Author: Grist – the Latest from Grist

by Todd Woody

I spotted a rare critter on the streets of San Francisco
this week—a smiling, optimistic businessperson.

Then again, Ron Kenedi is in the solar panel business. 

“The big news as I see it is the demand—demand keeps
growing everywhere,” says Kenedi, vice president of Sharp Solar, the renewable
energy arm of the Japanese conglomerate. “What really amazes me every day is
how much demand has grown throughout the world.”

Kenedi is not one for Pollyannaish optimism—he started in
the business around the time Ronald Reagan took down Jimmy Carter’s solar
panels from the White House roof.

“I used to have to go out there with a sandwich board on to
get people interested in solar,” he says. “Now I can’t even walk down the
street without people talking to me about solar and wanting it on their home
and businesses.”

That’s because there’s a boom in so-called distributed
generation under way—placing solar panels and pint-sized photovoltaic farms at
or near where electricity is consumed.

Until very recently, distributed generation just couldn’t
compete on cost with Big Solar—massive megawatt solar thermal power plants
usually located in the desert.

Big Solar has had the edge by the dint of the gigawatt-size
deals utilities have struck with developers like BrightSource Energy, eSolar,
and Solar Millennium. Large solar thermal power plants—which use mirrors to
heat liquids to create steam that drives a generator—could make electricity
cheaper than photovoltaic panels, which produce electrons when the sun strikes
semiconducting materials.

Now that’s all changing. Over the past year, a number of Big
Solar thermal projects have become mired in disputes over their impact on
fragile desert ecosystems and the lack of transmission lines to connect them to
cities. In December, California’s powerful Democratic senator, Dianne
Feinstein, introduced
legislation to ban renewable energy development on more than a million
acres of the Mojave Desert she wants to protect as national monument.

Photovoltaic module prices, meanwhile, have plummeted by about
30 percent over the past year thanks to an oversupply of modules and the rise
of low-cost Chinese manufacturers. Thin-film solar companies, which make solar
cells that use little or no expensive polysilicon and which layer or print them
on glass or metal, began to produce solar modules for less than a one dollar a
watt—long considered a key milestone for making solar competitive with fossil
fuels. Though less efficient than conventional crystalline solar modules,
thin-film solar cells can be manufactured more cheaply, making it particularly
suited for use by photovoltaic power plants.

Distributed solar’s new competitiveness can be seen in a
spate of deals and initiatives over the past few weeks as utilities turn to
small-scale solar to help meet mandates to obtain a growing percentage of their
electricity from renewable sources. As of today, 1,300 megawatts’ worth of distributed solar
will be installed over the next five years—at peak output those arrays will
generate as much electricity as a big nuclear power plant.

California regulators two weeks ago approved Southern
California Edison’s five-year program to install 500 megawatts of solar arrays
on commercial rooftops. They also recommended that PG&E, the big Northern
California utility, be given the go-ahead for its own 500-megawatt distributed
solar program to place small solar farms near substations and cities that can
plug directly into the grid.

And both utilities revealed additional distributed solar
deals this week. Southern California Edison agreed to buy 50 megawatts from
three small-scale solar farms to be built by San Francisco’s Recurrent Energy
in Kern and San Bernardino Counties in the eastern part of the state.

On Monday, PG&E filed a request that regulators approve
a contract with Eurus Energy America, a
joint venture between Tokyo Electric Power and Toyota Tsusho, for 50 megawatts
of solar electricity from three power plants to be constructed near Fresno.

“We’re seeing the rest of the industry cotton on to what
we’ve been saying, distributed solar done at the right size can scale,” says
Arno Harris, Recurrent’s chief executive. “Distributed solar is faster on
permitting, on environmental issues, and interconnection to the grid.”

For Sharp Solar, the biggest demand for its thin-film panels
comes from utilities. “That’s what’s opening up the utility sector for Sharp—it’s a very robust market,” says Kenedi.

(And lest you think this is just a California phenomenon,
the New York Power Authority last week announced a program to
install 100 megawatts of photovoltaic panels on rooftops and at ground stations
over the next four years.)

The Sacramento Municipal Utility District showed, just last
month, how fast the distributed generation market is growing when it put up 100
megawatts of photovoltaic projects up for bid and sold out the allotment in one
week.

But the shocker of the SMUD deal is that the utility is not
paying a premium for solar electricity, according to Adam Browning, executive director
of Vote Solar, a San Francisco
nonprofit that promotes renewable energy (and an occasional Grist contributor).

I’ll spare you the utility industry calculus of “time
differential avoided costs,” but Browning has run the numbers and believes that
SMUD will pay essentially the same price for solar electricity as it would for
fossil fuel-generated power when demand peaks. (Solar farms typically supply
peak power as their output coincides with the time of day when demand spikes.)

“The point here is that this is an entirely revenue neutral
investment for SMUD,” Browning says. “They got solar electricity for what they
would have paid for fossil, which is a significant milestone.”

SMUD officials did not return requests for comment so I
could not verify those numbers with the utility, but given that solar
developers must put down a deposit of $20 a kilowatt for winning bids—that’s
$100,000 for a five-megawatt project—it seems unlikely there were many
speculators in the bunch willing to walk away from a six-figure commitment.

Truth be told, we’re going to need every kilowatt of green
electricity we can wring from Big Solar, distributed solar, wind, waves and
geothermal. But the rise of distributed solar generation will help ease the
load as well as the environmental pressures from developing other forms of
green energy.

Related Links:

Large-scale distributed energy is here: Recurrent Energy signs 50MW power purchase agreement

How innovative financing is changing energy in America

Let the era of solar wholesale distributed generation begin

by Tom Laskawy

From its failure to rein in abuse of farm subsidies to its misguided efforts on international trade, the Obama USDA has disappointed many progressives. But let’s take a moment to offer kudos to USDA Chief Tom Vilsack for two positive developments in one week.

On Thursday, the USDA responded to revelations first published in USAToday regarding safety lapses in the school lunch program. The report indicated that meat which wouldn’t meet safety standards at most national fast food chains was nonetheless sold into the school lunch system and fed to school children. In addition, USAToday also documented a broken system at the USDA for recalling tainted food from schools. Piling on, the NYT revealed a few weeks ago that a form of meat filler commonly used in school lunch meat, aka “pink slime,” was potentially unsafe and yet escaped USDA testing on a routine basis.

Well, the USDA has had enough:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced sweeping steps Thursday to “assure the safety and quality of food” purchased for the National School Lunch Program.
The measures include tightening requirements on
companies that supply ground beef to schools, testing the beef more
often and more thoroughly, and improving communications within the USDA
to “identify potential food safety issues” before children get sick.

… The measures outlined Thursday are intended to … [bring] the standards and testing protocols in line with those used by the most selective restaurants and
retailers. “It’s a big deal,” food safety consultant David Theno said
of the USDA measures. He said the moves will push companies to “play to
a higher standard” if they want to continue to supply food to schools.

The USDA also pledged to review the safety
records of its school lunch suppliers more carefully and bar companies
that have had repeated problems with their commercial products.

In an interesting wrinkle, the USDA, in response to a request from Rep. George Miller, has asked the National Academy of Sciences to review the department’s ground beef purchasing program and make recommendations for improvement. The non-partisan NAS is charged with advising the federal government on scientific and technical matters—and will allow the USDA to depoliticize attempts to reform the commodity purchasing program. So good news all around.

The second positive development came today with the USDA’s announcement that it is totally revamping the controversial “National Animal Identification Program.” What started as a voluntary program inspired by a mad-cow disease scare during the Bush administration threatened to morph into a mandatory, full life-cycle tracking program for every farm animal (pets included) in the nation. Facing the controversy, Vilsack embarked on a series of “listening tours” last summer to get feedback from farmers and got an earful.

In response, he has all but scrapped the national system in favor of a to-be-determined new state-level program focused on interstate commerce. Now, this has complications of its own (especially for farmers who send their cattle across state lines for slaughter), but, significantly, whatever the new system is, it will all but exempt small and medium-sized producers who sell locally. Given that many small farmers thought a mandatory animal tracking system could put them out of business, this news comes as a great relief.

These fixes may not be wholesale reform, but they do represent progress. Let’s hope these are the seeds, and not the crumbs, of change.

Related Links:

Battle for the soul of organic dairy farmers goes on behind the scenes

USDA’s Deputy Secretary discusses local, organic farming

And the winner of the USDA food safety sweepstakes is …

by April McGreger

Jewels of winter: Kumquats from L’Hoste Organic Citrus Farm in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana. Photo: April McGreger

For a long time, I never really saw citrus fruits. Lemon, limes, oranges, and even grapefruits were just fruits I often had in my fridge—nice, but unremarkable.

All of that changed in 2005. That’s when I realized that, like so much else, the citrus varieties we have available to us are the dull tip of a spectacular iceberg of biodiversity and deliciousness. Like the red delicious apple, I learned, most supermarket citrus, both conventional and organic, offers but a shadow of the fruit’s true glory.

That fall, I was given the chance to offer communal support—something so elemental, yet, sadly so rare in these days of frenetic consumption. In the weeks following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans native Poppy Tooker, champion of the self-styled “Eat-it-to-Save-it” Movement, found out that the L’Hoste Organic Citrus Farm in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, had escaped Katrina with only minor damage. But the infrastructure and outlets for selling the farm’s produce had been devastated. Through her contacts with Slow Food USA, Tooker got the word out and took orders for the L’Hoste’s prized citrus. I signed on to receive my first 5 boxes.

When my Satsumas arrived, their skin was tinged with green, but what lay beneath it was the sweetest, juiciest, most ethereal oranges I had ever eaten. The following year when I contacted the L’Hostes to order more, it was Lester L’Hoste himself who answered the phone while manning his booth at the Crescent City Farmers Market. I found that they were also the growers of Meyer lemons, both sweet and sour kumquats, two varieties of grapefruit, and more. I ordered some of all of them, and have come to anticipate the first Satsumas and Meyer lemons of late fall just like I do the first sun-ripened tomato of summer.

