist

If you’ve ever wondered how Grist’s famous (and mysterious) pun machine works, wonder a little less. We present you with a glimpse into its inner workings: a list of rejected punny headlines scooped up from the last week’s digital cutting room floor. Please, enjoy the witticisms and groan at the miss-icisms.

Story: James Cameron: I’m the greenest director of all time!

Rejects:
Titanic balls
Titanic ego
Winner: Opening Pandora’s box office

Story: Common weed killer chemically castrates frogs, study finds

Rejects:
Ampheminist revolution
No balls in his court
Weed whack her
You’ve got (no) male
My chemical romance
Chemical attraction
Winner: The wrong kind of chemistry

Story: The latest musical trend is annoying the Senate into climate action

Rejects:
It’s the E.N.D. of the world as we know it
Tonight’s gonna be a good fight
I’ve gotta feeling
Face the music
Winner: Democra-peas

Story: British scientist in climate controversy admits emails were ‘awful’

Rejects:
Hit unsend
Discard draft
But not (unl)awful?
Electronic disappointment
Winner: Electric slide into infamy

Story: Garden Girl TV: indoor gardening, part three

Rejects:
Hour of power tools
Start your power tool engines
Tool time
Winner: Drill baby drill

Story: Fifteen states have polluter-driven resolutions to deny climate threat

Rejects:
Dirty state of affairs
State of change
Legis-hate
Winner: Legis-hating change

Story: Peepoo bags help the developing world take off a load

Rejects:
A quick and feces solution
Feces to fix
Dropping off the kids at the Peepool
A load of crap
Unloading excess baggage
Making the biodegrade
Peepoo de toilet
Winner: Fecal matters

Story: Tech startup’s pollution detector aids enviro justice group

Rejects:
Drive by methane
Drive by polluting
Drive by justice
Track test
Action tracked
Breathe analyzer
Google fracks
Breath analyzer
Winner: Frackin’ busted

Story: Is ‘Birdemic’ the best/worst apocalyptic thriller of all time?

Rejects:
There is no cure
Birds on the brain
Bird brained
Terror in the flight
Flock you
Birds of a feather flock things up
Winner: Flocked up

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A treat for your Valentine: grass-fed steak in red-wine sauce

Welcome Grist Friends with Benefits

by Gar Lipow

Last week, I documented that the public supports trains and auto efficiency standards and renewable requirements, along with other policies sometimes slandered as “command & control” over emissions pricing. This week: some historical perspective on why the public is right, and mainstream environmental groups are wrong.

Historically U.S. infrastructure, the basis on which this nation developed, was never some magical response to supply and demand.

The Erie Canal would not have been built without rights of way given away to the builders. Land given to homesteaders and farmers made us one of the world’s great farming nations. Railroads were built because the great railway companies were granted land a mile out from their tracks to compensate for construction costs.  Or think of the telegraph, one of the first types of public infrastructure to receive not only grants of rights of way, but massive direct public cash subsidies. And it is worth remembering that none of this was built on empty land; American Indians were slaughtered or driven away for every one of these things. Much of the work on that stolen land was done by slaves. I can’t imagine a “green tax” that could have compensated for that. 

And that is not something that ended in the 19th century. Airports and water ports are mostly built with public funds and mostly built on public land and water. Utilities use public rights of way. Water pipes and sewer pipes, electricity lines, gas lines, old school phone lines, broad band fiber optic lines, television, radio, cell phone, and other wireless spectra all use public resources and are often built with public money. Any transport more advanced than a deer path also depends on right of way grants. Not just trains, but automobiles, bikes. Even walking paths need some construction and maintenance.

Any society that needs infrastructure more complicated than that built by hunter-gatherers will need public involvement, whatever “public” means in that particular society. And there is no way for such public infrastructure to be technologically neutral. Let’s take the automobile as an example.

Modern zoning requirements pretty much forbid housing and retail and government services to mix together in the right ratios to a community truly walkable. Further, the requirement that housing developments supply a certain amount of parking, along with the requirement of setbacks from the streets, make it even more difficult to design communities that are really suitable to live in for people who don’t want to drive. A lot of the so-called new urbanism is simply relaxing some of the restrictions that forbid creating walkable developments. And all the rules about parking and setbacks and so on are also huge subsidies to automobiles. I’ve heard figures that various parking regulation provide subsidies in the form of free parking of about $5,000 per automobile per year. And that is just parking. I wonder how much developer built roads, and city built streets funded from property taxes add to this, not to mention street maintenance also funded from property taxes.

