The White House today offered its endorsement to the 648-page draft climate and energy bill unveiled by House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman of California and Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts.”President Obama is committed to an energy policy that launches a new sector of clean energy jobs, makes our economy more competitive, and weans the nation off its dependence on foreign oil,” White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said in an e-mail. “While we are still reviewing the details, it is clear that Chairman Waxman’s legislation would advance all of those goals, and the president looks forward to working with members of Congress in both chambers to pass a bill that would transition the nation to a clean energy economy.”

So reports E&E News PM (subs. req’d, excerpted below) reports on the new House climate bill (see “First impression of Waxman-Markey” for more details).

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said she’d try to get GOP votes, but wouldn’t hold the bill up waiting for them.

“We would hope to have Republican votes as we go forward on this,” Pelosi said. “Will I not put it forth unless I do? No. No. There’s an inevitability to this that everyone has to understand.”… House Republican leaders signaled little interest in working with Democrats on the climate and energy bill.

Duh. Then E&E News PM reprinted the standard conservative lie:

Read more

National Center for Public Policy Research president Amy Ridenour explains to Congress why she laundered $2.5 million for Jack Abramoff.

In a widely reprinted column, the National Center for Public Policy Research’s (NCPPR) David Ridenour attacks White House energy and climate change adviser Carol Browner as a “socialist” and “zealot” with “so much baggage she could be an airline”:

As little respect as she has shown for the law, she has shown even less for science.

Ridenour’s arguments include the bizarre Drudge Report attack that Browner is a socialist, accusing Browner of complicity in an EPA case for which she was fully acquitted, and the repetition of a 1995 claim of “illegal lobbying” by then-Congressman David McIntosh (R-IN), which the New York Times explained then involved “doing things that have long been routine functions of officials in the executive branch, practices that lawyers in Republican and Democratic administrations alike have declared legal.”

In fact, it is the National Center for Public Policy Research that has little respect for the law, and even less for science:

Little Respect For The Law: Laundering $2.5 million for Jack Abramoff. Jack Abramoff was a member of NCPPR’s Board of Directors; he resigned in October 2004. From 1999 to 2001, NCPPR wrote “repeated articles that aligned with the positions of the lobbyist’s clients.” In October 2002, Abramoff directed the Mississippi Band of Choctaws to give $1 million to NCPPR, and then told Amy Ridenour to distribute the funds to front organizations he controlled. In June 2003, Greenberg Traurig, the firm that employed Abramoff, sent $1.5 million to NCPPR, which Ridenour again distributed to front organizations controlled by Abramoff. Amy Ridenour later testified to Congress that she was an unwitting dupe. [Raw Story, 3/8/06]

Less Respect For Science: NCPPR Is Part Of The Right-Wing Climate-Denier Machine. The National Center for Public Policy Research was founded in 1982 by Amy Ridenour, David’s wife and a compatriot of Jack Abramoff, Ralph Reed, and Grover Norquist in the leadership of the College Republicans in 1981. NCPPR is a member organization of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Cooler Heads Coalition and the right-wing State Policy Network. In 25 years of operation, NCPPR has received about $280,000 from Exxon Mobil, in part to fund its “Envirotruth” climate denial website. [ExxonSecrets, SourceWatch]

Less Respect For Science: NCPPR Uses African Poverty to Attack Climate Change Action. Using its Project 21 front group, NCPPR put out a press release supporting CEI’s Third-World vs. Gore campaign on Amy Ridenour’s blog. It attacked “Gore and his celebrity friends” for “living opulent lifestyles” while “many in the Third World – particularly those in Africa – are literally dying due to a lack of adequate power, and the catastrophe that could result from imposing anti-global warming emissions regulations on power generation in these areas.” In fact, Africa is “one of the most vulnerable continents to climate change and climate variability,” with between 75 and 250 million Africans facing increasing water scarcity by 2020, potential food shortages and a rise in disease. [Project 21, 3/10/2008] [IPCC, 2007]

This hit piece was published in several right-wing publications, including Investor’s Business Daily, Robert Decherd‘s Providence Journal, and Rev. Sung Yun Moon’s Washington Times.

