Author: Main Feed – Environmental Defense

By Peter Petropoulos, MBA, Booth School of Business, University of Chicago, 2010 EDF Climate Corp Fellow at Pepsi Co, Member of Net Impact

Kermit’s famous lament on the difficulty of being green rings a little less true for me today.

As a 2010 Climate Corps fellow for PepsiCo, I just completed EDF’s intense energy efficiency boot camp. As I sit at LaGuardia listening to random announcements over the airport loudspeaker and watching the hustle and bustle go by, I can’t help but think about the 50 other Climate Corps fellows participating in EDF’s program this summer.

The Climate Corps class of 2010 will be hosted by some of the world’s most influential companies this summer, all charged with uncovering energy efficiency opportunities that could increase companies’ bottom line while also reducing their carbon footprint.

I was already very excited about my summer project before arriving in NYC, but the Climate Corps training illuminated an important value-add of EDF’s program: the amazing network I just made. Over the last several days, I met the most dynamic group of go-getters, all attending top business schools around the country who share my passion for achieving sustainability without sacrificing profits. In the past, I have felt isolated as an environmentalist among my business school peers. I know now that there are many others that share my worldview. Climate Corps will help me and my fellow future business leaders to tackle one of today’s most pressing issues.

When I begin to knock on doors and investigate energy efficiency opportunities at PepsiCo, I will feel confident knowing that I am not alone in my effort and the rest of the Climate Corps network is there to help.

P.S. My flight just got canceled. Maybe my airline could use a well-trained MBA hand with efficiency…

On Grist, there are signs that President Obama is ready to connect the oil spill to the need for comprehensive climate and clean energy bill. At a fundraiser in San Francisco the President said:

“The reason that folks are now having to go down a mile deep into the ocean, and then another mile drilling into the ground below, that is because the easy oil fields and oil wells are gone, or they're starting to diminish. That tells us that we've got to have a long-term energy strategy in this country. And we've got to start cultivating solar and wind and biodiesel. And we've got to increase energy efficiency across our economy in our buildings and our automobiles.”

On the Financial Times, President Obama has “finally come out and linked the Deepwater Horizon accident and the continuing oil leak to the ‘dangers of fossil fuels’.” Mr Obama said

“the increased risks, the increased costs” of deepwater drilling “gives you a sense of where we’re going…We’re not going to be able to sustain this kind of fossil fuel use.”

E2 also has President Obama relating the oil spill to the need for clean energy.

“’This disaster should serve as a wake-up call that it is time to move forward on this legislation,’ Obama said, citing a need to develop ‘clean’ energy sources.”

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.

One rarely gets to use the words “elegant” and “Federal Register notice” in the same sentence. But that’s the best way to describe the notice EPA published yesterday. The notice states EPA will now review all confidentiality claims for chemical identity in health and safety studies, and announces to companies making such claims that they should expect soon thereafter to get a letter from EPA denying the claim.

In a concise and clearly reasoned notice, EPA sweeps away decades of poor policy and practice at the agency that was at odds with the clear intent of Congress under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).

Yesterday’s notice is the latest in a series of actions the new leadership at EPA has taken to make good on much-neglected aspect of its mission: “to promote public understanding of potential risks by providing understandable, accessible, and complete information on potential chemical risks to the broadest audience possible.”

In an earlier post, I described EPA’s first step to address this problem: denying CBI protection for the identities of chemicals that are the subject of substantial risk notices submitted under section 8(e) of TSCA, where that chemical is already listed on the public part of the TSCA inventory. I welcomed that step but said EPA needed to go much further to address the problem. Yesterday they did.

Here's what EPA's notice outlines as the new policy and practice, to take effect August 25 (at the end of a 90-day comment period):

If, in submitting health and safety studies and associated data, a company claims the identity of the chemical in question to be confidential business information (CBI), EPA will:

• review the claim at the time of submission;
• deny the claim unless revealing the chemical identity would expressly reveal the process by which the chemical is made or the portion of a mixture the chemical comprises (these exceptions are the only ones provided under section 14(b) of TSCA from the general proscription against withholding health and safety data); and
• inform the submitter of that decision in a manner that constitutes a final EPA action and hence is not challengeable except via judicial review.

 The latest action is notable on a number of counts:

• For the first time in a long time, EPA will systematically review all confidentiality claims pertaining to chemical identity in any industry submissions of health and safety studies and associated data. Such claims are routinely asserted in submissions of health and safety data under TSCA section 4 (for test rules), section 5 (for new chemicals and new uses of existing chemicals), section 8(d) (for call-ins of health and safety studies), and section 8(e) (for mandatory reporting of substantial risk information). 