If you ever wonder why new urban neighborhoods are so seldom real neighborhoods, it is because that is not allowed. If you wonder whatever happened to small town main street, the answer is: they outlawed it.

If any right wing libertarians have made it this far, they probably are shouting “yes, yes, oh god yes, get big gubmint out of the way and everything will be fine!” Unfortunately it is not that simple.

Yes there have been some really bad choices in these regulations, but that does not mean we can leave development unregulated. Hate zoning? OK, but do you want to allow a toxic waste dump next door to your house? Would you be OK with an all night strip club, with loud music keeping you awake, and drunks who stagger out to vomit on your porch? And you’d probably prefer that any home you rent or own meet fire safety standards, have climate control and ventilation that works.  I personally prefer the earthquake codes that saved lives in Chile to the lack of such regulations that killed hundreds of thousands in Haiti. And when it comes to appearance, if you have a block filled with lovely 19th century homes, you probably don’t want a glass pyramid plopped in the middle of them.

We can’t do without regulations. We can’t make such regulation “neutral”. The best we can do is explicitly choose what we want regulation and public investment to accomplish, and focus our rules and our public investments on those goals. The minimal state is not an option and never has been. Adam Smith, the inventor of the term “the invisible hand” favored fire regulations, free public education, building safety codes, and (in emergencies) wage and price controls. As someone concerned with supporting an infant capitalism, and overthrowing the remnants of feudalism, he would have laughed at the idea of capitalism without a strong state. And yes, Adam Smith was overoptimistic about the ability of such regulation to contain the dark side of capitalism. But, given when he wrote,  he may be excused his errors, especially since even then he was a far clearer thinker than the fuzzy headed right wing libertarians who consider themselves his true heirs today.

I think he did invent (or at least promote) a fundamental error that explains why the role price can play in replacing other forms of regulation is often overlooked. He thought of price as reflecting a balance between supply and demand. To some extent price does reflect those things. But price also reflects power. In Adam Smith’s time, price often reflected the ability to kill people, seize their land by force, and then work that land with slaves. Today the price of a pound of rice reflects in part the Haitian market for that rice developed by applying financial pressure to a series of Haitian governments, and forcing them to destroy their domestic capacity to produce their own rice. The price of sugar in the United States reflects in part the embargo against Cuban competition. (Protecting the American sugar industry is not the only reason for that embargo. But it would be naïve to think that is not a serious motivation in U.S. Cuba policy.)

That is why we have to see “getting prices right”, whether through a carbon fee or other means as marginal in making change. It is not useless, is even necessary. But “getting prices right” can never be the main driver of change. It can never be of equal importance with other types of policy.

I know that in today’s world people often find historical arguments unconvincing. “Why you talking about old stuff?” So the next post will contain contemporary data showing that right now, at this very moment, price is a weak driver of change.

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On rooftops worldwide, a solar water heating revolution

by Michael A. Livermore

The Obama administration has made
very clear that they want Congress, rather than EPA, to take the lead in
creating a national response to climate change. Despite their oft-repeated preference for congressional action,
recently, EPA head Lisa Jackson had to once again reiterate that the agency had no plans to do a carbon cap.

There is some irony in members of
Congress worrying about what EPA is up to when their time might be better spent
putting a law together themselves.

Under existing law, it is possible
for EPA to create an economy-wide price on carbon. The Clean Air Act gives the agency broad
authority to regulate pollutants deemed harmful to the health and safety of the
population, and there are several routes EPA could take to create a national cap-and-trade, even
potentially setting up allowance auctions and going through states to refund
the profits back to American taxpayers.

But going down this road has many
downsides. First, (apologies to Paul
Thomas Anderson) there will be lawsuits.
Even if EPA uses cap-and-trade to keep the costs of regulation down, certain
industry groups will be in court before the ink
is dry on the new rule. And even if
courts ultimately side with EPA, these lawsuits will succeed in slowing down
progress.

The second problem is the threat of a
new president coming in and dismantling the system. Anything that Obama does can be undone by a
future administration-either directly or through a lack of budget support and
enforcement.