Comcast, FedEx, GM, Honda, Microsoft, TimeWarner, Toyota (!), Visa, VW, and WalMart — these are among the brand name companies who support the global warming denial promoted by the Cato Institute (full list below).

Many of you have probably now seen that absurd anti-scientific denier ad Cato is spending big bucks to put in major newspapers. “The New York Times ad alone would have cost over $150,000, based on the newspaper’s published ad rates,” notes one article.

The ad attacks President Obama and the whole notion of strong climate action with studies that don’t even support its basic premise — see New study quoted by Cato deniers concludes “warming over the 21st century may well be larger than that predicted by the current generation of models” and RealClimate’s excellent post (here).

The ad’s premise — “We, the undersigned scientists, maintain that the case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated” — has been utterly debunked by the most comprehensive and up-to-date scientific research in the past two years (see “M.I.T. doubles its projection of global warming by 2100 to 5.1°C and “Hadley Center warns of catastrophic 5-7°C warming by 2100 on current emissions path” and “Recent observations confirm … the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are being realised” — 1000 ppm).”

If we listen to Cato and the ad’s signatories, we are sure to destroy a livable climate for our children and their children and the next fifty generations (see “Intro to impacts: Hell and High Water“).

So I thought as a matter public service, you’d like to see the corporate sponsors of Cato, whose money goes to support its efforts, including this ad and their general disinformation effort (see “The intellectual bankruptcy of the Cato Institute“).

Read more

“Money no object for Indian reactor plans”

That is certainly the attitude you need to have if you’re planning to build a bunch of nukes:

• Turkey’s only bidder for first nuclear plant offers a price of 21 cents per kilowatt-hour
• Exclusive analysis, Part 1: The staggering cost of new nuclear power
• Warning to taxpayers, investors — Part 2: Nukes may become troubled assets, ruin credit ratings
• The Self-Limiting Future of Nuclear Power
• Nuclear meltdown in Finland

The recently introduced Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save (CARS) Act (H.R. 1550) is seriously flawed, according to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE).

The ACEEE is one of the most respected organizations in the country analyzing and promoting sound energy efficiency policies. I have worked with them many times over the past two decades. Here is their press release:

March 31, 2009

Washington, D.C.: ACEEE commends the intent of Representative Sutton, sponsor of the CARS Act, to help the U.S. auto industry emerge successfully from the current crisis while reducing oil dependence and global warming emissions. Unfortunately, the vehicle scrappage program outlined by the bill as introduced would not achieve its energy and environmental objectives.

The most serious shortcomings of the bill are:

Read more

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Energy and Environment Subcommittee Chair Ed Markey (D-MA) have unveiled green economy legislation today that will set national standards for energy efficiency, renewable energy, and global warming pollution — but leaves open whether polluters will be subsidized to achieve those standards.

Green economy legislation is needed now, for three key reasons:

Repowering A Healthy Economy. According to an analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a federal standard requiring all utilities to obtain 25 percent of their electricity from renewable energy sources by 2025 would create 297,000 new domestic jobs and save consumers $64.3 billion in lower electricity and natural gas bills. Clean energy standards will reduce the 24,000 premature deaths, 550,000 asthma attacks, and 38,000 heart attacks caused each year by power plant pollution, disproportionately hurting vulnerable children and the elderly.

Restoring Economic Leadership. Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr warned Congress in January that “of the top 30 companies in solar, wind, and advanced battery technologies in the world today, only six of them are U.S. firms.” Doerr called for “a predictable price tag be put on greenhouse gases in order to encourage the massive investment and innovation necessary to make the American economy competitive in coming years.”

Stopping Global Catastrophe. The MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change has devised this visual representation of the risks of global temperature rise if we don’t implement green economy policies. Any rise over 2°C carries high risks of worldwide devastation.

NO POLICY	GREEN ECONOMY

Waxman and Markey are releasing their discussion draft today, with an aggressive schedule to get the legislation to the House floor in less than two months:

– March 31, 2009: Discussion draft
– April 6 – 17: Representatives return home for spring district work period
– Week of April 20: Hearings
– Week of April 27: Energy and Environment subcommittee mark up
– Week of May 4: Full committee hearing
– May 11: Full committee mark up begins

House Science and Technology Chairman Bart Gordon (D-TN) told E&E News that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) “plan floor votes in both chambers by the end of July,” with a conference “by the end of the fall.”

