The Energy Information Administration has delayed a comprehensive analysis comparing per-MW subsidies between renewable and fossil resources.  Climate Progress has learned the delay may stem from internal concerns that the findings were far too narrow and did not give a “full picture” of the subsidy landscape.

The report, which was commissioned by three Republican House members, has come under heavy criticism for being politically driven because the requested set of data inherently inflate subsidies for renewable energy and deflate subsidies for nuclear and fossil fuels.

According to one source familiar with the EIA’s handling of the report, the study was delayed this morning during a meeting because of “quality assurance” and that the agency was re-visiting the report to ensure it gave a “full picture” and did not come to a conclusion based upon the desired results of members of Congress.

A previous EIA study looking at 2007 per-unit subsidies showed renewables getting far more government support than fossil resources: The report was requested by Senator Lamar Alexander, who has called for an end to subsidies for “big wind.” It showed that renewables received between 0.6 cents and 3.5 cents of subsidies per kilowatt-hour of electricity produced, while nuclear and fossil energies received between .02 cents and 2.9 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Opponents of clean energy pounced on the numbers, saying that they proved renewables are over-subsidized and that government funding for the industry should be significantly scaled back. But in its own analysis, the EIA cautioned about the limitations of the study:

It is important to recognize that the subsidies-per-megawatt hour calculations are a snapshot taken at a particular point in time. Some electricity sources, such as nuclear, coal, oil, and natural gas, have received varying levels of subsidies and support in the past which may have aided them in reaching their current role in electricity production. The impacts of prior subsidies, some of which may no longer be in effect, are not measured in the current analysis.

The EIA analysis simply showed that because the mature nuclear and fossil energy industries generate more units of energy, they get fewer subsidies per MWh in a given year. But by only taking a “snapshot” of a particular year, the analysis completely ignores the life-cycle subsidies for a particular technology, thus inflating the subsidy count for new renewables.

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JR: I read this story, “Cloud computing could lead to billions in energy savings,” which cites multiple studies.  It intrigued me enough to ask for a response from Jon Koomey, Consulting Professor at Stanford and a leading expert on the energy impact of electronics and the internet.  Here’s his response (reposted from his blog).

– by Jon Koomey

There have been a few recent analyses showing that cloud computing has significant efficiency and cost advantages. The most recent one with which I am directly familiar was conducted by Jon Taylor’s team at WSP Environment & Energy for Salesforce.com, and it showed per-transaction emissions reductions averaging 95 percent for companies that shift to using the cloud.

I can think of four reasons why cloud computing is (with few exceptions) significantly more energy efficient than using in-house data centers:

1. Economies of scale. It’s cheaper for bigger cloud computing folks to make efficiency improvements because they can spread the costs over a larger server base and can afford to have more dedicated folks focused on efficiency improvements.

For example, there are usually significant fixed costs of implementing simple techniques to improve Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), like the costs of doing an equipment inventory and assessment of data center airflow (same for implementing institutional changes like charging users per kW instead of per square foot of floor area). Whenever there are costs that are substantially fixed (i.e. only weakly related to the size of the facility), bigger operations have an advantage because they can spread the costs over more transactions, equipment, or floor area.

There’s also a substantial advantage to having “in house” expertise devoted to efficiency, instead of having staff split between different jobs. Technology changes so rapidly that it’s hard for people not devoted to efficiency to keep up as well as those that are.

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By Tom Kenworthy, senior fellow, Center for American Progress.

A new study that looks at the impact of global warming on wildfire patterns in the area around Yellowstone National Park predicts such a sharp increase in large fires by mid-century that the region’s ecology will undergo profound changes, including the failure of some forests to regenerate.

At a pace and scale that surprised the researchers led by professor Anthony Westerling of the University of California-Merced, the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem will be dramatically altered within a few decades. Now dominated by dense forests, the region will have younger and more open forests, and more grasslands and shrub areas, which will have major impacts on wildlife, hydrology, and aesthetics:

What surprised us about our results was the speed and scale of the projected changes in fire in Greater Yellowstone. We expected fire to increase with increased temperatures, but we did not expect it to increase so much or so quickly.