Running carbon pricing through EPA is
also a little more unwieldy than it could be if structured by smart legislative
action. Regulators would have to
jury-rig an auction system, possibly needing to enlist the help of the
states. Command-and-control mandates
under the Clean Air Act would stand, potentially hindering the efficiency of
the program.

There is also a small “d” democratic
issue. Controlling America’s greenhouse gases will
take a massive economy-wide effort and there is a legitimate benefit in having
the issue hashed out in the legislature by elected officials. That is not necessarily to say that the
legislature will arrive at a better plan than regulators, but a new law passed
by Congress and signed by the president would have a have a stronger democratic
imprimatur than an EPA regulation.

But if Congress cannot get its act
together, a Plan B of EPA action would not be so bad. If the regulation is well-designed and
justified according to the letter of the law, it will be better able to
overcome legal challenge. Auctioning
permits and sending a monthly refund check to taxpayers would build broad based
public support for the program, buffering it from the winds of change in the
White House. While running cap-and-trade
through EPA is not preferable, it is clearly better than infinite delay in
Congress.

There is still time and a glimmer of
hope for a climate bill has
been rekindled.
But if it doesn’t pass, the world’s eyes will turn to EPA with hope that
they are prepared to pick up the slack.
With that in mind, legislators’ best strategy for fending off a more
active regulatory agency is to get to work and pass a bill themselves.

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Is it a problem that more industry groups are meeting with key regulatory officials than enviros?

by Lester Brown

The harnessing of solar energy is expanding on every front as concerns about climate change and energy security escalate, as government incentives for harnessing solar energy expand, and as these costs decline while those of fossil fuels rise. One solar technology that is really beginning to take off is the use of solar thermal collectors to convert sunlight into heat that can be used to warm both water and space.

China, for example, is now home to 27 million rooftop solar water heaters. With nearly 4,000 Chinese companies manufacturing these devices, this relatively simple low-cost technology has leapfrogged into villages that do not yet have electricity. For as little as $200, villagers can have a rooftop solar collector installed and take their first hot shower. This technology is sweeping China like wildfire, already approaching market saturation in some communities. Beijing plans to boost the current 114 million square meters of rooftop solar collectors for heating water to 300 million by 2020.

The energy harnessed by these installations in China is equal to the electricity generated by 49 coal-fired power plants. Other developing countries such as India and Brazil may also soon see millions of households turning to this inexpensive water heating technology. This leapfrogging into rural areas without an electricity grid is similar to the way cell phones bypassed the traditional fixed-line grid, providing services to millions of people who would still be on waiting lists if they had relied on traditional phone lines. Once the initial installment cost of rooftop solar water heaters is paid, the hot water is essentially free.

In Europe, where energy costs are relatively high, rooftop solar water heaters are also spreading fast. In Austria, 15 percent of all households now rely on them for hot water. And, as in China, in some Austrian villages nearly all homes have rooftop collectors. Germany is also forging ahead. Janet Sawin of the Worldwatch Institute notes that some 2 million Germans are now living in homes where water and space are both heated by rooftop solar systems.

Inspired by the rapid adoption of rooftop water and space heaters in Europe in recent years, the European Solar Thermal Industry Federation (ESTIF) has established an ambitious goal of 500 million square meters, or 1 square meter of rooftop collector for every European by 2020—a goal slightly greater than the 0.93 square meters per person found today in Cyprus, the world leader. Most installations are projected to be Solar-Combi systems that are engineered to heat both water and space.

Europe’s solar collectors are concentrated in Germany, Austria, and Greece, with France and Spain also beginning to mobilize. Spain’s initiative was boosted by a March 2006 mandate requiring installation of collectors on all new or renovated buildings. Portugal followed quickly with its own mandate. ESTIF estimates that the European Union has a long-term potential of developing 1,200 thermal gigawatts of solar water and space heating, which means that the sun could meet most of Europe’s low-temperature heating needs.

The U.S. rooftop solar water heating industry has historically concentrated on a niche market—selling and marketing 10 million square meters of solar water heaters for swimming pools between 1995 and 2005. Given this base, however, the industry was poised to mass-market residential solar water and space heating systems when federal tax credits were introduced in 2006. Led by Hawaii, California, and Florida, U.S. installation of these systems tripled in 2006 and has continued at a rapid pace since then.