House Energy and Commerce Chair Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Energy and Environment Subcommittee Chair Ed Markey (D-MA) are releasing their long-awaited draft energy and climate bill today. Based on reports from a Committe debrief and an E&E Daily story this morning (subs. req’d, excerpted below) and a Reuters story (here), I’ll give some first impressions.

[UPDATE: Full 648-page (!) bill is here and summary is here. More comments to come, but first impression stays the same. I agree with the Greenpeace statement, "Waxman-Markey Draft a Good First Step, but Improvements Needed."]

Waxman-Markey seems pretty good. It will jumpstart the crucial transition to a green economy. It keeps the overall impact to U.S. businesses and consumers very low (as any smart climate bill would, see “Introduction to climate economics: Why even strong climate action has such a low total cost — one tenth of a penny on the dollar“). And it has the targets needed for the U.S. to join other countries in averting catastrophic lobal warming impacts that are inevitable if we stay on our current emissions path.

I’d give it a B+.The bill, as Friday’s Waxman-Markey-Dingell-Boucher letter suggested, uses the flawed US Climate Action Partnership proposal as a blueprint (see “NRDC and EDF endorse the weak, coal-friendly, rip-offset-heavy USCAP climate plan“).

But it has stronger near-term targets: “a 20 percent cut from 2005 levels by 2020.” And the bill embraces the useful USCAP notion of a medium-term target — in this case “a 42 percent reduction in 2030.” That target sends a strong message that business-as-usual is off the table for fossil fuel companies. It also keeps the needed 80% cut in 2050.

It has both a renewable electricity standard for utilities (25 percent in 2025, though “a fifth can be met with efficiency measures”) and an energy efficiency resource standard — two essential provision for jumpstarting a transition to a clean energy, green jobs economy, while keeping total energy bills low. It also establishes a Low Carbon Fuel Standard — eventually, which is to say apparently after 2022.

One reason the bill doesn’t get an “A” is because it still allows too many offsets — 2 billion, whereas total U.S. GHGs in 2005 were about 7.2 billion tons (see “Bush policies cause U.S. GHG emissions to soar 1.4% in 2007“). The good news is you apparently have to purchase 5 tons of offsets to substitute for 4 tons of actual emissions reductions and you can’t get international offsets from a country that has not agreed to reduce its emissions — which together are vast improvements over USCAP.

The provisions on new coal plants do not strike me as tough enough for the next few years, but don’t lose much sleep — or lower the overall grade for this bill too much — over this since the Obama administration is probably not going allow very many new dirty coal plants anyway (see “EPA makes landmark finding: Global warming threatens public health and welfare“).

Read more

Countries representing 190 nations are participating in United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change talks this week (see Climate Envoy Stern in Bonn: The U.S. can’t “ride in on a white horse and make it all work”). Guest blogger Andrew Jones and Elizabeth Swain has been doing important modeling work on what climate commitments are needed to avert catastrophic impacts in a post first published here.

The diplomats at this week’s UNFCCC meeting in Bonn will need to aim towards the most ambitious proposals offered so far within the UNFCCC process if they want a global agreement later this year that will stabilize CO2 levels in the range of 350-450 ppm.

The figure to the left — the output of the C-ROADS simulator — explains why.

We collected emissions reductions proposals in the public domain up until March 10, 2009 (called “Current Proposals” in the graph and documented here) — and found that even if they were fully implemented they would be far from sufficient to meet the goal of stabilizing atmospheric CO2 levels at or below 450 ppm, reaching instead about 730 ppm by 2100.

Read more

A cost of one tenth of a penny on the dollar — not counting co-benefits

Here is an overview of the major cost analyses of global climate action.

In its definitive 2007 synthesis report of the scientific literature, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded:

In 2050, global average macro-economic costs for mitigation towards stabilisation between 710 and 445ppm CO2-eq are between a 1% gain and 5.5% decrease of global GDP. This corresponds to slowing average annual global GDP growth by less than 0.12 percentage points.

