The energy efficiency provisions in the House energy and climate bill (H.R. 2454) could save $750 per household by 2020 and $3,900 per household by 2030, according to an analysis by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE).   An ACEEE news release notes that not only will efficiency reduce the costs to consumers and businesses of cutting carbon pollution:

ACEEE estimates that approximately 250,000 jobs will be created by the energy efficiency provisions in H.R. 2454 by 2020, with a total of 650,000 jobs generated by 2030.

The bill’s authors clearly understood that Energy efficiency is THE core climate solution – the biggest and lowest cost carbon-free resource by far.

The ACEEE agrees with CP and major environmental groups that a key improvement for progressives to pursue would be to “require utilities to reduce electricity demand by 10 percent by 2020″ (as opposed to the 5% to 8% the bill allows), which would result in an extra $50 billion in cumulative consumer savings by 2030“”savings that Waxman-Markey is leaving on the table.

The bill has a remarkable number of energy-saving provisions [click to enlarge].

Here is ACEEE’s discussion of the key efficiency provisions of the bill (and go to their original analysis for a detailed spreadsheet of the electricity, natural gas, and CO2 savings of each provision):

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A new economic study reveals that concerns a cap on global warming pollution could hurt American agriculture are unfounded. As the Waxman-Markey green economy legislation (H.R. 2454) moves toward passage in the House of Representatives, the farm lobby and rural officials have questioned the bill’s costs to farmers. Last week, Rep. Frank Lucas (R-OK), the ranking member of the House Committee on Agriculture, cried that farmers are “a prime target for a national energy tax“:

From higher energy costs to lost jobs to higher food prices, cap-and-trade promises to cap our incomes, our livelihoods, and our standard of living, while it trades away American jobs and opportunities. . . . Whether it’s the fuel in the tractor, the fertilizer for the crops or the delivery of food to the grocery store, agriculture uses a great deal of energy throughout production. On average, 65 percent of farmers’ variable input costs are fuel, electricity, fertilizer, and chemicals. Even a small increase in the operating costs for our producers will hurt American agriculture.

Yesterday, the Brookings Institute released the topline results of an economic analysis of cap-and-trade systems, with sectoral impacts. This study models the worst-case economic scenario for cap-and-trade programs, modeling the impact of an inflexible system that does not include offsets, incentives for renewable energy development, or other cost-control measures. Even without the inclusion of an offset program to allow the agriculture sector to benefit from carbon market, their analysis found the impact on agriculture to be minimal:

Chart compiled by the Wonk Room from Brookings Institute data. The “Obama” and “Waxman-Markey” models do not include banking and borrowing of pollution allowances, unlike the actual Waxman-Markey legislation. The “hotelling” models include banking and borrowing, but no models include agricultural offsets.

Not only will the transition to a green economy not hurt America’s farmers, but it will save their livelihoods from the increasing threat of climate disruption, which impact the Brookings study did not model. In reality, the only sectors that face measurable pressure from a cap on carbon pollution are the coal and oil industries, who have enjoyed extreme profits at the expense of the rest of the economy — and yet have failed to make any real investments in clean energy.

Global warming is a major threat to life in the oceans — and humans who depend on that life (see Ocean dead zones to expand, “remain for thousands of years”).  As one recent study found:

Global warming may create “dead zones” in the ocean that would be devoid of fish and seafood and endure for up to two millennia”¦.

Its authors say deep cuts in the world’s carbon emissions are needed to brake a trend capable of wrecking the marine ecosystem and depriving future generations of the harvest of the seas.

Jane Lubchenco — Obama’s terrific choice for administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) — discussed the threat to the ocean from global warming in a long interview on NPR’s Diane Rehm show yesterday (mostly in the second 20 minute segment).  You can catch it here.

If you want to understand ocean acidification better, see this BBC story, which explains:

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Facilities “producing large quantities of drinking water from moisture in the air could look like this” — and it looks to me this could be powered by the waste heat from concentrated solar thermal plants.

Drinking Water From Air Humidity

Not a plant to be seen, the desert ground is too dry. But the air contains water, and research scientists have found a way of obtaining drinking water from air humidity. The system is based completely on renewable energy and is therefore autonomous….

In the Negev desert in Israel, for example, annual average relative air humidity is 64 percent – in every cubic meter of air there are 11.5 milliliters of water.

Research scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB in Stuttgart working in conjunction with their colleagues from the company Logos Innovationen have found a way of converting “¦ air humidity autonomously and decentrally into drinkable water.

“The process we have developed is based exclusively on renewable energy sources such as thermal solar collectors and photovoltaic cells, which makes this method completely energy-autonomous. It will therefore function in regions where there is no electrical infrastructure,” says Siegfried Egner, head of department at the IGB.