We now have the data to make some global projections. With China setting a goal of 300 million square meters of solar water heating capacity by 2020, and ESTIF’s goal of 500 million square meters for Europe by 2020, a U.S. installation of 300 million square meters by 2020 is certainly within reach given the recently adopted tax incentives. Japan, which now has 7 million square meters of rooftop solar collectors heating water but which imports virtually all its fossil fuels, could easily reach 80 million square meters by 2020.

If China and the European Union achieve their goals and Japan and the United States reach the projected adoptions, they will have a combined total of 1,180 million square meters of water and space heating capacity by 2020. With appropriate assumptions for developing countries other than China, the global total in 2020 could exceed 1.5 billion square meters. This would give the world a solar thermal capacity by 2020 of 1,100 thermal gigawatts, the equivalent of 690 coal-fired power plants. This would account for more than half of the Earth Policy Institute’s renewable energy heating goal for 2020, part of a massive effort to stabilize our rapidly changing climate by slashing global net carbon emissions 80 percent within the next decade. (For more information, see Chapters 4 and 5 of Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization.)

The huge projected expansion in solar water and space heating in industrial countries could close some existing coal-fired power plants and reduce natural gas use, as solar water heaters replace electric and gas water heaters. In countries such as China and India, however, solar water heaters will simply reduce the need for new coal-fired power plants.

Solar water and space heaters in Europe and China have a strong economic appeal. On average, in industrial countries these systems pay for themselves from electricity savings in fewer than 10 years. They are also responsive to energy security and climate change concerns.

With the cost of rooftop heating systems declining, particularly in China, many other countries will likely join Israel, Spain, and Portugal in mandating that all new buildings incorporate rooftop solar water heaters. No longer a passing fad, these rooftop appliances are fast entering the mainstream.

Adapted from Chapter 5, “Stabilizing Climate: Shifting to Renewable Energy,” in Lester R. Brown, Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2009), available on-line at www.earthpolicy.org/index.php?/books/pb4

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by Umbra Fisk

Do you ever think about all the resources, the man hours,
the stuff that went into making your
iPod? Your cell phone? Your computer? The clothes you’re wearing? Annie Leonard
did. And then she started talking to other people about it.

You may have seen her animated 20-minute viral video,
released in 2007, The Story of Stuff—it’s been viewed more than 10 million times—about America’s take-make-waste
cycle of excessive consumerism. Following the video’s success, Annie had more
questions to answer, more information than could be packed into a short film.

Enough, as it turned out, for a book “The Story of Stuff:
How our obsession with stuff is trashing the planet, our communities, and our
health—and a vision for change,” is out today. Admittedly, the book itself is
stuff, but it was produced using
electronic copyediting, 100% post-consumer recycled paper, soy-based ink, and
nontoxic binding and jacketing materials—so props for that.

Annie took a moment out of her trash- and toxics-reduction
crusade to chat about The Story of Stuff Project, the video, and her new book.

Q. The Story of Stuff video gained a lot of attention
without you doing any real promotion for it. What do you attribute that to?

A. I think it was the right message at the right time. The
economy was collapsing, so it forced people to think more strategically and
critically about where they put their dollars. I feel like, in a way, releasing
the film was sort of like taking the temperature of the public. Because it was
so accessible and simple without dumbing down, it offered people the narrative
framework to talk about the issues. My goal in making the film was to turn the
volume up on thinking and talking about the problems with how we currently
make, use, and throw away stuff.

Q. Is there anything that you would change about the video
now?

A. There are two lines I think are misunderstood. When I talk about the 1 percent
of stuff is still in use. [From the video: “Guess what percentage of total material flow through
this system is still in product or use six months after their sale in North
America—1 percent. In other words, 99 percent of the stuff we run through
this system is trashed within six months.”] Because of where it is in the film,
people often misinterpret that as 1 percent of what we buy. The other line that
I’m ambivalent about is the part where I say it’s the government’s job to take
care of us. Some people misinterpret that to think I mean that they should
remind us to floss our teeth and tuck us into bed at night. Maybe I should have
said is it is the government’s job to make sure things are fair and good and
safe. I think “take care of us” was shorthand that triggers different things in
people’s minds.

Q. The video is being used as a teaching tool for students
in classrooms across the country. Were you expecting that?

A. In no way was I even remotely thinking I was making this
film for kids. It’s very inspiring that people like it. My real goal was to
talk to my peers in the progressive movement. I wanted people like recycling
activists and forest activists and gender rights activists and economic rights
activists. I wanted to encourage all of us to think about the broader context
of the issue that we’re working on, to sort of deepen our analysis.