So global GDP drops by under 0.12% per year — about one tenth of a penny on the dollar — even in the 445 ppm CO2-eq case (through 2050, see Table SPM.7). And this is for stabilization at 445 ppm CO2-eq, which is stabilization at 350 ppm CO2 (see Table SPM.6).

And that has a very good chance of averting the incalculable cost of catastrophic global warming impacts to the next 50 generations, which means the cost of action is far, far less than the cost of inaction.

The IPCC’s conclusion — and every single word in the report — was signed off on by 130 nations including China and the Bush Administration. Nor is this an especially controversial conclusion, at least among the few groups that have done comprehensive global economic and energy modeling:

• McKinsey 2008 Research in Review: Stabilizing at 450 ppm has a net cost near zero. [See cost curve for global greenhouse gas reduction measures -- click to enlarge.]
• Must read IEA report, Part 1: Act now with clean energy or face 6°C warming. Cost is NOT high — media blows the story

How can the world’s leading governments and scientific experts and McKinsey and the traditionally conservative International Energy Agency agree that we can avoid catastrophe for such a small cost?

Read more

Conservative economist Dennis Avery, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and one of Marc Morano’s climate denial jokers, claimed today on a right-wing website that the “atmospheric CO2 levels at Hawaii’s Mauna Loa observatory have declined since 2004″:

How can this be when humans keep emitting more greenhouse gases? Could declining atmospheric CO2 levels mean that the whole Greenhouse Warming theory is collapsing?

In fact, carbon dioxide levels measured since 1958 at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s Mauna Loa Observatory have continued their inexorable rise, going from an average of 376 to 385 parts per million from 2004 to 2009:

Avery’s claim was based on a post on Morano climate denial joker Anthony Watts‘ blog, which implied that carbon dioxide growth rates have been going down. As Joe Romm noted at Climate Progress, “Dennis Avery doesn’t know the difference between growth and growth rate.”

In a telephone interview with the Wonk Room, Avery admitted his error:

I stand corrected . . . I apparently misstated the case.

Furthermore, the post Avery misinterpreted was nonsensical as well. Craig Loehle, principal scientist with the National Council for Air and Stream Improvement, the forest products industry’s “research institute,” drew an “eyeball trend line for the peaks” of a chart of monthly carbon dioxide growth rates by Morano joker Alan Siddons. Despite Loehle’s ability to draw lines on charts, carbon dioxide is piling up in the atmosphere faster than ever:

To reiterate, carbon dioxide levels are continuing to increase. And the increase is getting faster. In the 1960s, carbon dioxide levels were going up an average rate of less than one part per million each year. Since 2000, carbon dioxide levels have been rising at an average annual rate of two parts per million. Avery and Loehle weren’t just wrong — they’re dead wrong.

The Wonk Room appreciates Avery’s willingness to admit one mistake. But we doubt this marks the beginning of a trend.

Written by Alexandra Kougentakis, a Center for American Progress Action Fund Fellows Assistant, and Brad Johnson.

At the G20 Summit in London on April 2, the 20 largest economies in the world, from the United States and the European Union to Russia and China, will discuss a response to the global financial crisis. Using a study first presented at the Center for American Progress, Germany will argue that a coordinated effort by the G20 to fight climate change will be essential to fighting the global recession. “Towards a Global Green Recovery: Recommendations for Immediate G20 Action,” by Ottmar Edenhofer of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PICIR) and Nicholas Stern of the London School of Economics (LSE), notes that the G20 has the power to “trigger a global green recovery”:

As G20 countries account for roughly three quarters of global gross national product, energy consumption and carbon emissions, their combined efforts constitute a critical mass to trigger a global green recovery.

As the nation with the largest economy in the G20 and with one of the top greenhouse gas emission levels, the United States has a particular responsibility to act. The recently passed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act devotes one of every ten dollars to making the kinds of green investments recommended by the Center for American Progress’s Green Recovery report and this new Potsdam-LSE report, according to an advance copy acquired by the Wonk Room.