Arguably the most egregious assertions come in with section 8(e) submissions. EPA statistics indicate that, over the last 3 years, more than 40% of such 8(e) notices claim the chemical identity to be confidential. As EPA’s FR notice points out, this yields the perverse result that “the public is able to see that some unidentified chemical substance might present a substantial risk of injury to health or the environment” (emphasis added).

EPA’s notice goes on to note: “EPA believes that Congress generally intended for the public to be able to know the identities of chemical substances for which health and safety studies have been submitted.”

In my earlier post, I has put it more bluntly: “Why would Congress, when drafting TSCA, have gone out of its way to carve out an exemption from CBI eligibility for data from health and safety studies – effectively establishing the public's right to know such information – only to render impotent that right by denying the public the right to know to which chemical the data apply? That makes no sense.”

• EPA will review not only new claims, but also existing claims. This will erase decades of unwarranted claims that have been allowed to stand solely because of EPA’s passive approach of simply not reviewing the claims as they poured in.
• EPA flatly rejects a common industry argument, swallowed too readily by EPA in the past, that it must protect information asserted to be confidential that is not itself entitled to protection if revealing it might, however indirectly or convolutedly, help a competitor to figure out something that is confidential. In the current context, industry has claimed EPA must withhold the identity of a chemical even in the context of health and safety data, if knowing that identity might indirectly motivate or assist a competitor in figuring out how the chemical is made.

EPA rightly discards that argument:

EPA, however, questions the assertion that when disclosing a chemical identity of a chemical substance inspires a competitor to ascertain a process for manufacturing the chemical substance, such disclosure is equivalent to disclosing the process itself. Disclosing the end product of a process (i.e., a chemical identity) is not the same thing as disclosing the process to make that end product. The process information would come from the competitor’s expertise, research, or publicly available sources, not from EPA. Although some companies might find such use of a chemical identity undesirable, EPA does not believe that TSCA section 14(b) was intended to limit the uses of information from a health and safety study. (emphasis added)

EPA notes that this latest move is one more step in a systematic effort to identify and make public “information [that] may have been claimed and treated as confidential in the past but is not in fact entitled to confidentiality under TSCA.”

It’s about time.

Thirteen groups signed letters today to both the Administration and Congressional Appropriators in response to the British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The letters present fishery management and economic-related recommendations for broadening the scope of and increasing the amount of funding in the spending package proposed on May 12 by President Obama.
The groups' […]

The American Power Act, the bill that would give EPA new tools to regulate carbon pollution, make us more energy secure as a nation, and enhance our competitiveness, is the best chance we have for a comprehensive climate and clean energy bill this year, maybe even this decade.

Instead of rallying around Senators Kerry and Lieberman’s “all of the above” strategy, some senators appear to be for “none of the above.” A resolution introduced by Sen. Lisa Murkowski would strip EPA of all of its existing authority under the current Clean Air Act to reduce carbon pollution. That would make us more dependent on foreign oil, do nothing to help American manufacturing compete with China or other nations in clean energy technologies, and cripple efforts to address global warming.

How is this possible?

Basically, Sen. Murkowski’s bill would nullify EPA’s finding of scientific fact that greenhouse gases cause harmful global warming – a finding that forms the legal basis for any further steps EPA can take to address carbon pollution. A vote for Murkowski’s bill is a vote against the strong scientific consensus that climate change is a real threat we must avoid.

Sen. Murkowski’s bill would also block a key step in fighting America’s oil addiction. It would dismantle the government’s program to reduce carbon pollution from cars and trucks – a program that U.S. automakers and the Obama Administration agreed last year to put in place. The program will save Americans more than 1.8 billion barrels of oil over the lifetime of the affected vehicles, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. At oil prices of $80 a barrel, that’s more than $80 billion worth of foreign oil Americans will not have to buy thanks to these standards.

Sen. Murkowski’s bill would also lead to greater red tape and conflicting regulations for our auto manufacturers (and their suppliers) at a time when many are struggling to recover in these tough economic times. That’s because the agreement the Obama Administration and automakers reached last year also included California and 13 other states that agreed to set aside their own regulations of automobile emissions. With no national program, the agreement would fall and states would be free once again to move forward independently, leaving the automobile industry without the nationwide uniformity that it has described as vital to its business.

It’s truly ironic that even as we watch what may end up being one of the most serious environmental and ecological disasters in our nation's history – the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico – some senators are actively trying to block pollution regulations and hamstring the EPA's ability to protect the public. This is both inexcusable and unforgivable.