Q. The film got a lot of attention from detractors as well.
And I know you’ve addressed Glenn Beck’s comments specifically on your blog and in other interviews, but have you seen
the corresponding videos that Lee Doren made?

A. I did watch part of them. The part where I lost my
interest was when he was attacking me for saying we’re using up our resources.
He had a cross section of the earth and said the earth is 4,000 miles deep, and
we’re nowhere near using up our resources. I’ve lived in India, in Bangladesh,
in Haiti, and I imagined going to those villages and handing them a shovel and
saying, “Dig deeper.” It was nuts. It became clear to me that it wasn’t an
attempt at fact-based, rational discussion. But still, I’m glad he did it. I’d
rather we be arguing about this stuff than ignoring it.

Q. So it’s just a loud minority that disapproves of The
Story of Stuff?

A. I should say less than 1 percent are angry. And the
majority of those are just following the exact lines they’re getting from Glenn
Beck. It’s not even rigorous critical thinking. There have been other
critiques. I really appreciate the people who give honest critiques, and the
number one critique we get is that I left something out. In which case I say, “Duh,
it’s a 20- minute cartoon.” Of course I left something out. But it’s
interesting to see what’s on people’s minds, and by far the number one thing
people say I left out is population. And second is industrial food systems and
how whacked they are.

Q. You said that with the video, you were initially hoping
to reach out to your peers. But with the book, who were you hoping to reach?

A. Well I got tens of thousands of emails from people asking
for more information. One woman wrote and said, “I’m an SUV-driving, republican
housewife from Texas, and I would never have watched your film if I knew what
it was about.” She said that she had never thought about any of these issues
before, and it’s made her rethink everything. I feel like people’s interest was
piqued. There are a lot of incredible environmental books out there obviously,
but I think a lot of them are a little intimidating to people who are new to
the issue. So my book is not meant for diehard environmentalists. It’s meant
for the people who are new to the issue who want a slightly easier entrée to
learn about some of these issues.

Q. What would you encourage people to do on an individual
level?

A. People ask me that a lot, and I like to see where they
are so I ask them, “What can you think of to do?” They say, “I can recycle. I
can ride my bike more. I can buy organic. I can buy this instead of this.”
Really individual actions as opposed to, “I can work with my neighbors to shut
down this toxic factory.” We have a consumer part of ourselves and a citizen
part of ourselves. And throughout this country’s history, the citizen parts of
ourselves have accomplished enormously wonderful things to make this country a
better place. But in recent decades, I feel like the consumer part of ourselves
is spoken to and validated and nurtured so much that we’ve over-identified with
it and the citizen part of ourself has atrophied. We just need to start reinvigorating
that citizen muscle. So the number one thing to do is to hook up with others
who share your values and start making some real change.

Q. What signs of hope for positive change have you witnessed
since you started the project?

A. When I was making The Story of Stuff film, I went back
and looked at all the latest information and all these facts so I could make
sure I had the most up-to-date credible information, and it was such a
disheartening process because on every issue, there’s some species lost to
deforestation, to economic inequality. And all the web pages said things like,
“Consensus of scientists warns of imminent collapse.” It was really bad. But
the antidote to that was how, all over the world, people are doing things to
reject this system and help transform our economy to be more sustainable and
fair. It is incredible how everywhere you look, on every corner of the planet,
there are people that are charting a new path. The other thing that helps me
maintain hope is that I know that change is inevitable. We can’t keep using one
and a half planet’s worth of resources indefinitely. But the question is, are we
going to change by design or by default? Either way it’s going to be a lot of
hard work. But if we change by design, we can be so much more intelligent and strategic
and compassionate about it. If we change by default, if we dig our heels in and
say we’re not changing the American way of life, we’re still going to change
because we’re butting up against ecological limits. But it’s going to be a lot
uglier and a lot more violent. But I have enormous faith in the goodness of
humans, so I think we can pull it off.