My citrus epiphany led quite naturally to a marmalade conversion. Turns out you don’t have to be British to be endlessly enchanted by the stuff! I’m inclined to believe there is no better defense against the winter doldrums than marmalade, toast, and tea. The concentrated burst of sweet, bitter, and tart feels like warm sunshine on my face and sand between my toes.

And now, here I am in the middle of winter with snow on the ground. Just as I am beginning to believe the preserving season is over, I find myself with my most challenging and rewarding subject yet. Yes, marmalade has a reputation for being fussy. From my experience, however, most of the difficulty of making marmalade can be remedied with a very sharp knife for slicing through the fruit. Other helpful tips include, using a candy thermometer for a more reliable set, and using citrus in its prime. Overripe citrus or citrus that has been sitting around in your refrigerator for weeks will be lower in pectin, therefore, will not set properly.

Marmalade that has a somewhat softer set is still delicious so don’t be deterred. It makes a wonderful glaze for fish, chicken, or pork, as well as a topping for yogurt, pound cake, oatmeal or pudding. I even love it stirred into mashed sweet potatoes and use it as a flavor booster in sweet potato and pumpkin pie filling.

Still too timid to attempt marmalade on your own? The best way to get your feet wet is to take a class or observe a pro. Luckily, you don’t have to go to cross the Atlantic to find skilled marmalade makers. On the west coast, check out classes offered by Brit expat June Taylor of June Taylor Jams or Rachel Saunders of Blue Chair Fruit Company. Easterners, check out Marisa McClellan’s, of foodinjars.com, class in Philadelphia next week.

Know of any other classes offered by skilled marmaladers? How about direct sale, minor purveyors of delicious, organic citrus? Please share this information with the rest of us in comments below! If you aren’t ready to make your own marmalade but you still want to know what all the fuss is about, you can support gifted artisans like June Taylor, Casey Havre of Lou Lou’s Garden, and Rachel Saunders through their online stores. I’d rather receive a jar of their marmalades than a box of truffles on Valentine’s Day. Honey, are you reading this?

Your marmalade epiphany awaits you. Photo: April McGregerThree-Citrus Marmalade
So far this year I’ve made three-citrus marmalade—a mix of Meyer lemons, Ruby Red grapefruit, and kumquats; a Satsuma-rosemary marmalade; and sour kumquat marmalade. A quick search on the internet will yield all sorts of other esoteric combinations, such as Rangpur lime & ginger; Lemon & Cara Cara orange; or even Bergamot. Start with the best citrus you have access to. I find that you can use sweet oranges in marmalade but it is helps to balance that flavor with a supporting role of a bitter or tart variety.

Ingredients

1 ½ pounds organic citrus—I used grapefruit, sour kumquats, and Meyer lemons, but oranges, limes, and other citrus would also work
3 1/2 cups water
1/4 cup lemon juice
4 cups sugar

Canning equipment: three pint-sized or six 8-ounce or canning jars with rings and lids, a funnel, tongs, a ladle, a wide 12-quart pot, a candy or deep fry thermometer, a sheet pan, and a small 3 to 4 quart pot.

Instructions

Scrub your citrus. For oranges, grapefruit, lemons, or limes, slice off the top and the bottom of the fruit, deep enough so you can see the flesh. Half the fruit, squeeze out the excess juice and reserve. Slice each half into halves or thirds, or even quarters, depending on the size of the fruit, then slice thinly, peel, pith, and all. Discard the seeds as you go. For kumquats, slice the fruit thinly, and discard the seeds.

Place the sliced citrus in a wide preserving pan. Add the reserved juice and the water. Set aside for 4 hours.

After 4 hours, bring the fruit mixture to a boil, turned down to a simmer, and cook uncovered until the fruit is tender, about 40 to 45 minutes.

While the marmalade is cooking, preheat your oven to 250 degrees F. Place your washed jars on a sheet pan and place in the oven. Bring a 3 to 4 quart pot of water to a boil and boil your lids, as well as your tongs, ladle, and funnel for 10 minutes to sterilize before canning the marmalade.

When the fruit is tender, stir in the sugar and lemon juice and bring back to boil. Attach a candy or deep fry thermometer to the side of your pot. Boil rapidly, stirring occasionally until the thermometer registers between 222 and 225 degrees F.

Test the set of the marmalade with the plate test. Drop a teaspoon of marmalade on a plate and place in the freezer for 1 minute. If it thickens up on the plate, it is done.

Remove the jars from the oven. Pour the marmalade into the sterilized jars, leaving a 1/4-inch of headspace, and top with sterilized lids. Do not disturb for 24 hours so that a proper set can be achieved. After 24 hours, check to see that the jars have sealed. Refrigerate any unsealed marmalades and use immediately. The sealed jars can be stored in a cool, dark place for up to one year.

 

Related Links:

Hello, Dal-ly: curried red lentils

Thick as a foggy, drizzly night: smoky-spicy split peas

Winter cold no match for spicy kimchi stew

by Tom Philpott

 In Tom’s Kitchen, Grist’s food editor discusses some of the
quick-and-easy things he gets up to in, well, his kitchen. He thinks
the column name sucks—please help him rename it. Email ideas to
tphilpott[at]grist[dot]org. Forgive him for the lame iPhone
photography.

—————

Mise en place: getting it together in Tom’s kitchen. Photo: Tom PhilpottOn page 304 of Deborah Madison’s masterpiece Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, there’s a recipe called, with undue modesty, “Red Lentil Dal with Aromatics.”

The dish is gorgeous—and simple. You saute onion, garlic, and chile in ghee; add lentils, turmeric, and water, and cook until soft. You finish with shallots fried in ghee with mustard seeds and bay leaves, and finally some coconut milk. That’s it. The result gets depth and richness from the coconut milk and fried shallots; and this incredible, full curry flavor from the turmeric, mustards seeds, and bay. It’s a pure, elemental dish—perfect for warming up after a cold day outside.

The curry flavor in the dish surprised me. It really only has two spices associated with curry—mustard seeds and turmeric. I had always assumed to get a good, full curry flavor, you have to either grind a bunch of whole spices—cinnamon, cardamon seeds, cloves, etc.—or buy some pre-gound mix at the grocery store and hope for the best (because pre-ground spice mixes turn to sawdust with shocking speed). Deborah’s dish taught me that just a couple of well-chosen spices can deliver the goods.

Indeed, It wasn’t until I this recipe dish seven or eight years ago that I really got red lentils at all. They’re quick—they cook in little more than 30 minutes. And, goosed with curry spices and aromatics, they taste really, really good.

These days, I use Madison’s recipe only occasionally—when I have all the ingredients on hand (the absent ones typically being coconut milk and shallots, both of which I adore). When I don’t have them around, I do a kind of slapdash version, which I will describe now.

My hacked version relies on onions caramelized in butter (when I run out of onions, cooking becomes difficult) and whetever curry spices I have on hand. The onions, sweet and buttery, give the dish a savory depth that approaches, but doesn’t quite reach, the splendor of Madison’s. And the random nature of the curry spices I have on hand give the dish an unpredictability I treasure.

Mise en place.
• A good chunk of butter, about three tablespoons. (I’ve been using Organic Valley “pasture butter.”) Especially without the coconut milk, butter gives this dish richness. I don’t much like store-bought ghee, and am usually too pressed for time or lazy to make my own from butter. You could use good-quality vegetable oil in a pinch—or a combination of butter and oil. Homemade ghee is the gold standard.
• 2 small onions, halved lengthwise and sliced thinly.
• Curry spices. I really recommend keeping a store of black mustard seeds around. Other ones are turmeric, cinnamon, cardamon, and even store-bought “curry” mix. something hot is neccessary—crushed chile flakes, hot paprika, etc. Note: whole spices, like cinnamon stick and cardamon seed, add real vibrancy to the dish, and need not be ground. (See below.)
• 2-4 cloves garlic (I use four), chopped fine.
• A knuckle-sized knob of ginger, peeled and chopped fine, optional but recommended (note to self—why am I always out of ginger? I love the stuff.)
• I cup red lentils, rinsed and picked over for rocks, then drained.
• 3 cups water
• Good sea salt
• A loaded pepper grinder
• Something green—preferably cilantro, but parsley works, too—chopped.

Process:
In a medium-sized heavy-bottomed pot, heat butter over medium-low heat. When the butter has melted and its foam has subsided, add the sliced onion. Turn heat to a gentle medium. (Note: to aid the caramelizing process, i sometimes add a pinch of sugar.) Now add the spices—a little of this and a little of that. Definitely a full teaspoon of mustard seeds. If you have a small chunk of cinnamon stick, add it; two or three cardamon seeds would be good. You’ll fish them out later, or someone will accidently bite into one. I guarantee your the risk-reward ratio is favorable here. Sprinkle on a heavy pinch of turmeric, by all means, and “curry powder,” too; and whetever else you have in the way of curry spices. And good pinch of spicy paprika or crushed chile. Stir in spices. Cook, stirring often, until onions soften. Make sure they don’t scorch; turn down heat if they threaten to. When the onions are soft, turn heat to low and stir occasionally. Be patient. Soon enough, you will have lovely brown onions. When the onions have browned, stir in the garlic and, if you have it, the ginger. Let it cook another minute and add the lentils. Stir to coat with the curried brown onions. Add the water, bring to a boil over high heat, turn heat to lowest setting and cover. They’ll cook in 30-40 minutes. Check occasionally to make sure they’re not drying out; if so, add some hot water. Like split peas, they should be very soft—a kind of rough paste. When they’re done, taste, and add a half teaspoon of salt and a generous grinding of pepper. Then taste again. Note how the salt sparked everything to life. Correct for salt, and serve.