Sectors, the catch share management system adopted in New England, have opened up the door to groundfishing in Down East Maine. According to the Bar Harbor Times, until sectors came into effect May 1, it had been more than 15 years since groundfish had been caught and landed in commercial numbers in the eastern Gulf of Maine. The article tells one fisherman’s story of how sectors have allowed him to get back into the groundfishing industry.

Look out DC! An exciting, yet unconventional conference series is storming through the nation this year and the capital city is next on the target list.

On May 27^th, the Green Innovation in Business Network Solutions Labs come to Washington, DC!

Solutions Labs are one-day, interactive events where participants help craft the agenda and spend the day brainstorming ideas for accelerating green innovation while sharing their experiences and lessons. Solutions Labs provide leading thinkers and “doers” from business, academia, government and non-profit organizations the opportunity to explore the next generation of business sustainability—one in which we can grow profits for our companies and create positive impact on the planet.

What: Green Innovation in Business Network: Solutions Lab 2010 – Washington DC

When: Thursday, May 27, 2010 from 8:30 AM – 5:00 PM (ET)

Where: The George Washington University, Washington, DC

It is not too late to sign up for this event! See the full Solutions Labs schedule for 2010.

The Solutions Labs are organized by the Green Innovation in Business Network (GIBN), an online and offline community focused on creating a well-informed, well-connected, rapidly-learning network of innovators making business more sustainable and are made possible by Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), in partnership with DIG IN, Greenbiz.com, Net Impact, Sony, Ashoka and many others.

Last Thursday in San Francisco, Environmental Defense Fund set 24 MBA students loose into the wilds of corporate America. This group of students represents half of our popular summer fellowship program known as EDF Climate Corps. Tasked with cutting carbon emissions and energy costs for some of the largest and most innovative corporations in the world, each MBA fellow will play an instrumental role in the growing energy efficiency movement. Hailing from business schools at top-tier universities such the University of Michigan, Duke and Yale, these fellows gathered for a three-day intensive energy efficiency training hosted by EDF’s Climate Corps staff.

The fellows were shy and humble at first but like old friends by the end – already planning reunions. Over the course of the training, they took tours of downtown San Francisco skyscrapers and spoke with building engineers who explained building components from lighting to elevators, water boilers to chillers and the composition of a one-car-garage-sized absorber.

This year’s class listened to alumni fellows recall the barriers they faced during their Climate Corps fellowships and the solutions they uncovered. One fellow jokingly tugged his collar and whispered “Pressure’s on,” to his neighbor as he learned that every Climate Corps fellow has paid for him or herself a hundred times over in identified savings. The same fellow grinned as Emily Reyna told of the $8 million in energy savings she discovered during her fellowship with Cisco Systems in 2008.

Fortunately the Climate Corps Class of 2010 measures up. They are a well-qualified group, prepared with an in-depth understanding of energy efficiency and a network of relevant contacts, research, white papers and financial tools. So far the program's 33 alumni fellows from the last two years identified almost $90 million in net operating savings. Companies report that they are implementing upgrades representing 84% of the energy savings recommended by the fellows. We are confident that this year's class will continue to recommend investments that cut costs and enhance the bottom line.

One of the questions fellows were continuously encouraged to ask throughout their summer fellowships is “why?”

Joey Barr, an MBA student at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley stated emphatically, “I'm trying to figure out why there are $20 bills laying on the floor and people aren't picking them up. I think there are a lot of understandable but frustrating reasons, and Climate Corps is trying to seek some answers.”

After the training, the group packed their laptops and calculators into their backpacks and dispersed across the country for the next 10 – 12 weeks to become champions of energy efficiency at their respective host companies including JCPenney, Bloomberg, Carnival Cruises and McDonald's, among others.

This week we are hosting the other half of the 2010 Climate Corps class here in EDF's New York City office. Thirty more fellows are attending the training which kicked off at 8:30 this morning in the Big Apple.

“One of the main reasons I wanted an MBA is to impact the world from a higher level,” said Rama Murugan of Pennsylvania State University’s Smeal College of Business, before she began the training in New York.” Rama, who will be working at CA, Inc. in Islandia, NY, states “I am passionate about the environment and firmly believe that it needs to be saved for future generations to come. With the Climate Corps fellowship, both of my goals become one, and I have the opportunity to impact the world I live in a way that will help secure its future.”

We look forward to seeing the talent and passion these fellows bring to the table in coming weeks!

For more information on EDF Climate Corps, visit edfclimatecorps.org. You can also sign up to receive email updates from the fellows and host companies.

This was originally posted on the Huffington Post.

Opponents of climate legislation often claim that now is the wrong time to put a price on carbon, with the economy just emerging from a recession. But a must-read study released by the well-respected, nonpartisan Peterson Institute for International Economics shows that the reverse is actually true: passing climate legislation would provide the economy with a much-needed shot in the arm.