Q. Has there been any stuff that’s been difficult for you to
give up or part with or not consume?

A. Not really, partly because I just don’t really focus on
the individual piece so much. I really don’t fall into that camp where it’s
your fault because you left the water running when you brushed your teeth. So I
just don’t spend a lot of time around the guilt and the individual action
stuff. That said, I lead, by U.S. standards, a pretty low impact life. Way
before The Story of Stuff, I did not bring into my house PVC plastic and brominated
flame retardants and Teflon pans and that kind of stuff. The main thing I do
that reduces my consumption is I live in a community in which my neighbors and
I are really good friends. We have six houses together on the block, and we’ve
taken down the fences so we have a shared backyard; and we share a lot of
things. So among our six families, we have one pickup truck that we share and
one ladder that we share and one barbeque and one hot tub and one gardening
pruner; and because we share things, we have to buy so much less. Less stuff
but more friends.

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by Agence France-Presse

NEW DELHI—India has decided to formally back a climate change accord struck in Copenhagen last year that includes non-binding limits on global warming, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said Tuesday.

Ramesh told parliament that India, the last major emitter yet to formally endorse the agreement, would join the more than 100 other countries that have already “associated” with it.

“We participated in the negotiations on the Copenhagen Accord and we stand by the accord,” Ramesh said.

The Copenhagen Accord sets a non-binding goal of limiting global warming to below 2.0 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) above pre-industrial times and a goal of $100 billion in aid from 2020.

It also lists steps by several countries, including all the top greenhouse gas emitters, to either cut or curb the growth of their emissions by 2020.

The deal was crafted amid chaos by a small group of countries, led by the United States and China, to avert an implosion of the U.N.‘s December 7-18 climate summit in Copenhagen.

Some had worried that India, though publicly in support, would refuse to endorse the accord, which fell far short of the binding legal agreement to cut carbon emissions that some countries and campaigners had wanted.

In the past, India and China had publicly said they “supported” the accord and Indian officials had stressed there was a distinction between expressing support and explicitly becoming “associated.”

Environment ministry officials said the decision came after other key emerging countries—Brazil, South Africa, and China—also associated themselves with the deal.

“We believe that our decision to be listed reflects the role India played in giving shape to the Copenhagen Accord. This will strengthen our negotiating position on climate change,” Ramesh said.

Ahead of the Copenhagen climate talks, India had pledged to cut its carbon footprint by reducing the intensity of its emissions.

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U.S. stops short of protection for western sage grouse

by Tom Laskawy

Cypress trees in the Everglades. Photo: National Park ServiceThe New York Times published a monster investigative piece Monday on the disaster that is the Everglades Restoration Project. In some ways, it distills much of what’s wrong with both corporate and government culture in this country. Fun fact: the key beneficiary of the restoration plan will not be the Everglades, any of your favorite charismatic mega-faunae that live therein, nor certainly Floridians.

The big winner in the deal will be American oligopolist extraordinaire U.S. Sugar. The deal as originally proposed would have bought out U.S. Sugar’s land in the Everglades to the tune of $1.75 billion. The recession has seen the deal downsized but still involves handing over $536 million to the company for land at inflated prices—especially handy given that the recipient is on the verge of bankruptcy.

This shouldn’t be surprising. As the NYT observes:

United States Sugar dictated many of the terms of the deal as state officials repeatedly made decisions against the immediate needs of the Everglades and the interests of taxpayers, an examination of thousands of state e-mail messages and records and more than 60 interviews showed.

” … I won’t lie to you—it’s a damn good price for that land,” said the [U.S. Sugar] executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he had signed a nondisclosure agreement. “But it’s not as good a deal for the Everglades. If the district doesn’t have any money after this purchase, then they won’t be able to do any restoration projects. It could be a disaster in the making.”

I don’t know if it’s possible to connect this particular deal with the unique position the sugar industry holds in the U.S. It’s pretty much the only industry that still enjoys stifling protectionist policies that keep domestic prices high. And while, as Marion Nestle points out, they’re not high enough to dampen sugar consumption, they were high enough to contribute mightily to the wholesale takeover back in the ‘80s and ‘90s of processed food sweetening by high-fructose corn syrup. In fact, I think this is more about what happens when you combine consolidation, industrial agriculture, and a government utterly captured by corporate interests, blend and serve.

Anyway, the whole sad affair is worth some attention. I’m not sure what conclusions can be drawn from this report other than U.S. corporations continue to extract billions from taxpayers as easily as taking candy from a baby. In the end, Florida’s Republican governor Charlie Crist seems to have been only too happy to have chucked over a bipartisan, more cost-effective plan in favor of a sweetheart deal that appears to be completely divorced from any sense of public good.

In a word: Ugh.