By 2075, the study predicts that fires on the scale of the 1988 outbreak that burned 1,200 square miles or nearly 800,000 acres could be an annual occurrence. “[Y]ears with no large fires – common until recently – are projected to become increasingly rare,” according to the study which is to be published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Large, intense but infrequent fires are a natural feature of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. But global warming is rapidly changing that normal fire regime, and frequent big, severe fires will become the norm. The study predicts that after 2050 the average annual area burned in the region will be about 400 square miles, and by 2075 the average area affected by fire will exceed the historic 1988 fires.

“The magnitude of predicted increases in fire occurrence and area burned suggests that there is a real likelihood of Yellowstone’s forests being converted to nonforest vegetation during the mid-21st century because reduced fire intervals would likely preclude post fire tree regeneration,” the study concludes.

In March, Tim DeChristopher was convicted on two felony counts for disrupting an oil lease auction at the end of the Bush administration. Today, “barring any further delays, he will face a sentence of up to 10 years behind bars — even though Obama Interior Secretary Ken Salazar cancelled the bids before DeChristopher was even charged.”

President Obama’s Department of Justice has relentlessly pursued putting DeChristopher into prison. In contrast, no charges have been brought up against BP or Massey Energy for their deadly catastrophes in April 2010, which collectively killed 40 Americans, in addition to the environmental damage done. Nor have any charges been brought against the financial companies which caused a global economic meltdown through their unlimited greed. Public Citizen responds:

While the actions of major corporations like Massey Energy and BP have led to vast environmental damages, safety hazards and even deaths, these companies never seem to get the punishment they deserve. When compared to the leniency afforded corporate polluters, his potential sentence seems unreasonably severe.

Noting that DeChristopher acted because of the global warming pollution the oil lease sale would unleash, Bill McKibben warns that the federal government’s prosecutorial zeal is creating a martyr:

The last year was the warmest in human history. Just last week new studies showed that with that heat came the most extreme weather ever measured, a spate of floods and droughts biblical in scope and power. DeChristopher is proving prophetic, and sticking prophets in jail does not rob them of their power.

McKibben is organizing weeks of climate civil disobedience aimed at the president, beginning Aug. 20.

by Kiley Kroh

With the latest dismal jobs report still fresh in the nation’s mind, it becomes increasingly clear that our current job creation efforts just aren’t cutting it. It is time to take action on facilitating new, emerging sectors that have been proven to create employment opportunities.

A new study from the Brookings Institution found that from 2003 to 2010, the clean economy grew by 8.3 percent—almost double what the overall economy grew during those years. Further, the clean economy currently employs 2.7 million workers across a diverse group of industries—more than the biosciences and fossil fuel sectors.

Offshore wind energy is one sector of the clean economy that has been able to realize its job-creating potential in other parts of the world. While America has yet to install our first offshore turbine, other countries are moving quickly to capitalize on this vast resource. France waded into the fray most recently with the announcement of a plan for five offshore wind projects with a combined capacity of three GW—an endeavor they project will support more than 10,000 jobs in the first round of bidding.

While the enormous opportunity for offshore wind energy from America’s oceans has been known for years, an area of lesser focus but perhaps comparable opportunity is the Great Lakes. Winds there average between 17.9 and 20.1 mph, just a bit slower than the storied gales off the northern Atlantic coast. And although recent studies continue to affirm that the benefits of offshore wind in the Great Lakes outweigh the potential drawbacks, area developers—like their saltwater counterparts—have yet to reap the benefits of this massive untapped resource.

Last month, CAP’s Michael Conathan and Richard Caperton detailed how far behind the United States has fallen in offshore wind development. As dozens of U.S.-based projects hang in financial and regulatory limbo, Europe has nearly 3,000 MW of installed capacity with permits issued for an additional 22,000 MW. And China has over 100 MW installed and has issued permits for 13,600 MW more. The CAP report echoed a Pike Research study citing favorable public policy and a market-based approach as factors facilitating Europe’s booming industry.

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A round-up of climate and energy news. Please post other stories below.

More big Yellowstone fires predicted with climate change

The size and frequency of wildfires in the northern Rocky Mountains will increase so much with global warming that it will profoundly alter the landscape of Yellowstone National Park and its environs, predicts a new study.

The conifer forests of spruce, pine and Douglas fir that grow at elevations from 6,000 to 8,000 feet could give way to open woodlands, grass and shrubs, transforming the greater Yellowstone ecosytem that includes parts of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.