Trevor Houser and his co-authors use a widely respected economic model to analyze the impact on the U.S. economy of the American Power Act, the energy and climate legislation introduced last week by Senators Kerry and Lieberman. The study estimates that the legislation would more than double investment in the electric power sector, adding 203,000 jobs per year to the economy during the next decade relative to a “business as usual” scenario without policy. The reason is that when labor and capital are underemployed, as they are now, a policy that spurs new investment in the private sector will create jobs rather than simply taking them from other sectors. This lends quantitative support to the argument I’ve been making for over a year, which is that the fragile state of the U.S. economy strengthens the case for a cap on carbon rather than weakening it.

To understand why this is such an important study, it helps to step back and think about what we know about the link between climate legislation and employment. The usual debates about the job impacts of climate legislation tend to follow parallel tracks that never intersect, with opponents focusing on jobs that might be lost, and proponents focusing on jobs that would be gained — but little analysis of what the net impact would be. So what would that net impact be?

There are a couple of ways to think about this issue, depending on what time frame you are looking at. In the long run, the American economy is likely to gain from taking the lead in the clean energy revolution, just as our economy has always benefited from technological leadership. The world is heading onto a low-carbon path, and huge markets await for the firms that are able to develop and produce new technologies that generate renewable energy and promote energy efficiency. That provides a strong economic argument for a market-based cap on carbon, while will give American firms a powerful incentive to figure out new and better ways of cutting emissions.

What about the short run? In general, the U.S. economy — like any market economy — tends to hover at some natural level of “full employment” that is determined by fundamentals like productivity, technological change, and the size of the labor force. This suggests that the main effect of a price on carbon will not be to change the overall level of employment, but to shift labor (and other resources like capital) away from carbon-intensive sectors and into cleaner sectors. Some sectors win, some sectors lose, but the overall level of employment stays the same.

The key problem with this logic is that we are clearly not in a period of “full employment.” Even though the economy seems to be slowly emerging from the recession, unemployment is still very high. And there is capital sitting on the sidelines as well, held back not only by the recent crisis but also by uncertainty over the strength of the recovery and over the regulatory environment.

When the economy is not in full employment, the picture changes fundamentally. Instead of reallocating resources from one sector to another, a price on carbon could have a positive impact by spurring demand for investment — leading to net job creation, even in the short run.

This is precisely what the Peterson Institute’s study forecasts would happen under the American Power Act introduced last week by Senators Kerry and Lieberman. A cap on carbon would create powerful demand for new investment in clean energy, especially in the electricity sector. The Peterson Institute study projects that annual investment in the sector would more than double as a result of the legislation, increasing by nearly $23 billion a year. Precisely because our economy is operating below full employment, the result would be a net job increase of 203,000 jobs per year over the next decade, relative to the no-policy “business as usual” scenario — even taking into account the effect of higher prices on fossil fuels.

This isn’t just theoretical. In a column in the New York Times last month, David Brooks reported that if climate legislation passed, the major electric power company FPL Group would likely invest roughly $3 billion more per year in wind and solar power. Similarly, NRG Energy would triple its new clean generation capacity. That’s the kind of investment that can produce real jobs in the short run.

I'll have more to say about other conclusions of the Peterson Institute study in coming blog posts. In the meantime, Dave Roberts at Grist has a great take on it along with a summary of the key findings.

As the BP-Deepwater Horizon Oil Well Disaster continues to spill massive amounts of oil into the ocean—jeopardizing the multi-billion dollar fishing, tourism and other ocean-related industries in the Gulf—EDF is partnering with Gulf fishing organizations to recommend several urgent initiatives to mitigate the devastating ecological and economic consequences for the Gulf region and beyond.
The Gulf […]

There is no question that tools exists today to significantly reduce fuel consumption by medium and heavy-duty trucks. The recent National Academy of Sciences’ report on reducing emissions from these vehicles explored this in-depth as did another recent report from NESCAUM. The key question is: can we deploy these tools at an acceptable cost?

The answer is closer to “yes” than ever before, thanks in part to President Obama’s statement last week instructing the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to develop rules to reduce emissions from medium and heavy-duty trucks – which consume over a quarter of the nation’s liquid fuels.

The most advanced of our fuel-saving tools, such as the hybrid system for medium-duty trucks, face a significant upfront cost barrier. While these systems can payback over the lifetime of the vehicle, the ROI timeline is too extended for most businesses to justify the cost without external incentives. Other, more incremental strategies such as single-wide tires face cultural and cost barriers as well. The resulting upfront capital cost versus long-term operating savings conundrum slows the adoption of these tools and delays emission reductions.