I serve them with brown rice, topped with chopped parsley. To take the dish to the next level, add some sauteed, curried collard greens to the side. All of that, plus a raw cabbage salad brightened with fresh lemon juice and chopped parsley, make a simple, delicious winter dinner.

This sort of food seems best-suited to beer—one with enough sweetness and roastiness to stand up to the spice. I enjoyed it recently with Duck-Rabbit Porter. I bet a zippy, dry Riesling would work, too.

Related Links:

How Hurricane Katrina turned me into a citrus fanatic and marmalade maker

Thick as a foggy, drizzly night: smoky-spicy split peas

Winter cold no match for spicy kimchi stew

by Tom Philpott

Sometimes when I’m interviewed on the radio, it’s really awkward. The interviewer doesn’t know or understand the topic and asks a senseless question; or I have five seconds to construct the perfect soundbite and flub it; sometimes both.

Other times, I get an interlocutor who’s immersed in the topic, puts me at ease, gives me time to, well, ramble, and asks great follow-up questions. Kate Manchester of Edible Radio is my ideal interviewer. Here find the podcast of our talk last week. (Don’t be put off by the massive mugshot that looms over the play tab.) We talk about Maverick Farms, the genius of multi-farm CSAs in mountain areas, and the importance of food in rebuilding robust community-level economies.

Related Links:

Watch Yes Men stick it to Archer Daniels Midland

Oscar smiles upon ‘Food, Inc.,’ stiffs ‘Mr. Fox’

USDA’s Deputy Secretary discusses local, organic farming

by David Roberts

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)On On Thursday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced a bill aimed at getting 10 million new solar rooftop systems and 200,000 new solar hot water heating systems installed in the U.S. in the next 10 years.

Cleverly titled the “10 Million Solar Roofs & 10 Million Gallons of Solar Hot Water Act” (PDF), it would provide rebates that cover up to half the cost of new systems, along the lines of incentive programs in California and New Jersey (not coincidentally, Nos. 1 and 2 in installed solar in the U.S.). It also includes measures to insure that those who receive assistance get information on how to make their buildings more energy efficient.

Sanders currently has nine co-sponsors: Environment and Public Works Committee Chair Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.),  Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), and Arlen Specter (D-Pa.).

The bill would accelerate what is already a fairly rapid pace of growth for distributed solar power. Distributed energy has a number of advantages over its central-plant competitors (both clean and dirty): it’s faster to build, avoids the need for expensive transmission lines, can use already developed land, and enhances community resilience and self-reliance. It’s also labor-intensive, creating more jobs per dollar of investment than its competitors—a feature that may make it more attractive during a recession, when Democrats are turning their attention to unemployment.

I chatted with Sen. Sanders about the bill, the growth of solar, and his colleagues’ peculiar fixation on nuclear power:

Q. How much would your program cost?

A. We think this will cost between 2 and 3 billion dollars a year, and at the end of a 10-year period we are going to be producing 30,000 new megawatts of energy—the equivalent of what 30 nuclear power plants produce. This is a very cost effective way of producing that energy.

Q. Even if you take half the price off a solar system, it still has relatively high upfront capital costs. Are you looking into ways for people to find financing?

A. Remember that there are already a lot of tax credits, federal and in many states.  The federal tax credit would be up to 30 percent off the cost of a project. That’s a lot.  Let’s say hypothetically you wanted to spend $40,000 on solar. If you take 30 percent off that, you’re down to $28,000. If you get state help you’re down to $25,000. Then the federal government would pay half of that.

That’s a pretty good deal! It could be a major incentive for people to use photovoltaics. And the more photovoltaics we use, the more will be built; the more that are built, the cheaper it becomes.

Q. What about the objection that it’s a subsidy that advantages some states (the sunny ones) over others?

A. The fact is that every state in this country can produce at least 10 percent of its electricity from solar. [Sanders’ press release cites ISLR’s report on Energy Self-Reliant States.] In Vermont, we’re moving on solar. New Jersey is one of the leading producers of solar energy in America.  It’ll obviously work better in Florida and California—that’s true, and that’s great—but this is for all 50 states.

For people who are complaining about subsidies to energy, well, they’ve got to take a deep breath: huge amounts of money into nuclear, huge amounts of money into coal, huge amounts of money into oil.  It is time that we begin to subsidize those technologies that are cutting greenhouse gas emissions and in the long run will be more cost-effective.

Q. Do you get the sense that your Senate colleagues appreciate the power of renewable energy, particularly distributed renewables?

A. No, they don’t. I’m a member of both the Environment Committee and the Energy Committee, and it just astounds me how little discussion there has been about the potential of sustainable energy in general and solar in particular.  If you go to an Energy Committee meeting, it’s about nuclear, nuclear, nuclear. The general assumption is that nuclear is time-tested, it’s cheap, it’s reliable; solar is experimental, it’s fringe, maybe someday.

Roughly speaking, a new nuclear power plant will cost you about $10 billion. Then at some point you’ve got to decommission it and get rid of the waste—a great expense. The average nuclear power plant will produce about 1,000 megawatts for that $10 billion dollars. We can produce 30,000 megawatts for $30 billion and they’re going to produce it for $300 billion.

Now, theirs is baseload ours is intermittent, that is true. But having said that, our form of production is far more cost effective than nuclear. Have you ever heard anybody talk about that outside of the environmental community? You have not heard that discussion on the floor of the House or the Senate. And the reason you’re not hearing about this is the solar industry doesn’t quite have the clout that the coal industry, the oil industry, or the nuclear industry has.

Now, you asked me [about distributed energy].  We need to push solar, in all of its forms, as aggressively as we can.  I’m not very sympathetic to people who tell us, “If we don’t move aggressively to cut greenhouse gas emissions the world will collapse, but I don’t like wind because a bird got killed.” According to the secretary of the interior, we can produce almost 30 percent of the electricity for homes in this country through solar thermal in the Southwest.  That is extraordinary. We should begin building those things tomorrow.

It’s not a question of either/or. It’s both. It’s those, wind, geothermal, biomass versus coal and oil and nuclear. Our main job is to cut back greenhouse gas emissions in a fundamental way, and to transform our energy system. So people should be putting their shoulders to the wheel.

Q. Is anyone in Congress talking about the barriers to distributed energy posed by America’s complex regime of utility regulations?

A. Yeah, they are. Many of us like what Germany has done—feed-in tariffs. In Vermont, without state regulations, one of our major utilities has unilaterally instituted those with good results. A lot of the utilities are tied into coal and to gas, and they will be resistant. There’s always resistance to change. But I think we have the wind at our backs, or the sun in our faces, or whatever. We are making progress.

Q. What’s the road forward for the bill? Any chance it will be part of the upcoming jobs bill?

A. It’s certainly something I would like to see. In any vehicle, any venue we can get, we’re going to push it.

Related Links:

Palin bashes ‘cap and tax’ and commends Obama on nuclear

The Climate Post: In which it feels like everything has come to a full stop

Anti-jobs ‘California Jobs Initiative’ crew threatens suit over name change

by Umbra Fisk

Dearest readers,

Sometimes when I’m down in the stacks researching answers to
your latest dilemmas, I enjoy taking a stroll down Ask Umbra archives lane. Here
are some sparkly tidbits I culled from my past advice on lessening your impact on
that sweet little romantic holiday, Valentine’s Day. Have any of your own
sustainable loving tips or stories? Let me know in the comments section below
or shoot me an email.

Break up
with your blow-up doll.
And that jelly vibrator, while you’re at it.
Lots of popular sex toys are made of PVC—a fancy name for vinyl (no
vinyl, that’s final)—or with plastic-softening, hormone-disrupting phthalates.
Heat and agitation from use can cause toxins to leach from the toys—not hot. Get the
full Ask Umbra answer.

Pull the
e-card.
About a billion Valentine’s Day cards are
sent globally each year. Don’t let your Valentine greeting be just another
number: Save some paper (and a few bucks) by sending your snookums a well-selected e-card instead. Get the
full Ask Umbra answer.

Channel
Martha Stewart.
Eschew conventional consumption, and get a
little crafty for your Valentine. Put together some memorable photos, write a
poem, or bake a tasty vegan
chocolate cake. Get the
full Ask Umbra answer.

Sweeten the
deal.
If traditional is your middle name, then your
parents were a little odd, no? Anyway, perhaps you’re inclined to give a more
classic V Day gift like chocolate. Because of issues like child labor, low
wages, pesticide use, and deforestation, pay careful attention when picking
sweets for your sweetie. Look for chocolate that’s both fair-trade and organic.
Get the full Ask Umbra answer.

Turn on
the green light in the bedroom.
Set the mood in your boudoir with
sustainable hemp sheets,
dimmed lighting, organic
massage oils, and vegan condoms. Then pop in a steamy movie—An Inconvenient Truth, perhaps?—and let
the magic begin. Get the full
Ask Umbra answer.

Lovingly,
Umbra

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on engagement rings, straws, and napkins

Ask Umbra’s video advice on making your own club soda

Ask Umbra on sustainable manufacturing jobs, sexless fish, and matches

by Grist

Series redirect.

Related Links:

Coal: clean it up or move on?

Climate Citizens

A rollicking tour of America’s energy landscape

by Brad Johnson

Cross-posted from Wonk Room.

In a series of hard-hitting television ads, a liberal veterans
advocacy organization challenges Republican lawmakers for blocking
clean energy legislation that would cut oil funds to terrorists. As
part of a $2 million television ad campaign,
VoteVets has released a national spot as well as ones targeting Senate
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), and Sen.
John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) for their opposition to climate and clean energy
legislation. Other ads challenge representatives in Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, and South Dakota.
As the spots point out, each member has taken thousands of dollars from
oil companies that have operations in nations like Iran, Libya, Saudi
Arabia, Iraq, Nigeria, and Algeria. The national ad explains the connection between our dependence on oil and terrorists like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab:

Terrorists. They’re trying to kill Americans at home and
our troops abroad. And who’s footing the bill for the attacks against
us? Oil money. Filtered through secret organizations in the Middle East
and countries like Iran. When oil money hands up in the hands of our enemies, Americans pay the ultimate price.
We’ve got to protect ourselves and end our dependence on foreign oil.
Tell Congress: Pass the Clean Energy and American Power Act now.