The authors note that “the costs of action are likely to be much less than the costs of inaction.” Stern, who concluded in 2006 that a failure to address climate change could lead to “a 20% reduction in consumption per head, now and into the future,” has warned that more recent findings show his report actually underestimated the threats of climate change.

This new report accordingly states that “the risks from any given global temperature increase are greater than previously thought.” Even as “emissions are increasing at a faster pace,” “the planet’s capacity to sequester carbon in natural sinks is decreasing.” Therefore, “seven strategic areas for G20 action” are identified to build a global green recovery that will address short term economic decline while emphasizing a long-term strategy of sustainable growth:

1. Implement across-the-board energy efficiency improvements
2. Convert to low carbon economic infrastructure through physical upgrades
3. Support clean-technology markets in renewable energy and energy efficiency
4. Initiate flagship projects to improve technological knowledge and increase innovation
5. Enhance international research and development (R&D) efforts, including international collaborative projects
6. Incentivize investment in low-carbon growth by setting a global price of carbon
7. Coordinate financial and climate change mitigation efforts

Specific recommendations include:

– “Ensure that new infrastructure investments are ‘climate-proof,’ i.e. that they take into account the impacts of unavoidable climate change”

– “Review and amend national procurement guidelines with the aim of going ‘carbon-neutral‘”

– “The development of a G20 Strategic Energy Technology Plan . . . which could serve to streamline R&D efforts globally”

– “Appoint ‘Energy and Climate Sherpas‘ to coordinate follow-up meetings and ensure that momentum in developing policies is maintained”

Edenhofer and Stern recommend “linking regional schemes” to limit global warming emissions in the manner of the International Climate Action Partnership, a 2007 coalition of 15 countries and regions that have already implemented or are actively pursuing the implementation of carbon markets through mandatory cap and trade systems. Interlinked regional carbon markets can “pave the way for the negotiations on a global climate agreement, which will take place in Copenhagen next December.”

The world’s fossil-fueled economy is now sagging dangerously even as its continuation will make climate change unmanageable and catastrophic. By making strong investments in climate-friendly sectors, “Towards a Global Green Recovery” declares that “a global green recovery can deliver immediate and long-term economic benefits, cut the risk of dangerous climate change, reduce energy insecurity and competition for natural resources, and prepare the ground for a successful post-Kyoto agreement in Copenhagen in December 2009.”

The American Daily has just published this laughably wrong piece of disinformation by long-term global warming denier Dennis Avery, “Now CO2 is Declining as well as Temperatures.” Before AD and Avery take it down, let’s look at what passes for analysis among the deniers. The piece opens:

The atmospheric CO2 levels at Hawaii’s Mauna Loa observatory have declined since 2004. How can this be when humans keep emitting more greenhouse gases? Could declining atmospheric CO2 levels mean that the whole Greenhouse Warming theory is collapsing?

Now let’s look at the Mauna Loa data, something Avery didn’t bother to do (from the NOAA website here):

Doh!

Avery is an environmental economist, and a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC. I guess for conservative economists, “declined” means “steadily increased.” I guess that’s why, after eight years of being run by conservative economics, the economy is in such bad shape. [Insert your conservative economist joke here in the comments.] But I digress.

What’s especially laughable about this piece of “analysis” is that not only didn’t Avery check the Mauna Loa data, which would take maybe 10 seconds to find with Google — he apparently didn’t bother reading his original source or look at the title of his own footnote, which is “Mauna Loa Rate of Change.”

Avery’s inanity is actually based on some torturous and cherry-picked analysis from the winner of the 2008 Weblog Award for Best Anti-Science Blog, “Watts Up With That” [see "Diagnosing a victim of anti-science syndrome (ASS)"].

Read more

The House will be announcing its comprehensive energy and climate bill Tuesday. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, however, “has been working to produce a bipartisan, comprehensive energy bill since the beginning of this Congress,” as a new press release explains.

The Committee, chaired by Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), will be marking up their bill Tuesday. They have just released an outline of key details, which I reprint below. Key features include authorizing the doubling of R&D, a major initiative to create a domestic battery industry for electric vehicles, and a major push to develop and deploy energy-efficient and low-carbon technologies for industry (which I will blog on a later).