Fuel-saving components need to be produced at a large enough scale to spread out the fixed costs over time while simultaneously bringing the dollar cost down. By creating a nationwide standard for greenhouse gas emissions, the President has put us on a path to finally reach this scale. Imagine that instead of spreading the fix costs of developing and producing medium-duty hybrid powertrains, or single wide tires over a few hundred vehicles a year, these costs are spread over tens of thousands of trucks annually. The ROI for any one unit will instantly be much more attractive. This is what can happen with a strong federal rule.

How will this impact the business community? Consumers, shippers and carriers will be better off with more efficient, cleaner trucks. Operating costs will be lower and less exposed to fuel price volatility. The increased capital costs should be manageable with the advantages of scaled economies. Some of the increased upfront cost will likely be recouped through hire residual values too.

Of course, technological improvements alone aren’t sufficient. There remain many opportunities to reduce emissions through better operational practices, particularly for freight. From reducing empty backhauls, cutting idling, dropping curb weight, decreasing packaging and improving trucking loading, every truck trip can get more done. Some trips can be avoided all together or simply moved to more efficient modes of transportation.

Medium-and-heavy duty trucks will continue to play a vital role as we transition into a carbon constrained world. These trucks are needed to deliver food and beverages to restaurants and stores, drop off packages at homes and offices, and move goods across the nation. However, they will use less fuel for each of these actions. That’s a good thing for the environment, our pocketbooks and energy security.

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.

Now more than a month into the mammoth, out-of-control, no-end-in-sight oil spill at Deepwater Horizon, the unanswered questions, data gaps and withheld information surrounding BP’s use of dispersants are flowing in seemingly as fast as the oil is leaking.

With each passing day, it seems we know less and less about the composition and safety of these dispersants, other available dispersants, and even whether the use of dispersants– especially on this unprecedented scale – is to be advised at all.

It begs the question: Isn’t having ready answers to such questions the reason why the federal government was required to develop a contingency plan in the first place? 

As I noted in an earlier post, BP has to date released more than 700,000 gallons of two dispersants, Corexit® 9527 and Corexit® 9500, that are among the least effective of the 18 dispersants that EPA has approved under the National Oil and Hazardous Substances Pollution Contingency Plan, and they appear to be among the more toxic based on limited short-term toxicity tests conducted on fish and shrimp.

Those data, plus the massive volumes involved and BP’s proposal to inject the dispersants into deep water, led EPA on May 20 to direct BP to identify and start using more effective and less toxic dispersants. BP responded over the weekend, maintaining steadfastly that Corexit® is the best choice given the circumstances.

Several impressions emerge in reading BP’s response. First, the most glaring: Big sections appear to have been redacted as confidential business information. In releasing BP’s response to its directive, EPA stated:

BP and several of the dispersant manufacturers have claimed some sections of BP's response contain confidential business information (CBI). By law, CBI cannot be immediately made public except with the company's permission. EPA challenged these companies to make more information public and, as a result, several portions of the letter can now be made public. EPA is currently evaluating all legal options to ensure that the remaining redacted information is released to the public. EPA continues to strongly urge these companies to voluntarily make this information public so Americans can get a full picture of the potential environmental impact of these alternative dispersants.

Whether or not it is technically legal, BP’s heavy invoking of CBI protection – in light of its dumping of what will soon exceed one million gallons of proprietary formula into the Gulf of Mexico – is deeply troubling.

It’s good to hear EPA is evaluating “all legal options” – one of which under Section 14 of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) provides that CBI “shall be disclosed if the [EPA] Administrator determines it necessary to protect health or the environment against an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment.”

While under this provision, EPA generally must notify a company 15 days in advance of releasing the information, there is an emergency exception: Where “the Administrator determines that the release of such data is necessary to protect against an imminent, unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment,” only 24 hours notice is required.

In this context EPA has some nontrivial burdens to meet: “imminent” and “unreasonable” risk. But if this situation doesn’t meet those tests, what does?

Second, I can’t help but highlighting the pretty remarkable reference by BP to its substantial concern for “the potential long term effect and persistence of the chemicals in each dispersant.” Too bad that concern didn’t lead BP to demand or at least support long-term toxicity testing of Corexit®.

But BP’s concern is strong enough to lead them to point out that one of the other dispersants has a chemical in it (identity withheld) that “may degrade to a nonylphenol.” BP helpfully points out that nonylphenols “have been identified by various government agencies as potential endocrine disruptors.”

This, from a company in an industry that has done its level best to undermine researchers’ and government’s efforts to identify and act to control endocrine disruptors. Has a new leaf turned?