Watch it:

The local spots are unflinching, featuring local veterans of the
Iraq War. Veteran Benjamin Cossel, of Pine Bluffs, Wy. tells Sen.
Barrasso to “decide whose side he’s on”—the terrorist-enabling oil
companies that have given him $50,500, or the American people:

For thirty years, we’ve been warned about the danger of
spending billions of dollars oil. The United States military calls it a
major threat to our security. And on Christmas Day over Detroit, we
were reminded again how oil money can support terrorism against us. But
even today, Sen. John Barrasso won’t break our addiction. And he won’t
break his own. Call Sen. Barrasso. It’s time for him to decide whose side he’s on.

Veteran James Sander of Columbia, Mo. challenges Rep. Blunt for taking
$151,000 in oil money and voting against the Waxman-Markey American
Clean Energy and Security Act:

When a terrorist tried to attack us on Christmas Day, I
was reminded why I’m willing to risk my life for America’s security and
why we need to stop sending billions in oil money to countries with
ties to terrorism. But Congressman Blunt voted against the bipartisan
clean energy bill that could cut our dependence in half. And he’s taken
thousands from oil companies that do business in countries with ties to
terrorism. Congressman: it’s time to put America’s security ahead of
your own politics.

George Zubaty, of Louisville, KY takes on the minority leader for taking $150,800 in dirty oil cash:

When a terrorist tried to attack us on Christmas Day, I
was reminded why I’m willing to risk my life for America’s security and
why we need to stop sending billions in oil money to countries with
ties to terrorism. But Sen. Mitch McConnell is against against the
bipartisan clean energy bill that could cut our dependence in half. And
he’s taken thousands from oil companies that do business in countries
with ties to terrorism. Sen. McConnell: it’s time to put America’s
security ahead of your own politics.

As the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review noted, “climate change,
energy security, and economic stability are inextricably linked.” And
the number one link is our deadly dependence on petroleum.

Related Links:

Pentagon: ‘Climate change, energy security, and economic stability are inextricably linked’

Water, conflict, and security on the banks of the Hudson

Veteran wins groundbreaking claim for Agent Orange exposure at Georgia military base

by Eric Roston

First things first: President Barack Obama
defended a market-based system to limit the pollution of heat-trapping
gases, a core part of his legislative agenda, even as he acknowledged
the Senate may pursue an energy bill without one. He spoke to a “town
hall” meeting in Nashua, N.H., about the potential of Senators removing
technology-and-jobs legislation from the context of a larger climate
bill: “We may be able to separate these things out. And it’s conceivable that that’s where the Senate ends up.”

Unlike last year, the White House’s proposed 2011 budget,
which came out Monday, assumes no revenue from a “cap-and-trade”
program. In a footnote, the administration says that in the event
revenues materialize, they should be used in “climate-related purposes”
for industry and consumers. The budget eliminates fossil-fuel
subsidies, boosts EPA funding to implement its greenhouse gas
regulations, and triples loan guarantees to the nuclear industry, to
$54 billion, an olive branch to the GOP that is likely to rankle the
left.

The key Republican in the Senate climate debate, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, pushed back at his colleagues who favored an energy-only bill, saying, “If the
approach is to try to pass some half-assed energy bill and say that’s
moving the ball down the road, forget it with me.”

Washington beyond politics: The Defense
Department includes a dense, serious four pages on climate change and
energy security in its 128-page Quadrennial Defense Review [pp 84-88]. Planners write that global warming will challenge the kinds
of missions the military will carry out. The authors rely on official
U.S. scientific reports, including the U.S. Global Change Research
Program’s 2009 overview,
and intelligence sources. The QDR observes that “climate-related
changes are already being observed in every region of the world,
including the United States and its coastal waters.” Climate change, to
Defense planners is “an accelerant of instability or conflict.” The
military will also have to adapt to changes along with everyone else: “In 2008, the National Intelligence Council judged that more than 30
U.S. military installations were already facing elevated levels of risk
from rising sea levels.”

Politics beyond Washington: The Quadrennial Defense Review provides a sobering dose of reality to
the political arena, where the driving motivation for strong policy is
employment. And that message faces strong headwinds.

In California, fiscal woe is undermining public support for
leadership in climate and environmental policy. A bill to repeal the
state’s climate solutions law, known as A.B. 32, has failed in the
legislature. It would have suspended the law’s implementation, due in
2012, until California’s state employment rate falls to 5.5 percent,
from the current 12.4 percent. Opponents are pressing for a November public referendum to repeal. Separately, the oil, chemical, and trucking industries are suing California over its low-carbon fuels regulations, which took effect
last month. The suit charges that the state rules violate the
constitution by interfering with interstate trade. The rules, they
argue, discriminate against out-of-state fuel companies.

Internationally, the Guardian concludes from chats with international climate specialists that “a global deal
to tackle climate change is all but impossible in 2010,” leaving an
uneasy trajectory.  Jan. 31 was the “soft” deadline for nations to
submit to the UNFCC their emissions reduction commitments or national
mitigation actions. Fifty-countries complied with the deadline set out
in the Copenhagen Accord, including the European Union members. Top
U.N. officials who assessed the pledges have expressed concern that the numbers are very unlikely
to meet the political aspiration of keeping global warming limited to
two degrees. The U.S. submitted language similar to what Obama promised
at Copenhagen, a 17 percent emissions cut below 2005 levels in 2020.
Europe would reduce 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. China and
India have pledged reductions in the carbon-intensity of their fuels.

Intergovernmental Panel for Corrections and Clarifications: Twenty-six percent of the Netherlands is below sea level. This unremarkable fact surfaced this week after a Dutch magazine discovered the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) put 55 percent of
the land below the threshold in its 2007 report (55 percent of the land
is vulnerable to flooding). Finger-pointing ensued. Perhaps the IPCC
was thinking not of the modern Netherlands, but the Batavian Republic
of the late 18th century, which was smaller and more concentrated by
the sea?

How can such mistakes be avoided in the future? If you ask
cryptographers how to reduce the potential for mistakes, they’ll tell
you to publish everything about a cryptographic system publicly. If
there are security flaws, some enterprising hacker will find them. The
same idea applies to Wikipedia, whose quality control is only as good
as its volunteer community gardeners. It’s not a new idea. Attending a
livestock exhibition a century ago, the scientist Francis Galton was
surprised to discover that in a contest, no individual accurately
guessed the weight of an ox, yet the average of more than 800 guesses
hit the mark.

If so many of us are interested in helping scrutinize the second
review draft of the fifth IPCC report, perhaps there is a way to make
it easier for good Samaritan fact-checkers to root out what turn out to
be dumb mistakes. The IPCC is already an openly collaborative
work—scientific peer review is the original “crowdsourced” enterprise. And the organization is up front about the process by which it produces its comprehensive reports [pdf]. How can public readers of Web-published drafts strengthen the next final report?

Concerns about a lack of crowdsourcing go to the heart of
accusations over what, if anything, was wrong or distasteful about the
tranche of more than 1,000 e-mail messages hacked out of University of
East Anglia servers late last year. Yesterday, an ad hoc committee of
Pennsylvania State University administrators cleared paleoclimatologist
Michael Mann on three of four concerns arising from the UEA e-mails [pdf]:
that he made up or falsified data; disregarded protections on other
researchers; and failed to disclose financial conflicts of interests. A
fourth inquiry—“failure to comply with other applicable legal
requirements governing research or other scholarly activities”—will be
looked at by a group of faculty members, because the administrative
committee wasn’t in a proper position to evaluate.

Question of the week: If you’ve read this far down, and do every week, you officially are a friend of the Climate Post. Thank you. Lunch with a couple friends of Climate Post turned on a—perhaps the—central
question in talking about this stuff: How (on Earth) can we tell
experiential, photo-friendly stories about a phenomena experienced most confidently
only by satellites, digitized ocean buoys, and air-sipping,
laser-blasting, carbon-dioxide-molecule counting machines? In the post-Copenhagen world of Waxman-Markey purgatory, what do we talk about when we talk about climate change?

Have you personally experienced global warming? And how do you know
that, exactly? Let’s hear about it. We can crowdsource the big story embedded in
them.

IPCC, brown-paper cover edition: In a move no one could have foreseen, embattled IPCC chief Rejendra Pachauri last month published a lascivious romance novel, Return to Almora, which he wrote during recent years traveling the world as a celebrity scientist. Full stop.

Related Links:

A chat with Sen. Bernie Sanders on his new 10 million solar roofs bill

Anti-jobs ‘California Jobs Initiative’ crew threatens suit over name change

Digging into Obama’s 2011 budget on energy and the environment

by Jeff Biggers

I miss Van Jones.  A lot of us miss President Obama’s former green jobs visionary.

That includes coal miners and residents on Coal River Mountain.

If President Obama’s brilliant green jobs administrator hadn’t been hounded out of office in a bizarre witch hunt last fall, we would be engaged in an exciting discussion about pursuing a just transition to a clean energy economy at ground zero in our nation’s energy policy and climate debate—the coalfields.

While clean energy jobs are a hot topic in the president’s vision—and State of the Union—Van Jones was one of a few administrators in Washington, D.C., who also envisioned a fair share of green jobs for the Big Coal-strangled coalfields in Appalachia, the Midwest and the West, not just the rest of the country.

Last week, the president spoke about the need for a transition in West Virginia’s coalfields—by calling for more coal and the new bridge to nowhere in the guise of carbon capture and storage.  He declared:

For example, nobody’s been a bigger promoter of clean coal technology than I am. In testament to that, I ended up being in a whole bunch of advertisements that you guys saw all the time about investing in ways for us to burn coal more cleanly.