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Last week, extremist radio host Rush Limbaugh mocked the heat wave spreading across the country, arguing that the heat index was a goverment concoction to make people afraid of global warming. The heat index, which combines temperature and humidity readings to provide an estimate of what the equivalent temperature would feel like without humidity, is used by meteorologists and public health officials to determine the threat posed by heat waves.

In an exclusive interview with ThinkProgress, one of the top public health experts in the nation’s greatest metropolis, New York City, explained that the heat index and heat waves are no laughing matter. Dr. Thomas Matte, professor of urban public health at the CUNY School of Public Health, has investigated the dangers of heat waves to the 8 million residents of New York City, and is the co-author of the paper, “Summer heat and mortality in New York City: how hot is too hot?”

Matte emphasized that the heat index is a useful tool that combines two of the most important factors behind heat stress, a potentially deadly syndrome, particularly for the sick, young, and elderly:

There’s many many studies that have been done how people respond to hot conditions. They have shown that there are more variables than just ambient temperature. The environmental variables include obvious things like shade. Also, because humans cool themselves by sweating, when the humidity is higher the evaporation is less efficient.
On a warm day, a dry day will feel more comfortable than a humid day.

Heat stress isn’t just a matter of comfort, especially for people with a heart condition, or emphysema. A normal healthy person can tolerate a lot of that stress. Under some conditions it can be just discomfort, but under other conditions it can be life threatening.

“The reason that heat index is used is because high humidity makes it feel hotter, and causes more heat stress,” Matte said. Debunking Limbaugh’s claim that the heat index is a recent government plot, Matte noted, “it’s been done that way for a long long time.”

The weekend’s heat wave was the type that kills, Matte said:

When the temperature gets into this range, more people die of chronic health problems and deaths occur from heat stroke. Anybody who has a health condition or is elderly is at risk. These heat waves do kill people. Of all natural disasters, they kill more people than any other. This is not a hypothetical risk. People really die from heat waves.

When asked if he uses the heat index to promote concerns about global warming, Matte scoffed. “This is not really a climate change issue,” he responded. “When we warn people to take precautions, and we use the heat index to do that, climate change is not what’s on my mind.”

While the rest of the country focuses on the looming deadline to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, House Republicans are taking advantage of the distraction to repeal environmental regulations and pass the most severe environmental budget cuts in 35 years. Republicans are pushing a bill that cuts 7 percent from the Department of Interior budget and would reduce EPA funding by a whopping 18 percent — a $1.5 billion cut from current funding levels:

[T]he House of Representatives is busy with legislation aimed at repealing environmental regulations and stymieing conservation efforts.

The Interior and Environmental Protection Agency spending bill for fiscal year 2012 contains policy riders added by panel Republicans to thwart White House-backed initiatives on everything from the EPA’s regulation of greenhouse gas emissions to conservation efforts in the Grand Canyon. It would halt new regulations on mountaintop removal mining and prevent the Fish and Wildlife Service from listing new species under the Endangered Species Act. [...]

But members of the House of Representatives Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition say that Congress should be focused on preventing a default crisis and on creating jobs, not crafting policy riders to rollback essential pollution controls and public health protections.

Mike Simpson (R-ID), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee’s Interior Subcommittee, has made no secret of his disdain for environmental regulations and says his priority is to sharply curtailing the authority of the EPA. “The EPA’s unrestrained effort to regulate greenhouse gases, and the pursuit of an overly aggressive regulatory agenda, are signs of an agency that has lost its bearing,” Simpson insisted in remarks on the House floor Monday.

Republicans on the committee approved 38 riders targeting specific programs including defunding the EPA’s rulemaking on coal ash, mercury and other toxic air pollutants.

The White House has threatened to veto the bill, and dozens of Democrats took to the House floor yesterday to protest the underhanded attempts to defund the EPA at a time of national crisis. The House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition released a statement warning that the bill “would overturn 40 years of bipartisan progress protecting the clean air and water on which all Americans depend.”

Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Norm Dicks (D-WA) called it “the worst” Interior and Environment Appropriations bill he’s seen in his 35 years on the committee, while Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) lamented, “This is the most anti-environmental House of Representatives in history.”

During yesterday’s “filibreather” of the 2012 environmental budget bill (HR 2584), Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) railed against the efforts by the Republican majority to prevent action on climate pollution. The bill’s cuts in funding for greenhouse gas programs and regulations “severely limit actions the administration could take” to permit, control and even monitor the pollution. Connolly rightly observed that the extreme weather disasters around the United States are the “symptoms of global warming,” but Republicans are putting ecosystems, infrastructure, and public health at risk with their denial:

The Republican majority seems to be living in an alternative reality.