Finally, what is perhaps most remarkable about BP’s response, and more broadly the responses of scientists to the dispersant issue, is how little we know about what’s in these dispersants, what their effects will be on marine environments and on the workers and responders who are exposed to them – and even on the fundamental question of whether they should be being used at all to control a spill of this nature and magnitude. It appears we don’t have answers even to basic questions such as:

• Do the dispersants actually work to reduce the impact of the oil?
• Is it better to disperse the oil or leave it undispersed?
• Is the mixture of oil and dispersant more or less toxic than the oil by itself?

See articles here, here and here for some examples of the questions scientists are raising.

Is it too much to hope, next time around, that we might have a contingency plan in place that has asked and answered such questions before something like this happens again?

Should Congress or the EPA act to address the threat of global warming? Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that Congress must act – and she’s right. The House passed legislation last year, and recently Senators Kerry and Lieberman introduced a very different approach called the American Power Act. But both bills would cut carbon pollution, curb our dependence on oil from unstable regions of the world and create millions of new clean energy jobs according to a new study from the Peterson Institute.

But within the next couple of weeks the Senate may well decide to do “none of the above.” Senator Lisa Murkowski is proposing legislation to strip EPA of all authority to reduce carbon pollution, make us more reliant on foreign oil, and do nothing to help American manufacturing compete with China or other nations in clean energy technologies.

Sen. Murkowski’s bill would nullify EPA’s finding of scientific fact that greenhouse gases cause harmful global warming – a finding that forms the legal basis for any further steps EPA can take to address carbon pollution. A vote for Murkowski’s resolution is a vote against the strong scientific consensus that climate change is a real threat we must avoid. Just earlier this week, the National Academy of Sciences reaffirmed that consensus when it described the likelihood that much of global warming is not caused by human activities as “vanishingly small.”

Sen. Murkowski’s bill would make us more reliant on foreign oil. It would dismantle the government’s program to reduce carbon pollution from cars and trucks – a program that U.S. automakers and the Obama Administration agreed last year to put in place – which will save Americans more than 1.8 billion barrels of oil over the lifetime of the affected vehicles, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. At oil prices of $80 a barrel, that’s more than $80 billion worth of foreign oil Americans will not have to buy thanks to these standards.

Sen. Murkowski’s bill would do little or nothing for American manufacturers at a time when many are struggling to recover in these tough economic times. For American manufacturers hoping to compete with Chinese companies entering the clean energy, Sen. Murkowski’s approach would provide no assistance or incentive to innovate.

And Sen. Murkowski’s bill is outright opposed by American auto manufacturers. That’s because the agreement the Obama Administration and automakers reached last year also included California and 13 other states that agreed to set aside their own regulations of automobile emissions. With no national program, the agreement would fall and states would be free once again to move forward independently, leaving the automobile industry without the nationwide uniformity that it has described as vital to its business.

The Senate should reject this “do nothing” approach and get back to the important task of passing climate and energy legislation.

A guest post by Ben Tulchin, President and Founder of Tulchin Research, a leading polling and strategic consulting firm.

Yesterday the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) released poll results about the California water bond. These results vary wildly from the poll Tulchin Research conducted back in February.

Our February 2010 poll showed the water bond losing big—with 55 percent of likely voters indicating they would vote no on the proposed $11 billion bond.

To me, this was an indication that the water bond is in deep trouble. No California bond measure has ever won statewide that started with a majority against it. The poll surveyed 600 likely voters across California, asking respondents to share their opinions after reading the official title and summary as it will appear in voters’ handbook*.

Recently, the PPIC poll asked a question about the water bond which we believe has been misinterpreted to suggest there may be majority support for the water bond, so we wanted to set the record straight.

PPIC found that seven out of 10 voters (70%) feel that a “water package”, which includes general reforms as well as the water bond, is “important”, with 42 percent saying it is “very important” and another 28 percent indicating it is “somewhat important”.

Why do these polls vary so much? Well, it's all in how you ask the questions…

While the PPIC results are interesting, this question fundamentally differs from the question we asked in our own survey.

The Tulchin Research poll asked about the bond as it will appear in voters’ official handbooks, with the real price tag ($22 billion – principal and interest) and whether or not they would vote yes to support the bond or no to oppose it. This is a true ballot test that we have done hundreds of times to measure support for a ballot measure and have found it to be a very accurate measurement of how voters will vote for an initiative.

In contrast, the PPIC poll asked about a “water package” that includes water conservation, clean up and recycling, and restoring the Delta, with the bond thrown in at the end. Here is the question, with conservation listed up front and the price tag at the end:

“The governor and legislature recently passed a water package that includes water conservation requirements and plans for new water storage systems, water clean-up and recycling, and a council to oversee restoration of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. This package includes a proposal for an $11.1 billion bond measure to pay for water projects. How important is it that voters pass the bond measure?”