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by Agence France-Presse

Online electric vehicleCredit: Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

SEOUL—South Korean researchers on Tuesday launched an environmentally friendly public transport system using a “recharging road”—with a vehicle sucking power magnetically from buried electric strips.

The Online Electric Vehicle (OLEV), towing three buses, went into service at an amusement park in southern Seoul. If the prototype proves successful, there are plans to try it out on a bus route in the capital.

The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), which developed the system, says OLEV needs a battery only one-fifth the size of conventional electric vehicles and eliminates the need for major recharging.

It also avoids the need for overhead wires used to power conventional trams or trolley buses.

Guests including Seoul Mayor Oh Se-Hoon and KAIST President Suh Nam-Pyo were given a 1.4-mile ride Tuesday around the zoo at Seoul Grand Park.

Recharging strips have been installed in four segments totalling about a quarter of a mile along the route.

Pick-up equipment underneath OLEV collects power through non-contact magnetic charging from strips buried under the road surface. It then distributes the power either to drive the vehicle or for battery storage.

If the system is used on Seoul bus routes, underground power lines would have to be installed on only 20 percent of the route at places like bus stops, parking places, and intersections, KAIST said in a statement.

The technology was first developed in a project involving the University of California-Berkeley, but KAIST said that produced no tangible results.

The state-funded institute says it has applied for more than 120 patents in connection with OLEV, which it describes as safe, clean, and economical.

“Of all the world’s electric vehicles, this is the most economical system,” Suh told reporters, adding the operating cost is only about one-third of ordinary electric vehicles. “The potential for application [of this technology to public transport systems] is limitless. I dare say this is one of the most significant technical gains in the 21st century.”

Suh said KAIST plans to use OLEVs to shuttle delegates at the G20 summit that Seoul will host in November.

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by David Roberts

EVEN MORE UP-TO-DATE UPDATE (3/22): The New York Times profiles Calera, the Vinod Khosla-backed company that hopes to embed carbon dioxide in cement. Dave tells the full story below.

UPDATE: Vinod Khosla sent in a response—see the bottom of the post.

———

Tom Friedman had a column over the weekend lauding a couple of American clean-energy innovators and entrepreneurs. Like almost all his green-focused columns, it’s good stuff. However! In the course of accomplishing his worthwhile objective, Friedman and one of his subjects both say something I just can’t let pass without comment. I hate to make a big kvetch out of what is otherwise a good column, but this particular error really needs to be called out.

Discussing Khosla’s big new investment, in a company that can trap carbon into concrete and other useful products, Friedman says:

If this can scale, it would eliminate the need for expensive carbon-sequestration facilities planned to be built alongside coal-fired power plants—and it might actually make the heretofore specious notion of “clean coal” a possibility.

Khosla himself goes even farther overboard:

“If this works,” said Khosla, “coal-fired power would become more than 100 percent clean. Not only would it not emit any CO2, but by producing clean water and cement as a byproduct it would also be taking all of the CO2 that goes into making those products out of the atmosphere.”

No, no, a thousand times no. Even if a coal-fired power plant sequestered 100 percent of its carbon pollution, it would not be “clean.” Even if, as Khosla says, it sequestered all its carbon pollution and helped abate carbon pollution from other sources, it still wouldn’t be “clean.”

Marsh Fork Elementary school, just downhill from a whole bunch of clean.Getting coal out of the ground is horrifically destructive to both ecosystems and human communities. Washing coal to prepare it for transport leaves behind multi-million gallon pools of toxic slurry, which regularly fail and flood nearby communities. Transporting coal is a carbon-intensive and destructive undertaking in itself. In Appalachia, gigantic trucks careen downhill on narrow roads carrying enormous coal loads trailing toxic dust. Coal trains also lock up most of the country’s rail infrastructure, which could otherwise be used for low-carbon freight shipping.

Burning coal is also horrific. It leaves behind enormous quantities of heavy metal-laden coal ash, often in uncovered impoundments, from which ash drifts onto local communities. (Some coal ash is used in concrete too, but that doesn’t make it clean either.) In fact, efforts in recent decades to scrub air pollutants out of smokestacks in response to Clean Air Act requirements have led to more coal ash, as pollutants are effectively transferred from the air to the ash, where they are far less strictly regulated.

