Our guest blogger is Kalen Pruss, intern with the Energy Opportunity team at the Center for American Progress, and a junior at the University of Michigan majoring in environmental studies and history.

A new report finds that the Southeast will benefit from a national renewable electricity standard (RES), despite the complaints of one of region’s largest utilities that there’s not enough sun, wind, or other renewable energy to move away from coal. Southern Company, the giant parent company of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Gulf Power, has actively lobbied against an RES for years, using empty excuses to prevent renewable energy development:

Renewables like solar power and wind turbines often catch the public eye, but challenges with their consistent and widespread use in the Southeast persist.

In 2007, Southern Co. protested a 15% by 2020 RES bill championed by Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), claiming that that compliance would cost $4 billion to implement by 2030, because “the Southeast is short on wind and sun, unlike the Midwest and Southwest.” “We’re not opposed to renewable energy,” Southern’s CEO David Ratcliffe claimed, just a “sort of a one-size-fits-all federal mandate that would be very difficult for us to achieve with any economic sense.”

In fact, Southern Co. has spent only a measly $6 million on research and investment over the last five years, while annual profits grew in 2008 to a whopping $1.74 billion despite the economic downturn. A heavy user of coal-fired electricity, Southern Co. is the most polluting utility in the U.S. when it comes to carbon dioxide, and “runs six of the 50 dirtiest power plants in the country in terms of sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and mercury released.” Southern Co.’s 172 million tons of annual carbon dioxide emissions — the same as the entire nation of Venezuela — make it the only U.S. utility to rank in the top ten carbon-emitting utilities worldwide.

A new Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE) study busts the myth that the Southeast can’t produce clean energy. “Yes We Can: Southern Solutions for a National Renewable Energy Standard” finds investment in renewables to be an economic boon to the region:

The Southeast has been portrayed as a region that will face significant cost and difficulty meeting a national RES due to scarce access to renewable energy resources. This assertion is simply inaccurate. The Southeast has sufficient renewable energy resources to comply with a strong RES. Developing our region’s renewable energy potential and meeting an RES will actually benefit the region.

With investment from companies like Southern Co. and federal funding for renewable energy and efficiency (such as the $6.145 billion in the recovery package), SACE found that the Southeast could produce 15% of its electricity from renewables by 2015, and 25% by 2025. The implementation of an RES would also spur job growth in a region now suffering 7 to 8% unemployment. For example, one 20 MW biomass power plant creates an average of 177 jobs and $11.07 million in additional economic activity. North Carolina’s implementation of an RES will create 41,000 net jobs, SACE estimates. Despite the protestations of coal-fired executives, the Southeast is ready and able to become a leader in the shift toward green energy and green jobs.

The Center for American Progress explains how a national renewable energy standard (RES) would help usher in a green energy economy across the nation.

Apparently Henry Waxman (D-CA) has sold both Harry Reid (D-NV) and the White House on the strategy of having a mega-bill that combines climate and energy legislation. This post explains why I believe that is both a tactical and strategic mistake.

E&E News PM (subs. req’d) reports tonight:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) confirmed today that he will package energy and global warming measures together into one large bill for consideration later this year, a decision that should put to rest questions about whether Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill have different strategies for one of President Obama’s top agenda items.

Reid gave only a one-word answer — “yes” — when asked whether he planned to wrap a cap-and-trade bill together with separate bills establishing a nationwide renewable electricity standard (RES) and promotion of a modernized grid that can improve energy efficiency, reliability and renewable energy management.

There are three reasons this is a bad idea — two that are obvious to all, one that is apparently not. First, the climate bill is huge and complicated and uber-controversial and will be exceedingly difficult to get to Obama’s desk this year according to everybody I talk to (see “Breaking: Sen. Boxer makes clear U.S. won’t pass a climate bill this year“). So that means we are delaying important clean energy and smart-green grid bills that could otherwise probably get passed by the end of the summer (and quickly start help Obama meet his crucial promise of doubling renewable power in his first term):

But not everyone is on the same page.

Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) said earlier today that he wants to mark up the energy and “smart grid” legislation next month and he still has doubts whether a cap-and-trade bill can move within the same timeframe. “I hate to see all of that sort of held hostage until we can get agreement on a cap-and-trade bill,” he told reporters today.

Second, and more importantly, the climate bill is one of the most important pieces of legislation that any Congress will ever consider. You don’t want to add stuff to it that will lose votes or give people an excuse to vote against it. The RES in particular may prove unpopular with people who might otherwise be inclined to vote for the climate bill — since the whole point of a cap and trade is that you don’t force everybody to do exactly the same thing, whereas the point of the RES is that every state is being mandated to adopt the same percentage of renewable power.

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The science makes clear that many extreme weather events have increased in recent years — and that there is a link to climate change. The point is such well-established science that even that bastion of denial, the Bush Administration, acknowledged it in a major 2008 report, Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate (see here and below).

But the deniers and their allies, the denier-eqs, try to attack, mock or shout down any talk of such a link whatsoever. That was a key point of Michael Crichton’s book, State of Fear (see here). Some denier-eqs go so far as to claim that any scientist even hearing anyone talk about the link and not objecting is a “willing silent collaborator” in the “misrepresentation of climate science for political gain.”

This is political correctness — and scientific incorrectness — taken to a Category 5 extreme.

I offer my explanation for why deniers and their allies adopt this strategy below, but first, it is worth noting that this shouting down strategy is so important to them it goes back more than a decade:

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Amazingly, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp — yes, the one that owns Fox News — is very, very serious about climate change. If you don’t believe me, watch the remarkable hour-long video (here), which is mostly a Rupert-Murdoch-led international launch of News Corps’ Global Energy Initiative.

Murdoch explains why he has become a global warming believer — he grew up in Melbourne, Australia, which is among the populated areas hardest hit by climate change (see “Australia faces collapse as climate change kicks in”).

He also explains they have done a corporate-wide carbon footprint, that they emit 640,000 tons of CO2 a yea, and that they will be carbon neutral by 2010. And while I am not the hugest fan of carbon neutrality, since it ultimately relies on rip-offsets, Murdoch is a serious guy who has done his homework and who understands and articulates the right three-fold strategy

1. Reduce energy as much as possible
2. Then switch to renewables, and
3. “As a last resort,” purchase carbon offsets.

And it is a gas listening to Fox News’ Roger Ailes say, “We have to save energy.”

Perhaps most important, Murdoch realizes that the viewers and readers of his corporate entities emit “10,000 times as much carbon dioxide,” (i.e. 6.4 billion tons of CO2, which exceeds total U.S. emissions!) and the biggest impact he can have is through messaging and public education.

Note: I am unwittingly part of Murdoch’s messaging strategy, since he owns the publishing giant HarperCollins, which published my book Hell and High Water, which is now listed as part of their “environmental titles” and gets a link from his global energy initiative website.

Of course, HarperCollins also published Michael Crichton’s denier-fest State of Fear, which probably sold a thousand times as many copies as my book, which brings me to the biggest problem with Murdoch’s initiative:

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