Note that the question goes on to ask, “How important is it to pass the bond” – not whether people support or oppose the policy package or the bond.

The bottom line is that it is hard to interpret what exactly the results for the PPIC survey question mean, since the question has so many different components. At the least, it suggests to me that Californians feel water is an important issue facing the state, particularly water conservation, clean up and recycling. However, I don’t think the PPIC poll question tells us anything about how voters are, in fact, going to vote on the water bond, since it does not measure support or opposition directly.

In sum, in assessing these different polls on the water bond, I believe that voters do feel water is an important issue facing California, but, based on our poll results, they do not feel prepared to spend $22 billion and put our state deeper in debt at a time when California continues to face a budget deficit.

*Tulchin Research conducted the survey on behalf of the campaign opposing the bond measure.

The oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has put fishery closures in the headlines, but closures are nothing new or unusual. In fact, numerous fisheries are closed every year. In an era of declining fish stocks, managers essentially have two tools at hand to meet the legal requirement of ending overfishing and rebuilding stocks – closures or catch shares. Closures have been used extensively and increasingly.

Read the full post »

In his insightful post, Rob Stavins makes two key points regarding the allocation of emission allowances under climate legislation like that introduced last week by Senators Kerry and Lieberman.

First, Stavins addresses head-on the concerns that some progressives have toward the allocation provisions in the bill, asking in the title of his post: “Is the Kerry-Lieberman Allowance Allocation a Corporate Give-Away?” To answer this question, Stavins carries out a careful breakdown of the allowance allocation in the Kerry-Lieberman bill. He shows that the vast majority of emission allowances (more than 80% over the duration of the bill) — goes to energy consumers and public purposes (including deficit reduction). That hardly sounds like a windfall to big corporations! Indeed, if you add it up, the largest fraction of allowance value (43% in total, according to my calculations) goes to households, through an energy refund to low-income consumers, a tax credit to working families, a universal trust fund for all Americans, and allowances that are allocated to local electricity and gas utilities for the benefit of their customers.

As Stavins's calculations illustrate, what matters most in terms of allocation is not whether the allowances are auctioned or given away for free, but who receives the value. (For example, of the allowance value that is directed to households, about four-fifths comes as auction revenue, while the remainder is from the allowances allocated for free to local utilities.)

Even so, some progressives worry that free allocation is at odds with cutting emissions. After all, if you give emitters something for free, doesn't that eliminate the "price on carbon" that creates an economic incentive to cut carbon emissions? The answer, actually, is "no."

Here's where Stavins's second point comes in. As he explains, it is a basic result of economics that even when allowances are distributed for free, they will still have a value (since they can be sold on a market). In economic terms, each time a company uses an allowance, there is an “opportunity cost” involved — the foregone profit they could have gotten from selling the allowance instead. As a result, companies will still have a strong economic incentive to find cost-effective ways to reduce their carbon emissions — so that the economic performance of the bill is basically unaffected. (It's also worth pointing out that the environmental performance of the bill is also unaffected, since that is determined by the cap — not by how allowances are allocated.)

To put the same point a bit differently, the value of allowances doesn't depend on how they are allocated. Rather, allowances have value because they are in scarce supply — thanks to the cap on emissions. The tighter is the cap, the greater is the scarcity, and the higher is the value of allowances, all else equal.

Of course, there are a few nuances worth noting. First, from a strictly economic point of view, the best use of allowance value would be to use it to lower distortionary taxes on labor and capital, giving the overall economy an added boost. However, getting such a "double dividend" requires not just auctioning the allowances, but using the revenue in a specific way to cut other taxes — something that has yet to generate significant political momentum. In other words, acknowledging the possibility of a double dividend doesn't undermine the main point that what matters is how the value of allowances is allocated, not simply whether allowances are auctioned or freely allocated.

Second, some ways of allocating allowances can affect incentives. This can cut both ways. In theory, using allowance value to reduce electricity rates can undermine incentives to conserve energy; this suggests that it would be preferable to compensate households for higher energy costs by sending them a lump-sum rebate rather than cutting their marginal price. In other contexts, allowance allocation is deliberately designed to affect incentives. For example, energy-intensive, trade-exposed manufacturers are given allocations that are tied to their output and to the average emissions intensity of their sector. As research by Carolyn Fischer at Resources for the Future and others has shown, such "output-based rebates" manage to preserve the incentive to reduce emissions, while helping to keep manufacturing in this country and prevent "emissions leakage" to countries without a carbon price.