Notably missing is a renewable electricity standard and an energy efficiency standard:

Read more

Averting catastrophic global warming requires completely overturning the status quo, changing every aspect of how we use energy — and doing so in under four decades (see “The full global warming solution“). Failure to do so means humanity’s self-destruction, Hell and High Water.

Media coverage of the problem and the solution has been dreadful (see “The media’s decision to play the stenographer role helped opponents of climate action stifle progress” and here). But why?

In his new cover story on Paul Krugman, Newsweek‘s Evan Thomas unintentionally provides the answer — the shocking, unstated truth about the media elite: They have “a vested interest in keeping things pretty much the way they are.”

Assuming we don’t spend the mere 0.11% of GDP per year needed to avert catastrophe, future generations who are puzzled about our fatal myopia need look no further for explanation than Thomas’s full remarks. He begins with the amazing admission, “If you are of the establishment persuasion (and I am),” and continues with words that should be emblazoned across journalism schools around the country and read out loud at every Ivy league college graduation:

Read more

You will not hear anyone on my team cast doubt upon or downplay the threat of global climate change. The science is clear, and the threat is real. The facts on the ground are outstripping the worst case scenarios. The costs of inaction–or inadequate actions–are unacceptable.

But along with this challenge comes a great opportunity. By transforming to a low-carbon economy, we can stimulate global economic growth and put ourselves on a path of sustainable development for the 21^st century. I would go so far as to say that those who hang back and cling to a high-carbon path will be economic losers in the end because with the scientific facts of global warming getting worse and worse, high-carbon products and production methods will not be viable for long.

So chief negotiator Todd Stern told delegates to the 190-nation climate talks kicking off today in Bonn, Germany. In a Q&A, he said, “The United States is going to be powerfully and fervently engaged in this process.”

You can read a U.S. news story, “U.S. Climate Envoy Vows Support: Commitment to Global Talks Affirmed Even as Caveat Is Issued,” here; a German one, “Bonn Climate Talks Give Obama’s Green Team First Chance to Impress,” here; and Stern’s full transcript here. Stern acknowledged the need for U.S. action:

Read more

Four key members of the House Energy and Commerce committee sent a letter to President Obama Friday (full text below) embracing the urgent need for climate action:

We represent different regions of the country and approach energy issues from different perspectives, but we are united in the view that now is the time for Congress to pass comprehensive energy and climate legislation….

As scientists learn about the dangers of “tipping points” in the global ecosystem and their potentially disastrous consequences, the need for decisive efforts grows increasingly urgent.

Chair Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Energy and Environment Subcommittee Chair Ed Markey (D-MA) — who will release a draft energy and climate bill Tuesday — were joined by the two people they dethroned (see here and here) in this call for action.

Unfortunately, they seem to embrace the relatively wimpy US Climate Action Partnership proposal (see “NRDC and EDF endorse the weak, coal-friendly, rip-offset-heavy USCAP climate plan“):

Read more

[With global climate negotiators meeting in Bonn, this week will have more of an international flavor. Here's another guest post from Charlie McElwee, an international energy & environmental lawyer and Professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University's School of Law who writes the blog China Environmental Law.]

A number of well-respected US think tanks and NGO’s have recently issued reports and roadmaps that urge greater cooperation between the US and China on global warming issues and less finger pointing. For the most part, the proposals make very positive contributions and should aid the fight to reduce the growth of greenhouse gas emissions. Many other NGO’s have been working on the ground in China for years and are also making important contributions to efforts to trim China’s carbon emissions. These efforts deserve our support (and thanks), and should continue.

Here’s the problem. We are fast approaching the point (Copenhagen, December 2009) where the rubber will (must!) hit the road. We are operating under an international framework that supports a “common, but differentiated” approach to global climate change negotiations. The “differentiated” component means that less is expected of “developing” countries, like China, than developed ones. The crucial question is how “differentiated” should China’s obligations be? Is China more like the US or more like Haiti? China’s historical as well as current and future carbon emission projections need to be considered in answering this question and tailoring its contributions to carbon reduction efforts.

Read more

[If readers have other good sources and citations for electricity costs, please put them in the comments.]