And then the president offered:

What I want to do is with West Virginia to figure out how we can seize that future. But to do that, that means there’s going to have to be some transition. We can’t operate the coal industry in the United States as if we’re still in the 1920s or the 1930s or the 1950s. We’ve got to be thinking, what does that industry look like in the next hundred years?

Next hundred years?  Even West Virginia Congressman and Big Coal peddler Nick Rahall has openly discussed the issue of Appalachia facing a “peak coal” crisis within 20 years.

In the president’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the entire state of Kentucky, for example, only received $4.7 million in green job funds and initiatives—while billions of dollars continue to be poured into the Big Coal black hole to cover external health care and environmental costs, including defaulted black lung payments.

A study released by the National Academy of Scientists in October found that the “hidden costs” of coal amount to more than $62 billion in “external damages” to our health and lives.  According to a West Virginia University report this year, the coal industry “costs the Appalachian region five times more in early deaths than it provides in economic benefits.” A recent Mountain Association of Community Economic Development study concluded that coal is responsible for $528 million in state revenues and $643 million in state expenditures in Kentucky alone.

While Kentucky ranks 46-47th in per capita income, coal mining hubs like Clay, Harlan, and Martin County rank as some of the poorest counties in the nation.

Thanks to mountaintop removal mining and greater mechanization, employment in these coalfield areas has dropped by nearly 50 percent in the last generation.

A year ago at the Powershift clean energy conference in Washington, DC, Jones declared: “This movement also has to include the coal miners.” He added. “We could have clean coal, and we could have unicorns pull our cars for us.”

While our president continues to carry Jones’ clean energy banner, he still glibly clings to “clean coal” slogans, a motto introduced by Chicago coal pusher Francis Peabody in the 1890s, and used over the past century whenever the coal industry faces an image problem and seeks to derail any diversification in our coalfield economies.

In 2008, Jones noted:

I think it’s important that we be respectful of all the contributions that have been made by all workers. Even our coal workers are heros in a way … in that they’ve been asked to sacrifice their lungs, their health, their communities. We’re now asking our coal miners to blow up their grandmother’s mountains! Awful … Mountaintop removal and strip-mining … Those coal miners don’t set the energy policy in this country but they have to make the sacrifices to carry it out. I think that sometimes we aren’t respectful enough, that we’re not as encouraging and honoring of the people who have gotten America to this point.

Van Jones understood, like the majority of coalfield residents not on the payroll of a coal company, that mountaintop removal mining—and strip mining, in general—have blindsided any progress for sustainable economic development and clean energy jobs in Appalachia, and other coal mining regions.

Just ask residents fending off mountaintop removal in the Coal River Valley today.

As blasting continues daily at the Bee Tree Branch area of the massive 6,600-acre mountaintop removal mine on historic Coal River Mountain today, our nation’s most exciting clean energy initiative and green jobs breakthrough for the coalfields is being destroyed.  Coal River Mountain is being blown to bits, and with it, any sustainable economic future for the area.  Unlike the limited 14-year supply of coal on the site, the Coal River Wind project would have provided long-term energy for 70,000-150,000 households, an estimated 200 jobs and $1.7 million in annual county taxes.

Says Eric Mathis of the JOBS project in Mingo County, W. Va.:

Sustainable economic development not only needs to start in the coalfields but has to start in the coalfields if only for the fact that America has a long standing commitment to operating within the boundaries of democracy. Boundaries which seek to limit the monopolization of markets and more importantly peoples choice. For this reason America owes coalfield residents a choice to decide their own fate. Sustainable economic development provides a viable choice that shatters the 150 year legacy of a monopolized workforce. As our great county transitions to a carbon neutral economy we owe coalfield residents our greatest and sincere respect for building our country and bringing us through two world wars. For this reason, the JOBS project intends to show respect to these communities by providing a choice for what type of development they want to see.

Van Jones would be standing at Coal River Mountain today, as part of Clean Energy Week.  He would have made sure that the coalfields—in Appalachia, the heartland, and the west—were included in the clean energy future.

Related Links:

The people speak out in favor of stronger smog standards

My whiz-bang light rail is your pain in the asphalt

EPA capitulates on ethanol, hearts clean coal

by Stephanie Ogburn

.series-head{background:url(http://www.grist.org/i/assets/special_series/n2_dilemma_series_header.gif) no-repeat; height:68px;} .series-head a{display:block; width:949px; height:68px; text-indent:-9999px;} .series-head a{margin-left:-70px; margin-top:-10px;} .series-head span{visible:none;}

Few people spare a thought for nitrogen. 
But with every bite we take—of an apple, a chicken leg, a leaf of spinach—we are consuming nitrogen. Plants, including food crops, can’t thrive without a ready supply of available nitrogen in the soil.

The amount of
food a farmer could grow was once limited by his or her ability to supplement soil
nitrogen, either by planting cover crops, applying manure, or moving on to a
new, more fertile field. Then, about 100 years ago, a technical innovation enabled us to
produce a cheap synthetic form of nitrogen, and voila! Agriculture’s nitrogen
limitation problem was solved.  The age
of industrial nitrogen fertilizers had begun. 

The breakthrough, by German
chemists Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch (rhymes with posh), made it possible to
grow many, many, many more crops per acre. For the last 50 years, farmers
around the world have used synthetic nitrogen fertilizers to boost their crop
yields and drive the 20th century’s rapid agricultural
intensification.

But in their fervor to increase
yields, farmers often dose their crops with more nitrogen than the plants can absorb.
The excess is now causing serious air and water pollution and threatening human
health. Ironically, all that fertilizer may even be ruining the very soil it was
meant to enrich.

Nitrogen, it seems, has a
dark side, and it has created serious problems that we are only now beginning
to reckon with.

Nitrogen kills a bay

To see nitrogen’s ill effects up close head to the mid-Atlantic coast and visit
the Chesapeake Bay, the nation’s largest estuary. Once the site of a highly
productive fishery and renowned for its oysters, crabs, and clams, today the
bay is most famous for its ecological ruin.

On Dec. 9, 2008, the
Environmental Protection Agency’s restoration program for the Chesapeake Bay
marked its 25th anniversary. Other than the passing of the years, there wasn’t
much to celebrate. The Chesapeake Bay Program’s goal is rehabilitation of the
vastly polluted estuary, yet its 2008 “Bay Barometer” assessment found that “despite
small successes in certain parts of the ecosystem and specific
geographic
areas, the overall health of the Chesapeake Bay did not improve in
2008.” (The fight to save the Chesapeake continues; in 2009, President
Obama ordered the federal EPA to lead the ongoing cleanup efforts, but
groups involved are still arguing over the details.)

A significant portion of
the Chesapeake Bay pollution comes from agricultural operations whose
nutrient-rich runoff—in the form of excess nitrogen and phosphorus—fills the
Bay’s waters, leading to algal blooms, fish kills, habitat degradation, and bacteria proliferations that endanger human health.

The nitrogen runoff comes
from the synthetic fertilizer applied to farm fields, as well as the manure generated
from the intensive chicken farming on the east bay. Of course, the nitrogen in
that chicken manure—some 650 million pounds per year, according to The New York Times— can largely be traced to
synthetic nitrogen; the chickens are merely recycling the synthetic fertilizer
that was originally applied to feed crops.

This type of reactive
nutrient pollution is now so common that the dead zones, acidified lakes, and
major habitat degradation it can cause are occurring with greater frequency,
not just in the Chesapeake Bay, but in other parts of the United States and around the world.

Bombs away:
Synthetic nitrogen comes of age

Nitrogen is ubiquitous. It makes up 78 percent of the earth’s atmosphere. But
atmospheric nitrogen is inert. It exists in a stable, gaseous form (N2), which
plants cannot use. Unless nitrogen is made available to plants, either by
nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the soil or by the application of fertilizer, crops
won’t grow as productively.

The German chemists Haber and Bosch found a
way around this availability problem. Originally conceived as a way to make explosives for war, their technique turned inert nitrogen gas into highly
reactive ammonia (NH3), a form of nitrogen that can be applied to soil and
absorbed by plants. With their discovery, nitrogen ceased to be a limiting
factor in agriculture.

The widespread use of
synthetic fertilizer took off after World War II when innovations allowed nitrogen fertilizer
to be produced inexpensively and on a grand scale. When Norman Borlaug, a leader of the Green Revolution,
and other plant breeders began developing and exporting dwarf, high-yielding,
fertilizer-loving varieties of corn and wheat, the new chemical fertilizer
addiction went global. In 1960, farmers in developed and developing countries
applied about 10 million metric tons of nitrogen fertilizer to their fields. In
2005, they applied 100 million metric tons.

This order of magnitude
increase coincided with the Green Revolution. Indeed, nitrogen fertilizer is
largely responsible for the phenomenal crop yield increases of the past 45
years. Without the additional food production fueled by nitrogen fertilizer,
researchers estimate that two billion fewer people would be alive today.

Shifting shapes, getting around

Modern agriculture—and, consequently, present-day human society—depends on
the widespread availability of cheap nitrogen fertilizer, the ingredient that
makes our high-yielding food system possible. But the industrialization of this
synthetic nitrogen fertilizer has come with costs.

The high temperatures and
very high pressures needed to transform N2 to NH3 are energy intensive. About
one percent of the world’s annual energy consumption is used to produce ammonia,
most of which becomes nitrogen fertilizer. That’s about 80 million metric tons
(or roughly one percent) of annual global CO2 emissions—a significant carbon
footprint.

Nearly half that
fertilizer is used to grow feed for livestock. Herds then return the nitrogen
to the landscape, where it contributes to several different kinds of pollution—the
second cost of synthetic nitrogen.

Synthetic fertilizer is
made with reactive nitrogen—that’s what makes the fertilizer easy for plants to
use. As it turns out, though, reactive nitrogen doesn’t always stay where you
put it. Farmers may apply this synthetic fertilizer to their cornfields, but the
nitrogen in it will happily engage with the soil carbon, oxygen, and water in
its environment. This is the essential problem with reactive nitrogen—its
ability to morph and move around, often to unhealthy ends (see illustration).