The bottom line is that the distinction between free allocation and auction makes little difference for the environmental or economic performance of the bill. That's a key point well worth keeping in mind in the coming debates over climate legislation.

On E2, Reid says he’s serious about energy and is planning to convene a Democratic caucus next month to

“discuss how to proceed on energy and climate change legislation.”

On Grist, David Roberts applauds Thomas Friedman on his New York Times op-ed in which Friedman worries that Obama won’t make a strong push for climate legislation in the wake of the Gulf oil disaster and compares it to George W. Bush’s lack of vision when dealing with the public outcries and aftermath of 9/11. Friedman explains:

“No, the gulf oil spill is not Obama’s Katrina. It’s his 9/11 — and it is disappointing to see him making the same mistake George W. Bush made with his 9/11. Sept. 11, 2001, was one of those rare seismic events that create the possibility to energize the country to do something really important and lasting that is too hard to do in normal times. President Bush’s greatest failure was not Iraq, Afghanistan or Katrina. It was his failure of imagination after 9/11 to mobilize the country to get behind a really big initiative for nation-building in America.”

Green focuses on the three new studies released by the National Research Council, part of the National Academy of Sciences, calling for action on climate change.

“The report states that the most efficient way to reduce carbon dioxide pollution is to put a predictable and rising price on it.”

Dot earth also has the story which includes an interesting video which explains the significance of the three reports in the wider climate policy debate.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY94AB6o-D8

Richard Denison, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist.

This just out: The Washington Post is reporting that EPA has given BP 24 hours to identify and locate a supply of a less toxic dispersant to be applied to the Gulf oil spill, and to begin using it within an additional 72 hours.

As noted in my last post, EPA has identified numerous alternative dispersants that are both less toxic and more effective than those on which BP has been relying to date — more than 600,000 gallons of which have already been released into Gulf waters. The Post also notes that some forms of the initial dispersants, sold by Nalco under the trade name Corexit®, were banned by the British government more than a decade ago.

Yesterday’s federal court ruling issuing an injunction against portions of the 2009 salmon Biological Opinion is disappointing and even alarming. We are extremely appreciative of Earthjustice and NRDC for their great work in handling the litigation, but dismayed that a federal judge chose to strike down measures that were recently endorsed by the National Academy of Sciences. As Doug Obegi from NRDC points out, the Court ignored numerous findings that the salmon protections at issue are supported by the best available science.

In halting implementation of protections for salmon, the Court regurgitated old arguments and invented some new ones. Weighing the costs of an injunction against the benefits to salmon and our natural ecosystem, the court wrote:

“Harms that have been caused by [environmental] water supply reductions include but are not limited to: destruction of permanent crops; fallowed lands; increased groundwater consumption; land subsidence; reduction of air quality; destruction of family and entity farming businesses; and social disruption and dislocation, such as increased property crimes and intra-family crimes of violence, adverse effects on schools, and increased unemployment leading to hunger and homelessness.” (¶ 6, page 91)(Emphasis added).

While there are serious problems with the claims made in the first part of this excerpt, the second half of that statement is absurd and unsupported by evidence elsewhere in the opinion. Salmon are now being blamed for domestic violence? Fish cause property damage and are the cause of California’s failing schools? Really? Where is the evidence to support these findings? Have we lost all perspective?

Further, it is highly questionable whether there is any credible evidence that reductions in water supplies are to blame for the other evils cited by the Court. The Department of Water Resources has made clear that the huge majority of water reductions are a result of drought – not the relatively limited protections attributable to the effort to prevent salmon from becoming extinct. In its decision the Court acknowledged expert testimony that “it is a combination of factors, including the three-year drought, the global economic recession, the foreclosure crisis, and the collapse of the real estate market and construction industry, that are mainly driving crop and job losses, food bank needs, and credit problems in the Central Valley” (¶196 at 83). However, it ultimately chose to ignore that testimony. The Court's decision also ignored expert testimony “that the commercial fishing industry has suffered tremendous losses as a result of the near total collapse of California’s salmon fishery, which precipitated a shutdown of the salmon fishing seasons in 2008 and 2009 and threatens another shutdown in the future” (¶ 204 at 86).

While we recognize the economic pain felt throughout the Central Valley and genuinely feel for those in need, it is unreasonable and unfair to blame salmon for the impacts of the nation’s worst recession since the 1930’s.

Given that the viability of California salmon is at stake, it’s alarming that the court eliminated essential protections based on reasoning that ignored the effects of the economic collapse and years of devastating drought. Instead, the Court relied on unsupported claims that doing the bare minimum necessary to ensure the existence of salmon has lead to “intra-family crimes of violence”, failing schools, hunger and homelessness. Once again, where is the evidence to support such serious claims?