The principle of the process is as follows: hygroscopic brine — saline solution which absorbs moisture — runs down a tower-shaped unit and absorbs water from the air. It is then sucked into a tank a few meters off the ground in which a vacuum prevails. Energy from solar collectors heats up the brine, which is diluted by the water it has absorbed….

Greens make big gains in EU parliament vote

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The claim made by politicians from George Allen to Barack Obama that the United States is the “Saudi Arabia of coal” is based on a “wildly overconfident” estimate of the nation’s recoverable coal reserves. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Energy Information Administration estimate that the United States has a 240-year supply of coal uses a baseline established in 1974, now grossly out of date. Last year, he “U.S. Geological Survey completed an extensive analysis of Wyoming’s Gillette coal field,” which supplies one-third of the nation’s coal, “and determined that less than 6% of the coal in its biggest beds could be mined profitably, even at prices higher than today’s”:

“We really can’t say we’re the Saudi Arabia of coal anymore,” says Brenda Pierce, head of the USGS team that conducted the study. No one says the U.S. is facing a coal shortage. But the emerging ranks of “peak coal” theorists argue that current production levels may be unsustainable and, if anything, create a false sense of security.

The “Saudi Arabia of coal” slogan emerged during the oil shocks of the 1970s, when the coal industry and politicians promoted the use of the Nazi-era technology of turning coal into a gasoline substitute:

J. Allen Overton, Jr., president of the American Mining Congress: “You and I know that America is the Saudi Arabia of coal, and the more we extract it the less we’ll have to keep bowing to Mecca for oil. Perhaps in the long run nuclear fusion or solar power or some other esoteric form of energy will ride to our rescue. But, between then and now, we need a resource that will bridge the gap. And the name of it is coal.” [Oil & Gas Journal, March 26, 1979]

Vice President Walter Mondale: “We are the Saudi Arabia of coal. We’ve got lots of it, but we’re not using it like we should.” [Associated Press, June 26, 1979]

President Jimmy Carter: “America is the Saudi Arabia of coal, blessed with enormous reserves … I would rather burn one ton of Kentucky coal than see our nation become dependent by burning another barrel of OPEC oil.” [AP, July 31, 1979]

The industry-promoted metaphor has enjoyed popularity to this day, adopted by Republican and Democratic politicians alike to justify a continued dependence on this dirty and dangerous fuel, instead of true energy reform: Read more

Less than a postage stamp a day.  That’s what it will cost the average American to cut US greenhouse gases 83% in four decades and give the world a chance of avoiding catastrophic global warming while jumpstarting the transition to a clean energy economy.

The right wing likes to take economic analyses that don’t model the House clean energy and climate bill and then misrepresent the results to attack the bill — see, for instance, Exclusive: MIT Professor says GOP, Weekly Standard “misrepresentation” of his April 2007 study to project costs for Waxman-Markey is “inappropriate,” “silly” and “just wrong.”

The latest hit job is by The Washington Times, which abuses a new study by Brookings in a piece whose headline is exactly backwards, “Study: Cap and trade would hurt economy.”  You can see for yourself the devastating economic harm that Brookings projects strong climate policy would cause:

Yes, you need a magnifying glass to find any impact on GDP growth for decades.

Now, Brookings could not be clearer that the study doesn’t model Waxman-Markey.  Note the very first bullet point of its presentation on the study Monday (here):

Not an analysis of particular bills.

The study models a variety of scenarios, centered around a 20% cut in U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide emissions by 2020, 40% by 2040, and 83% by 2050

But it doesn’t look at the various clean energy provisions in the bill (or in the stimulus, for that matter).  It doesn’t model any of the cost containment provisions of the bill.  It just looks at brute-force emissions reductions over time similar to what Obama and Waxman-Markey propose.  And that’s probably why Brookings predicts a rather absurdly high price for CO2 permits in 2020 — $50 a ton, which is double CBO’s projection and triple EPA’s!

Even so, as the Brookings graph above shows that the bill’s impact on the economy is negligible — and Brookings assumes no offsets whatsoever.  The 83% reduction by 2050 is achieved through domestic emissions reductions and with no noticeable economic impact.

But how does The Washington Times spin this as harmful to the economy?  Here is their lede paragraph:

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Twenty major environmental groups sent House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a letter (here) urging that she make three key improvements in the Waxman-Markey bill and reject attempts to weaken it.

The groups, which include the Sierra Club, the National Wildlife Federation, the National Audubon Society, Environment America, the League of Conservation Voters, the Natural Resource Defense Council, and the Union of Concerned Scientists, want to

• “Increase the portion of pollution allowance value dedicated to delivering” clean energy;
• “Preserve EPA’s ability under the Clean Air Act [CAA] to require existing power plants, refineries and other sources to meet up-to-date carbon pollution standards”; and
• Strengthen the renewable energy and energy efficiency standard as follows:

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