Into the air it releases not only CO2 but sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, volatile organic compounds, mercury, arsenic, lead, cadmium, and smog-forming particulates. According to a 2009 report from the National Research Council, coal’s air pollution-related health impacts alone represent about $62 billion a year in “hidden costs.” To my knowledge, no one has yet added that $62 billion to the costs of coal-related water pollution (see NYT’s devastating Toxic Waters series), the cost of cleaning up after coal slurry floods, the cost of ceding rail infrastructure, the impoverishment of Appalachian communities, and the loss of some of America’s oldest, most biodiverse forests. Obviously it’s difficult to place a precise monetary value on some of that damage, but suffice to say, the sum total is enormous, if almost entirely unreflected in the market price of coal power.

All that sickness, all that ecological damage, all those social costs would remain the same at Vinod Khosla’s “more than 100 percent clean” coal plant. Indeed, those costs would be larger, since the energy required to sequester carbon means more coal must be burned for the same amount of useful power from a “clean coal” plant. If Khosla thinks we “have to” continue burning coal, fine—that’s the conventional wisdom—but to call it clean is an insult to, among others, the Appalachian families whose lives we sacrifice for our cheap power. I doubt he’d say that to their faces.

That Friedman and Khosla think carbon-free coal is “clean” is a function of what Alex Steffen calls “carbon blindness,” that is, a focus on climate change so narrow that it justifies anything that reduces carbon emissions. In my debate with Sasha Mackler, I put it this way:

Another way of viewing climate change, however, is in the context of a whole suite of biophysical limitations against which humanity is colliding. A recent paper in Nature identifies 10 such systems and claims we’ve passed the danger threshold on three of them and are rapidly approaching it on several others. (I discuss this paper in greater depth here.)

Viewed in this light, climate change is less an energy problem than a symptom of a larger problem, which could be characterized (if it’s not too dramatic) as existential. The question before us is not simply how to make energy less CO2-intensive. It is, how many of us can Earth comfortably accommodate? How and where should we live? How can we change our manufacturing, transportation, energy, political, and cultural systems to bring ourselves into a sustainable relationship with the only planet we’ve got? Heady stuff, to be sure, but a more honest assessment of our situation.

Now, what’s all that got to do with “clean coal?” Just this: When we evaluate a possible solution to climate change, we should judge it not just narrowly on its ability to prevent CO2 emissions, but more broadly—does it constitute a step toward a more sustainable relationship between human beings and the planet? If a solution is simply a patch that papers over broader problems, well … we don’t have much time left for those.

See also: my debate on “clean coal” with coal flack Joe Lucas.

———

Vinod Khosla responds:

Let me offer some clarifications. The article should more accurately say that coal with Calera is cleaner than solar and wind on lifecycle carbon emissions. Incidentally, we do also trap most of the SOX, mercury, and heavy metals. We do not trap the NOX, but there are other technologies and regulations to limit those. In fact, Dave Hawkins of the NRDC said to me, “If you clean up the flue gases, there are other ways to handle mining.”

Incidentally, the same technology also captures carbon emissions from natural gas power plants. So natural gas can be as clean or cleaner than solar and wind too on lifecycle carbon. We have observed 80-90% carbon capture in natural gas power plants with larger lifecycle reductions, at 8%-type parasite loads (we call it auxiliary load because we are using the power to produce a product).

I am not a fan of mountaintop removal mining and do agree with you that it is a problem. It should be eliminated. There are other sources of coal that are more acceptable. More importantly, the reality is that coal is going to be around and the cheapest source of power so countries will continue to use it. The pragmatic question is, can we clean it up? We do reduce the level of mining by eliminating or reducing the mining for feedstocks for cement and aggregates.  We also reduce the fly ash problem by using it fly ash from many types of coal as a feedstock in our process.  As a too-good-to-be-true punchline, we can produce fresh water as a by-product at dramatically lower energy cost than desalination.  We can be “zero discharge.”

Also, solar and wind are important but will not scale enough to solve the problem. (We have just invested in two new wind companies, one solar company, and a renewables storage company, in addition to past investments in solar and other renewables. We also have a large number of efficiency investments in almost every area.) Nuclear is not competitive in cost without subsidies and has other issues, including very long response times to capacity demand, and radioactive waste.

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by Gary Nabhan

The Calville Blanc d\‘Hiver, an heirloom variety dating from 15th-century France, will not be showing up in your supermarket, nor will the others in the slideshow below. Photo: Michaela/

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