I have known the New York Times energy reporter, Matt Wald, for 15 years, and generally think he is pretty good. But he has published perhaps the most flawed, inaccurate, and indefensible article in his career.

Wald’s piece could also be a poster child for award-winning journalist Eric Pooley’s searing critique of the media’s coverage of climate economics (see How the press bungles its coverage of climate economics — “The media’s decision to play the stenographer role helped opponents of climate action stifle progress”).

And, amazingly, as we will see, a report by one of Wald’s two industry sources completely disagrees with the report by the other industry group Wald cites! In fact, new Concentrated solar thermal power Solar Baseload is already competitive with new gas-fired generation and likely to have better economics in 2015.

The first flaw is that Wald completely ignores the lowest cost electricity strategy — energy efficiency — even though the article’s headline is “Cost Works Against Alternative and Renewable Energy Sources in Time of Recession,” and a major point of the piece is that “Curbing carbon dioxide emissions — a central part of tackling climate change — will almost certainly raise electricity prices, experts say.”

Wald never tells the reader that until the economic collapse, traditional sources of power have been rising much faster in cost than alternatives (see “Power plants costs double since 2000 — Efficiency anyone?“). He also never mentions that efficiency, which costs two cents to four cents a kilowatt hour (not counting ancillary benefits, including no need for new transmission), is the only new source of power that is both pollution free and far cheaper than current electricity rates (see “Efficiency, Part 3: The only cheap power left“).

The media simply needs to start talking more about electricity bills, which encompassses, efficient use of energy, than electricity rates.

Second, just as Pooley specifically warns against, Wald only cites industry sources for cost — and, surprise, surprise, they have absurd and indefensible numbers. Indeed, the clearest evidence article of bias is the utterly insupportable cost estimate for nuclear power Wald cites from a Black & Veatch study, “a new nuclear reactor, 10.8 cents.”

Matt, say it ain’t so. Let’s be clear here. That number is beyond unsupportable. There is not a utility or nuclear power plant provider in the country who would guarantee 10.8 cents/kwh in a Public Utility Commission (PUC) hearing. You would have trouble finding one that would guarantee twice that rate in year one of operation.

Let’s remember that “Turkey’s only bidder for first nuclear plant offers a price of 21 cents per kilowatt-hour.” Moody’s — a far less biased source than Wald cites — puts new nuclear at over 15 c/kwh (see here). Earlier this year, Time wrote “new nuclear energy is on track to cost 15¢ to 20¢ per kilowatt-hour,” and I published a detailed cost study this year that put it at 25 to 30 c/kwh (see “Exclusive analysis, Part 1: The staggering cost of new nuclear power“).

Read more

[Please Digg this post by clicking here.]

The NYT columnist Tom Friedman has another terrific global warming piece today, “Mother Nature’s Dow.” He is the only major national columnist or reporter consistently warning the public of what science now tells us is likely result of continuing on our current greenhouse gas emissions path — unmitigated unconscionable catastrophe. And he is the only one laying out the solution in detail. In this post I will endeavor to annotate his column for new and old readers who want more.

Friedman begins by noting, “I’m convinced that our current financial crisis is the product of both The Market and Mother Nature hitting the wall at once.” This piece is in some sense a sequel to his one from three weeks ago, see “Is the global economy a Ponzi scheme?” He then lays out the climate realist position, noting:

If you follow climate science, what has been striking is how insistently some of the world’s best scientists have been warning — in just the past few months — that climate change is happening faster and will bring bigger changes quicker than we anticipated just a few years ago.

He cites two scientific sources:

• Christopher Field, director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University, whose extended views can be seen here.
• M.I.T.’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, whose full analysis can be seen here: M.I.T. joins climate realists, doubles its projection of global warming by 2100 to 5.1°C.

For more sources on this climate realist position, see “An introduction to global warming impacts.”

Then he lays out the five key policies needed to avert this catastrophe, the “climate bailout.” He cites Hal Harvey, CEO of “a new $1 billion foundation, ClimateWorks, set up to accelerate the policy changes that can avoid climate catastrophe by taking climate policies from where they are working the best to the places where they are needed the most”:

Read more