Estimates vary on just
how much nitrogen escapes from fields and remains reactive and potentially
harmful, but it’s not unreasonable to assume that plants absorb 30 to 50
percent of the nitrogen in the soil. So if a farmer applies 125 pounds of
nitrogen fertilizer to an acre of corn, 30-50 percent of it will end up in the
corn; as much as 70 percent—or 87 pounds per acre—could end up somewhere else.

‘N’ stands for ‘Needs to improve’

There is an obvious way around this nitrogen problem: use less fertilizer more efficiently. But
there’s not much incentive to cut back.

Farmers
get paid by the ton, which makes yields the driving force of modern
agriculture. Most agronomists agree that farmers can get the same yields
without applying as much fertilizer and manure as they now do. But few farmers
are willing to take that chance. Many farmers use fertilizer as a form of insurance; better to apply a little too much and get high yields than apply too little and risk yield (and profit) declines.

 The challenge then is to
find a way to provide plants with enough nutrients to maintain high yields
while also minimizing nitrogen leakages. This may sound straightforward, but
it’s tough to find mainstream farmers who are using nitrogen efficiently and
safely. There simply aren’t incentives to do so. Fertilizer is cheap, and
polluters don’t pay.

The situation might
change if nitrous oxide becomes regulated under climate legislation. But in the
climate bills currently making their way through Congress, agricultural
emissions are explicitly exempted from any cap. Even if ag-related nitrous
oxide emissions did get capped, policies would have to address efficiency
directly. Otherwise, a climate-focused policy risks encouraging farmers to adopt practices that simply force the
reactive nitrogen in another direction—into ground and surface water, for
example.

Farmers
don’t over-apply nitrogen on purpose. Nor do they want to contribute to estuary
pollution and dead zones. But for 40 years, we’ve invested in a type of
agriculture that rewards high yields over all other considerations.

U.S. grain farmers
operate under pressure to generate volume, and have little or no incentive to
conserve synthetic nitrogen along the way. Under the Farm Bill, commodity
farmers get subsidies based on how many bushels they churn out, not how
efficiently they use nitrogen. Even when fertilizer prices spiked in 2008,
synthetic nitrogen remained a remarkably cheap resource—and corn farmers had
every economic reason to lay it on liberally.

In their
2009 paper in the Annual Review of Environment and Resources, researchers G.
Philip Robertson from the University of Michigan and Peter M. Vitousek from Stanford noted that the cost of applying a little
additional nitrogen to a cornfield is more than paid for by the marginal gains
in yield. In other words, corn is really cheap—but nitrogen is even cheaper.

Scientists now know that
this arrangement can’t last forever—agricultural intensification has come with
enormous costs. They also know there are other ways to manage crops and reward
farmers. The Rodale Institute’s research on high yield production using
cover crops to build soil organic matter and biologically fix nitrogen provides
one example of a potential alternative to current practices. But the incentive
structure around farming must change.

No longer can
farm-support policy blindly push maximum yield. Farmers should be rewarded at
least as much for conserving nitrogen and building the organic matter in soil.
Rodale’s research suggests that those goals can be achieved without sacrificing
much in the way of long-term yield.

Twenty-five years ago,
the Commonwealths of Pennsylvania and Virginia, the state of Maryland, and the
District of Columbia formally agreed to cooperate with the United States
Environmental Protection Agency, in order “to fully address the extent,
complexity, and sources of pollutants entering the [Chesapeake] Bay.” As it
turns out, the Bay and other nitrogen-threatened ecosystems need more than cooperation to get healthy. They need the kind of political will that will take nitrogen
efficiency and impacts seriously—and force actual changes to agricultural
practices. And endangered ecosystems need for those changes to happen soon. We don’t have
another quarter century to spare.

Related Links:

With climate legislation flat on its back, Collin Peterson goes in for the kill

Why you should go see ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’

Why are libertarian right wingers defending a dysfunctional, state-engineered food system?

by Adam Browning

This is funny.

A group in California is working on a ballot initiative to suspend implementation of AB 32, the state’s global warming law, until California’s unemployment drops below 5.5% for four consecutive quarters. No big fans of green jobs, one presumes. Their proposed title? The “California Jobs Initiative.”

The Luntzian nomenclature reminds me of Bush’s “Healthy Forests Initiative,” which did have its own perverse logic, in that a clearcut forest and denuded hillsides are significantly less at risk for major fires.

In any event, California Attorney General Jerry Brown gets final say on ballot initiative naming, and he prefers: “Suspends air pollution control laws requiring major polluters to
report and reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.”

Now the sponsoring group is reportedly threatening to sue.

Which reminds me of Fox News’ lawsuit against Al Franken for using “Fair and Balanced” in his book title—an effort entirely welcomed by Franken, as the controversy put his book onto bestseller lists and kept it there for a long time.

Fox had the last laugh, though. After the judge threw out their case, they dropped their lawsuit, saying:

“It’s time to return Al Franken to the obscurity that he’s normally accustomed to,” Fox News spokeswoman Irena Steffen said.

Anyway, I wonder what Senator Franken has to say about the ballot initiative?

Related Links:

A chat with Sen. Bernie Sanders on his new 10 million solar roofs bill

The Climate Post: In which it feels like everything has come to a full stop

The jobs are in the trees

by Paul Gipe

The
National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has issued a long-awaited legal
analysis of how states could implement feed-in tariffs and still comply with
federal law.

The January 2010 report, “Renewable Energy Prices in State-Level Feed-in Tariffs: Federal
Law Constraints and Possible Solutions,” was written principally by
Scott Hempling with the National Regulatory Research Institute (NRRI) under
contract to NREL.

Hempling treads ground that others have tread before him, including
California’s Attorney General, Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown. The Attorney General
filed comments on who has jurisdiction to set feed-in tariffs
with California’s Public Utility Commission in August of 2009. Brown concluded
that the state could set feed-in tariffs sufficient to pay for renewable energy
development while complying with federal law.

NRRI’s Hempling, like Brown, concludes that states can offer feed-in tariffs,
but the programs creating the feed-in tariffs must be structured in a way that
meets federal requirements.

There’s ample ammunition in the Hempling report to stoke either side in the
feed-in tariff debate.

Opponents have long argued that feed-in tariffs are illegal in the U.S. They
will find ample solace in the report that the European or Canadian approach of
setting specific tariffs directly won’t comply with current federal law or its
interpretation. Hempling says, in essence, that states can’t set specific
tariffs above “avoided cost” under the Public Utility Regulatory
Policies Act (PURPA) of 1978.

However, Hempling goes on to chart a path to implementing feed-in tariffs that
avoids the regulatory minefield under PURPA and the Federal Power Act. Hempling
describes how states can set total payments, or equivalent feed-in tariffs,
above avoided cost in compliance with federal law. The path may appear more
circuitous, in comparison to that in other countries, but it is, nevertheless,
clear.

Feed-in tariff programs work best, that is, they quickly develop a significant
amount of renewable energy, when the tariffs are based on the cost of
generation plus a reasonable profit. In these programs, there are a suite of
tariffs for solar PV, another set for wind energy, and so on. The tariffs for
solar PV in these programs are much higher than the “avoided cost” of
a conventional natural gas-fired power plant in the U.S.

California’s largely ineffective feed-in tariff introduced at the end of 2008
pays $0.096 USD/kWh for projects installed in 2010. The tariff—there is only
one tariff—is based on the Market Price Referent, California’s term of art for
the avoided cost of a natural gas-fired plant. By mid 2009 the tariff had
resulted in only 17 MW of generation. Even with generous federal subsidies,
this tariff is insufficient for most technologies, but especially for solar PV,
the most expensive of the new renewable energy technologies.

There are two paths to lawful feed-in tariffs argues Hempling: the PURPA path
and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) path.

The PURPA path

Feed-in
tariffs can be lawful under PURPA if the feed-in tariffs are
“voluntarily” offered by the utility, or if the tariffs are based on
“avoided cost” and any additional payments necessary to make workable
tariffs are derived from:

Renewable Energy Credits (or certificates),
Subsidies (cash grants), or
Utility tax credits equivalent to the amount of the
    additional payment (as in Washington State).

These “supplemental” forms of payment fall outside FERC’s
jurisdiction.

Voluntary tariffs

Feed-in
tariffs, whether above avoided cost or not, are permissible if a utility
proposes them “voluntarily” as in Indiana where Indianapolis Power
& Light (IP&L) has a suite of proposed tariffs before the state’s
Utility Regulatory Commission. IP&L has proposed a solar PV tariff for
systems from 20 kW to 100 kW of $0.24 USD/kWh—a tariff clearly above the current
avoided cost of gas-fired plants.

This provision is less useful than it first appears. In states where earnings
are not decoupled from investments in generation, it is not in the
self-interest of utilities to offer functional feed-in tariffs that supplant
their own generation with non-utility generation.

Additional payments

Both
Hempling’s report and Brown’s PUC filing argue PURPA stipulates the payment of
“avoided cost.” This restriction doesn’t preclude other forms of
payment that “tops up” or adds to the avoided cost. Thus, the total
payment, or total tariff, can be based on the cost of generation. These top up
payments can come from many sources: Renewable Energy Credits, subsidies or
other payments, and state tax credits.

Renewable Energy Credits

In states with Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS), or renewable energy
mandates, utilities are required to produce a certain portion of their
generation with renewable energy. Regulators track the amount of renewable
energy generated by issuing “credits” for units of renewable energy.
These credits can be traded, and the trades establish a value that can be added
to the avoided cost. However, it is not necessary to trade the credits to
establish their value.

The value of the credits can be established administratively for any of a host
of reasons: environmental values, climate change avoidance, distributed
benefits, and so on. Thus, the total tariff can include a Renewable Energy
Credit designed to reach the total cost of generation plus a reasonable profit
when added to the “avoided cost”.

