This afternoon the House Ways & Means Committee passed the energy tax portions of the stimulus package, including:

Investment Tax Credit Refundability. For alternative energy property put into service in 2009 and 2010, companies may apply for a cash grant equal to the value of the investment tax credit from the Department of Energy. DOE must make these grant payments within 60 days of receipt of the application and may not in its discretion deny any such applications that qualify for the credit. Companies may apply for the payments through September 30, 2011. The amount of the ITCs equal 30% of the base investment amount for solar, winds, and fuel cell property and equal 10% for geothermal and micro-turbine property.

Election of ITC over PTC. For property placed in service in 2009 and 2010, alternative energy companies entitled to the Production Tax Credit can elect to receive the Investment Tax Credit instead. This election would allow them to qualify for the refundability provisions of the DOE grant program.

Awesome! (see “Note to Obama, Congress on green stimulus: No to phony clean coal credits, yes to refundable renewable tax credits, Part 1“)
Why exactly does it matter so much that tax credit for renewable projects can be refundable? That was well explained by a recent WashPost article:

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Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) has circulated a letter critical of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (see here):

It appears their blueprint promotes many of the same problematic provisions that have plagued cap-and-trade bills in the past.

Duh! (see NRDC and EDF endorse the weak, rip-offset-heavy USCAP climate plan). He writes:

I believe that we should auction a vast majority — if not all — of the allowances and send 100% of those revenues back to consumers

Well, I’d probably send 60% to 80% back, at least at first, rising eventually to 80% to 90%. No need to give money back to the Warren Buffets, whereas you do need some money, at least in the first decade, for heavily impacted industries, worker transition, cleantech R&D, and the like.

Corker is no fan of rip-offsets:

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[My guest blogger today is Brian Angliss, an electrical engineer who blogs at Scholars and Rogues, where this terrific post was first published. What his analysis shows is that because of the exploding trade deficit during the Bush Presidency, the U.S. outsourced CO2 emissions growth of more than 700 million metric tons (see figure below) -- compared to reported growth of some 200 million metric tons (see here). So much for conservatives claims of Bush's leadership in slowing emissions.]

Figure 1: The 15 nations to whom the U.S. outsourced the most CO₂ embodied as a result of the net imports of goods and services from them. Click to enlarge. Total U.S. CO2 emissions are about 6,000 millio metric tons (see here).

The role of the United States in climate disruption is far greater than most people realize. Not only does the U.S. emit more carbon dioxide (CO₂) than any other nation besides China, not only does the U.S. have one the highest per-capita emissions in the world, but the U.S. economy also accounts for a massive amount of emissions released by the rest of the world too. S&R has investigated just how much CO₂ the United States economy is actually responsible for, and the results suggest the real emissions are 20% greater than official estimates.

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During Wednesday’s Senate Finance Committee confirmation hearing of Timothy Geithner for Secretary of Treasury, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) delivered a rambling discourse on the importance of investing in technology to reduce the global warming emissions of coal power. Admitting the topic was “off the beaten path,” he advocated for more federal support for coal research while reiterating the unavoidable environmental and health problems of using coal:

Coal is dirty, “clean coal” is dirty.

Watch it:

Rockefeller’s understanding of “American electricity situation” seemed hazy. Despite his advocacy of spending “a lot of money” on coal research projects, he inaccurately summarized the state of such technology. He claimed that Dr. John Holdren, President Obama’s appointee to the Office of Science and Technology Policy, told him that “there are already at work in this country at least two power plants producing electricity from coal that come in at a carbon reduction rate which is right in the middle of where nuclear power is now.” This is not the case. There are no coal-fired power plants in the United States that store any significant carbon emissions using carbon capture and sequestration technology (CCS), let alone nearly all carbon emissions. Clean coal does not exist.

Rockefeller decries ethanol as “waste of time” and a “waste of money,” despite the fact that ethanol is used as a transportation fuel, not for electricity production. He also repeatedly says that nuclear energy is “considered clean,” which is true only if you ask nuclear industry lobbyists.

Finally, Rockefeller asked Geithner “why is that we are not talking” about putting CCS research in the economic recovery package. This question is odd, because the package allocates $2.4 billion to carbon capture and sequestration research — more than the $2 billion allocated to all other non-automotive energy efficiency and renewable energy research projects combined.

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Obama gave a powerful call to action on energy and climate, and he has given the order to halt Bush’s final rules. But if he really wants to send a quick, strong signal that he intends to preserve a livable climate, he should intervene immediately to stop the Pentagon’s toxic dalliance with liquid coal.

As reported by Air Force Times on Tuesday:

The future of a synthetic fuel plant that would power fighters and cargo planes with processed coal will be announced this week.

The Air Force decided on Friday whether to move ahead with a plan to build a synthetic fuel plant at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont.

Due to the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and the inauguration, Air Force spokesman Gary Strasburg said the decision will not be released until Wednesday.

[Note: I can't find any notice of this decision on Google News or MT newspapers.]

UPDATE: My sources say the decision “has been delayed.”

This is simply a terrible idea (see “Coal-to-Liquid Is a Dead End” and “Congress should say NO to coal-to-diesel” and links below), especially since clean alternatives are on the way “Boeing: Jet biofuel in three years“).

Obama said in his powerful inaugural address: “we will work tirelessly to … roll back the specter of a warming planet.” That can’t be done running your Air Force on liquid coal:

Obama should kill this plant if the Air Force doesn’t, and then immediately make clear that America is not going to run its military on a fuel that itself worsens the greatest national security threat.

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I suppose the inevitable doesn’t deserve better than a below-the-fold story on the Post‘s business page:

Toyota outpaced its rival to sell 8.972 million cars and trucks around the world in 2008, about 616,000 vehicles more than GM’s final tally of 8.356 million.

This was a long time coming:

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If the Obama administration hopes to coax China to take action on global warming — and if the administration wants to give the U.N. climate negotiations a chance of success — it will need to solve the thorny problem of technology transfer. If it does so, however, it may face a quarrel with the clean-tech industry, one of its closest allies in the business community.

In the U.N. climate talks last month in Poznan, Poland, technology transfer emerged as one of the key stumbling blocks. China demanded that the United States and Europe agree to a strategy of transferring to developing nations a wide variety of energy-saving and emissions-reducing technologies to developing nations.

Details of this proposal were not fleshed out, but much of the tech transfer discussion centered on China’s proposal for a multi-billion-dollar fund generated by wealthy nations’ contributions of at least 0.7% of their GDP. Such an outlay — which would amount to about $100 billion annually for the United States — would face tough political sledding in Congress in the best of times. But in the current recession, it’s virtually unthinkable. That’s too bad for clean-tech companies, which would stand to profit hugely from selling their patented solar cells, wind turbines, “clean coal” generators and myriad industrial software and equipment.

Less attention has been given to another element of China’s proposal — the demand for a system that would give developing nations low-cost or no-cost access to those patented technologies.

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