Other payments

Similarly, other forms of payments can be added to the avoided cost. Hempling
suggests subsidies or cash grants as the top up payment, but it need not be
limited to taxpayer subsidies.

Swiss feed-in tariffs, for example, pay a tariff that is comprised of two
parts: the wholesale cost, and a top up payment. In the Swiss system, the top
up payment is paid out of a Systems Benefit Charge, a pool of money collected
from ratepayers for a public good, in this case the development of renewable
energy.

Creating a pool of funds to pay for the portion of tariffs that exceed the
avoided cost through a Systems Benefit Charge can work, but the policy must be
designed with care. Such charges create a defined and, therefore potentially
limited, pool of funds. These pools can, depending upon design, effectively
place a monetary cap on renewable energy programs separate from the physical
targets in RPS programs. While this defined pool of funds might be appealing to
timid politicians wanting to limit the perceived cost of renewable energy, it
often leads to a boom and bust cycle so characteristic of U.S. renewable energy
policy.

However, successful feed-in tariff programs, such as in Germany, use what is in
essence a Systems Benefit Charge. The charge, and hence the size of the pool,
is “flexible” and is applied to ratepayers after-the-fact, that is,
the pool is sized to pay for the renewables on the system. Unlike pools where
the charge is fixed and the pool of funds to pay for renewable generation is
limited, Germany’s pool adjusts annually to pay for the actual amount of
renewable generation. The pool expands as more renewables are added and the
charge to ratepayers adjusts accordingly.

The German strategy of flexible or annually adjusted charges make sense because
it is not inconceivable that as more renewables are added to the system, and as
fossil fuels becomes more expensive, the charges, or “overcost” as the
French call them, will actually decrease.

French bank Caisse des Dépôts examined the overcost of French feed-in tariffs in late 2008. Their
findings flew in the face of conventional wisdom: as more renewables were added
to the system, especially wind, the overcost declined.

State utility tax credits

Washington state’s net-metering policy was built around a top up payment that
utilities could offset with state tax credits. The total payments, while
attractive, have only been modestly successful because of numerous restrictions
on the program to limit the program’s cost to the state treasury.

FERC path

Feed-in
tariffs can also be lawful under the Federal Power Act if the tariffs are

Cost-based, or
Market-based.

If the tariffs are cost-based, each contract must be reviewed by FERC, says
Hempling. Thus, if a homeowner installs a 5 kW solar system and signs a
contract with a utility, it must have the contract reviewed by FERC. This is a
nightmare scenario for small power producers.

If the tariffs are market-based, such as through an “auction,” the
“seller” must issue a “market-power” report to FERC every
three years. Again, compliance through this route is too cumbersome for
widespread adoption.

Less
than 20 MW exemption

However,
Hempling notes that these onerous conditions could be superseded if FERC took
one of several actions. Most importantly, FERC has granted
“exemptions” from PURPA for generators less than 20 MW. These
generators can sell at any price without seeking FERC approval. Hempling
suggests that state regulatory commissions could ask FERC for a
“clarification” that above avoided-cost tariffs would qualify
automatically for the less than 20 MW exemptions if they met certain conditions.
This is a promising near-term fix that would allow compliance with PURPA and
the Federal Power Act without relying on a two-tiered tariff made up of avoided
cost and some form of additional payment.

The California Energy Commission in its 2009 Integrated Energy Policy Report recommends that
the state seek “clarification of federal law to ensure that states can
implement cost-based feed-in tariffs.”

Other exemptions

Hempling
notes that Hawaii, Alaska, and most of Texas are exempt from the Federal Power
Act.

Long-term solutions

While
the use of RECs or SBC funds to pay for the portion of feed-in tariffs above
avoided cost is administratively more complex and consequently more costly than
simply setting a tariff and putting the cost in the rate base, it can be done.
Regulatory commissions and the utilities themselves are fully capable of, and in
fact do, administer such funds in several states.

While such a system can work, and in the U.S. legal system since the Civil War,
it may be necessary, such an approach treats renewable energy differently than
utility-owned conventional generation that is put into the rate base. It treats
renewables as a cost to the system and to ratepayers not as an integral part of
the utility system as in Ontario and Germany.

That the principle federal law governing renewable energy, PURPA, treats
renewable energy in this second-class way shouldn’t be surprising, considering
that the law passed more than three decades ago. Even then the first major wind
farms were not erected in California until several years later when the PUC
created the world’s first feed-in tariff, California’s famous Interim Standard
Offer Contract No. 4.

The bigger question of whether U.S. law will continue to treat renewable energy
as a burdensome addition to the existing utility system remains. Unless these
legal precedents in the U.S. are clarified or revised, the competitive
position of the U.S. will continue to erode in comparison to such states as China, India,
Germany, and Japan that look at renewable energy differently.

Germany confronted just such a question of how to treat renewable energy in the
late 1990s and the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, acted. The result is the
now famous Renewable Energy Sources Act, also known as the law on granting
renewable energy priority access to the grid. In the Act, renewable energy is
treated not only as a necessary and integral part of the electricity system, it
was given preference and the payments needed to profitably develop renewable
energy, even costly solar PV, were deemed desirable and the costs put in the
rate base.

While every German consumer pays out of pocket for renewable energy development
on their utility bill, study after study has consistently shown that the
benefits to both German consumers and German citizens as a whole outweigh the
monetary costs. In fact, the monetary benefits of offsetting conventional
generation from plants on the margin, the so-called merit-order effect, alone
outweighs the full cost of the tariffs, including the payments to Germany’s
massive development of solar PV.

Congressmen Jay Inslee and his co-sponsors have proposed fixes to PURPA in the
Waxman-Markey climate change bill. This may be the best that can be hoped for
from the currently dysfunctional U.S. Congress. But even this well-meaning effort
falls short of the re-orientation of U.S. renewable policy that is called for.

For now, the Hempling report clarifies for states that want to act how to do
so. For those that want to act, it points them in the direction they need to go
to meet FERC’s constraints. For those states that don’t want to act or are
afraid of doing so, the report gives them sufficient legal cover to avoid
taking the steps necessary.

To paraphrase a 68-page legal opinion: “Yes, we can implement feed-in
tariffs in the U.S. under existing law, we just have to do it differently than
everywhere else in the world.”

The path forward is clear for those states that want to aggressively develop
renewable energy in an equitable manner. The choice is theirs to make.

 

Related Links:

Supreme Court ruling increases importance of local energy

Study shows transmission costs for big wind are low!

British engineers slam home wind turbines as ‘eco-bling’

by Jonathan Hiskes

Seattle light rail. Photo courtesy LeeLeFever via Flickr One train, two views:

Getting to the airport from Seattle’s north side—its wealthier, whiter
half—on public transit first involves a bus ride downtown. From there, as of two
months ago, you can take a new
light-rail line, instead of another bus, to Sea-Tac Airport.
This north-side resident found the light rail underwhelming—the train chugs
along at street level at a modest speed, stopping 10 times, even stopping at
times for traffic lights. It’s still faster to take the express bus from
downtown.

So it was interesting to hear a south-side
community organizer speak Wednesday about working during the light-rail planning
process to get precisely the things that annoyed me. “We [told transit
planners] we wanted more stops and we don’t want intersections cut off,” said Yolanda Sinde,
who was speaking at the New
Partners for Smart Growth conference in Seattle.

I wasn’t blind to the fact that people live along
the route, or that a new transit service could be disruptive. But Sinde’s
comments were a reminder that low-carbon development in cities—or
anywhere—isn’t always equally beneficial to all communities.

It was a message driven home by others at the
urban-planning event: the principles of Smart Growth may be climate-friendly, but they haven’t always benefitted
low-income and minority neighborhoods.

“What is the difference between Smart Growth and
gentrification? This is a big question,” said Deeohn Ferris, an
environmental-health lawyer, consultant, and former official at the EPA and
National Wildlife Federation.

She questioned the myth that revitalizing poor
neighborhoods requires outside residents, outside role models, and outside
businesses. This attitude fails to appreciate the social networks and
entrepreneurship potential already in those places, she said.

Urban planners often look to build new
developments on abandoned lots and industrial sites—but that strategy isn’t
necessarily popular with locals.  “For
many, ‘Smart Growth’ means fancy infill from outside people,” Ferris said.
“‘Infill’ is a scary word to many communities.”

The environmental and social benefits of building
better cities coincide with each other much more than they conflict (I look
forward to learning more about this at this week’s conference). But enthusiasts
of Smart Growth/New Urbanism/happy-walkable-what-have-you design would do well
to work with environmental-justice leaders like Sinde and Ferris, who have
decades’ worth of knowledge about what poorly crafted development can do to
neighborhoods.

Related Links:

The people speak out in favor of stronger smog standards

Bring back Van Jones

EPA capitulates on ethanol, hearts clean coal

by Tom Philpott

Davos Annual Meeting 2010 – ADM CEO Patricia Woertz from World Economic Forum on Vimeo

The Yes Men, in their infinite genius, managed to get this on to the World Economic Forum site. Sigh. I heart the Yes Men.

Related Links:

Palin bashes ‘cap and tax’ and commends Obama on nuclear

Me, on Edible Radio

Oscar smiles upon ‘Food, Inc.,’ stiffs ‘Mr. Fox’

by Michael A. Livermore

In the
months leading up to President Obama’s inauguration, the Bush administration
rushed through a raft of controversial regulations. These “midnight
regulations,” like the one that would allow mining waste to be dumped into
rivers and streams in West Virginia, caused a major stir at
the time—but whatever happened to them? After a year in office, has
the new president been able to clean up his predecessor’s last minute
mess? The answer is a mixed bag of
attempts, delays, successes, and road blocks.

Among the
avalanche of over
150 midnight regulations issued in the waning days of Bush’s tenure, there
are several major environmental deregulations that make it easier for factory
farms to pollute, endangered species to be threatened, and hazardous waste to
be burned. Despite attempts by the
current administration, almost all of these remain in effect.

Part of
the reason for the holdup is that the outgoing Bush administration made a
special effort to limit the incoming president’s ability to reverse these rules
by finalizing them before handing the reins to Obama. This makes the rules very difficult to
reverse even for a well intentioned successor. Changes or cancellations must go through the same extensive and
politicized process as proposed rules themselves, so removing a bad rule can
take years and success is not guaranteed.

The Obama
administration froze pending regulations where possible—Rahm Emmanuel issued a
memo within hours of the inauguration which stopped all rulemaking. He also
asked agencies to consider delaying the effective date of the rules if they
were already published. But once the
regulations are on the books—as many of Bush’s last minute regulations
were—they cannot be withdrawn unilaterally.

Here is
how the White House and its allies are making progress on overturning nine high
profile environmental midnight regulations:

Congress

In one
case, the president successfully encouraged Congress to use appropriations measures
to overturn a midnight regulation which weakened endangered species
protections. Congressional actions are
effective and binding, but trying to use this method to withdraw each of Bush’s
last minute rules may not be politically feasible: other than riders in appropriations bills,
only stand-alone legislation or the rarely used Congressional Review Act can
strike down a bad midnight regulation. In this political climate, it is not likely that Obama will go back to
the Hill for more help.

Courts

Three of
these nine environmental regulations are being challenged in court by advocacy
groups: the
mountain top mining rule, a permissive oil shale drilling rule, and a
deregulation for air pollution from factory farms. The challenges are all making slow and
halting progress through the legal system.

While
suits are pending, EPA has the authority to ask the courts to suspend the effective
date of the rule, preventing it from being implemented in the meantime. It’s not clear why the agency has not done
this yet for these rules.  For example,
the Obama administration pushed back the effective date to May 2010 for a
midnight regulation that would no longer ask facilities to collect and report
certain kinds of pollution emissions.

Slow or stalled

In two
cases, administrative action to reverse midnight environmental rules has been
slow. Only recently has the
administration proposed rescinding a rule allowing the burning of hazardous
waste. In addition, another bad
rule—this one to weaken a standard governing recycling hazardous solid wastes—just
begun the long path towards reversal. EPA 
opened a public comment period on proposed revisions, but no further
action has been taken.

In another
two cases, midnight regulations are on the books and seem likely to
stand.: one, allowing concentrated
animal feeding operations to self-regulate their own pollution, and another
rule that makes it harder to limit the development of public lands.

Clearly
there are many issues on the president’s plate that have prevented faster
action to push back against these rules. That is why passing midnight regulations is an effective strategy: it forces a new president to make the choice
between challenging the actions of a past administration and moving forward
with a new agenda. Because they are
drafting aggressive new regulation on greenhouse gases and other issues, the
agencies have not been able to act decisively to overturn midnight
regulations: there is only so much time
in the day, and agency budgets are not exactly flush. But the tradeoff has been that the ghost of
the last administration is still haunting us, carrying out an
anti-environmental agenda well after it drew its last breath.

Related Links:

Bill Gates thinks about energy innovation

Digging into Obama’s 2011 budget on energy and the environment

Murkowski’s floor speech on EPA regulations was full of deceptions

by Sue Sturgis

Percent by which President Obama’s latest budget proposal would
increase taxpayer-backed loan guarantees to build new nuclear reactors:
300

Amount the Department of Energy under President Bush originally proposed spending on loan guarantees for nuclear reactors: $18.5 billion

Amount the Obama administration is now proposing to spend: $54 billion

Number of new reactors that Energy Secretary Steven Chu says that amount could support: 7 to 10

The
nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of the risk of
default on these loans, leaving taxpayers to pick up the tab: 50 percent

Potential
risk exposure to taxpayers based on various proposed scenarios for new
nuclear plant construction, as calculated by the Union of Concerned
Scientists: $360 billion to $1.6 trillion

Current price estimate for a new reactor: $10 billion

Of the 4 nuclear reactor construction projects considered front-runners for loan guarantees,* number in the south: 3

Early
cost estimate for the two reactors proposed for the V.C. Summer plant
in South Carolina, a joint project of SCE&G and Santee Cooper: $9.8 billion

Current cost estimate for that project: nearly $11 billion

Current
estimated cost of the project to build two new reactors at the Southern
Co./Georgia Power Plant Vogtle in Waynesboro, Ga.: $14 billion

Year
in which the Georgia legislature passed a law allowing Georgia Power to
begin charging customers for the Vogtle reactors even before they were
licensed: 2009

Date
on which the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced that
Westinghouse failed to demonstrate that the building designed to shield
its AP1000 reactor—the design slated for Vogtle and Summer—was
safe: 10/15/2009

Original cost estimate for the two reactors at the South Texas Project, which involves NRG Energy, CPS Energy, and Toshiba: $5.4 billion

Adjusted cost estimate announced last fall: $13 billion

Current cost estimate for the project: $17 billion

Amount
in damages CPS is seeking via a lawsuit that alleges NRG and Toshiba
conspired to mislead its officials on the reactors’ cost: $32 billion

Current estimated cost of the EPR reactor proposed for Calvert Cliffs in Maryland, not including financing: $10 billion

The estimated cost of an identical reactor being considered in Pennsylvania: $13 billion to $15 billion

During the previous nuclear push of the 1970s and 1980s, number of new plants utilities abandoned due to cost overruns: about 100

Estimated amount taxpayers and ratepayers paid for those abandoned plants: $40 billion

Amount ratepayers paid in today’s dollars in cost overruns for the plants that were built: over $200 billion

Year
in which Forbes called the previous round of nuclear plant
construction “the largest managerial disaster in business history, a
disaster on a monumental scale:” 1985

Estimated
additional amount it would cost to generate electricity today from 100
new nuclear reactors instead of generating the same amount of power
from a combination of energy efficiency and renewables: $1.9 trillion to $4.1 trillion

*
In the South, two new reactors are slated for V.C. Summer in South
Carolina, two for Plant Vogtle in Georgia, and two at the South Texas
Project near San Antonio. One reactor is also planned at Maryland’s
Calvert Cliffs, a joint undertaking of Constellation Energy and the
French government-owned Electricité de France.

(This story originally appeared at Facing South. Click on figures to go to the original source.)

Related Links:

Palin bashes ‘cap and tax’ and commends Obama on nuclear

Yes, Obama is still pursuing clean air, clean energy jobs bill that puts a price on carbon pollution

A chat with Sen. Bernie Sanders on his new 10 million solar roofs bill

by Tom Philpott

Expect to see a lot more of this kind of thing. The press release could have come straight out of the utterly disgraced Bush EPA—and if it had, I can well imagine the howls of outrage it would have provoked, because I would have joined the chorus. Its headline read as follows: “Obama Announces Steps to Boost Biofuels, Clean Coal.”

In short, after a flirtation with reason last spring, the Obama EPA has signed off on the absurd, abysmal Renewable Fuel Standard established under Bush a couple of years ago—ensuring that farmers will continue to devote vast swaths of land to GHG-intensive corn, of which huge portion of will ultimately be set aflame to power cars—but not before being transformed into liquid fuel in an energy-intensive process.

As as ethanol factories continue sucking in more and more corn, plantation owners in places like Brazil and Argentina will put more grassland and even rainforest under the plow to make up for the shortfall, resulting in huge carbon emissions. That dire effect of our ethanol program, known as indirect land-use change, likely nullifies any scant climate benefits from ethanol. In downplaying indirect land use in its assessment of the Renewable Fuel Standard, the agency is essentially caving to the demands of House ag committee chair Collin Peterson—who is returning the favor with an all-out assault of the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases at all.

As for “clean” coal, the EPA announced a major push for “Carbon Capture and Storage” for coal plants. But no amount of public cash for such projects can clean up the atrocity of mountain-top removal—or stop coal plants from transforming the oceans into mercury-laden toxic pits. What would carbon capture do to solve the coal ash problem? Nothing.

I can only think of one more ersatz, flimsy way to confront the specter of global ecological crisis than promoting “clean” coal and biofuels, and it would be nuclear power. Unhappily, Obama has been hyping—and putting taxpayer cash behind—that, too.

I realize that Obama’s EPA director, Lisa Jackson, has worked hard to lift the agency from the ignominy into which it had plunged under Bush’s notorious director, Stephen Johnson. In a provocative essay in The New Republic, the veteran liberal journalist John B. Judis makes a case for Jackson. Judis writes:

In her first year at the EPA, Jackson granted California a waiver to impose tougher greenhouse-gas standards for new automobiles, which the Bush administration had denied. She declared that the EPA would set standards for greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. (This means that, if Congress fails to pass cap-and-trade legislation, the EPA could act on its own to regulate carbon emissions.) And she accepted the EPA staff’s recommendations for tougher smog standards—recommendations that had been rebuffed by the previous EPA head. Science, it seems clear, is back in command at the EPA.

That track record makes the EPA’s capitulation over ethanol all the more painful. I could understand such concessions if the President were using them as pawns in a fight to push through effective climate legislation. But climate legislation got hopelessly compromised—before collapsing unceremoniously on the Senate floor. Why is Obama giving this stuff away now?

When the Democrats gained power in 2007, progressives may have assumed that the tide had turned on environmental protection. But the fossil fuel and agribusiness industries were never going to just melt away. They have hundreds of billions of dollars in investments on the ground that can only be leveraged if their products emain paramount.  Those investments will be defended.

This is a long-term battle that will require much grassroots pressure from below before it really turns—much more than can be brought to bear in any single election.

Related Links:

The people speak out in favor of stronger smog standards

Bring back Van Jones

My whiz-bang light rail is your pain in the asphalt

by Grist

Thanks for becoming Grist’s Friend with Benefits. Umbra Fisk would like to issue you a warm welcome.