As Americans face unprecedented drought in the Southwest, record floods in the Mississippi basin, record heat here in Eastern and Midwestern cities, accelerating sea level rises and other symptoms of global warming, this bill blocks funding even to monitor global warming. Not only do Republicans deny the existence of global warming, apparently, they have even blocked funding to monitor its impacts.

This reckless policy rider doesn’t just endanger polar bears, coral reefs and countless other species and ecosystems, it endangers American infrastructure. From the Norfolk naval base to the Jefferson Memorial. It endangers American public health by increasing smog pollution and heat-related deaths, as we’ve seen from the recent heat wave that swept across the East and Midwest United States, setting record temperatures here in Washington, DC, Newark and other cities across the Eastern seaboard.

Watch it:

Hundreds of Americans have died and billions of dollars have been lost from this year’s record climate disasters, but the Republican House majority is stripping the nation of our ability to fight against the threat of climate pollution.

“I urge my colleagues to reject this reckless legislation that defunds critical land programs, eviscerates 40 years of bipartisan environmental standards and desecrates the memory of Teddy Roosevelt,” Connolly concluded.

(AP Photo/Jens Meyer)

by Raj Salhotra

“The consequences […] of failure to raise the debt ceiling would be Armageddon-like in terms of the economy,” explained White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, all the way back in April. Today, we’re a week away from the debt ceiling deadline and no agreement has been reached.

If the U.S. can’t pay its bills and a government shutdown ensues, the consequences for energy innovation would indeed be “Armageddon-like.” Without raising the debt ceiling, three of the government’s most important energy initiatives – the Section 1603 US Treasury cash grant program, ARPA-E, and the DOE Loan Guarantee Program – would be at risk.

The Treasury Grant
The US Treasury cash grant program provides an alternative to the investment tax credit that many firms were unable to use due to the recent financial crisis. Under the 1603 program, firms eligible for the investment tax credit can get a cash grant for the same value. The program has been immensely helpful in securing financing for project developers.

In 2009 and 2010 alone, the 1603 program supported thousands of projects and helped create over 40,000 jobs. In 2011, the success has continued as the Treasury continues to award around 240 grants per month. If the US fails to raise the debt ceiling, grant payments may be placed on hold, and the 240 companies expecting to receive payment in August could go unpaid. This would introduce tremendous uncertainty into the renewable energy development market, and could create a “chilling effect” in the financial sector. If the 1603 cash grant program is placed on hold, companies may consider withholding investments in renewable energy generation.

Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E)
ARPA-E is a government agency modeled on DARPA (well-known for developing the internet) that supports high-risk, high-reward research that would otherwise be unable to secure financing.  The agency currently funds research projects such as longer-lasting batteries and more-efficient building cooling systems. If ARPA-E spending ceases because of Congress’ failure to raise the debt limit, many of these projects could be stopped and cutting edge technologies may go undiscovered. Simply put, ARPA-E supports breakthrough technologies that can revolutionize America’s energy future and halting the program would delay important innovations.

Department of Energy Loan Guarantees
The DOE Loan Guarantee Program supports energy projects that are ready to move from demonstration scale to market commercialization. The program, which provides financial support to investors if a company defaults on a loan, has guaranteed 42 projects, which have created or saved over 66,000 jobs across 38 states.

If the US does not raise the debt limit, projects that have already received a “conditional commitment” may not actually close on their guarantees. Even if they do close on the guarantee, that guarantee may be worthless to private lenders who would likely demand a higher interest rate. These companies made business decisions based on the loan guarantee; thus, if the loan is delayed, the firms could face significant problems in closing financing or starting a project.

Power plants or manufacturing facilities that are currently being processed may also be placed on hold and likely delayed. And without any chance for getting a loan guarantee, companies that have a scalable technology may have to abandon projects altogether. If this program is halted or canceled, the renewable energy industry will surely suffer as it continues on a path to true scale.

While a failure to raise the debt limit ceiling remains something politicians across the political spectrum say remains unaccepatable, there will be significant consequences if it is not raised. Clearly the problems could extend well beyond the financial sector, undermining America’s long-term competitiveness in key job-creating industries like clean energy.

— Raj Salhotra with Richard Caperton and Stephen Lacey

by Mike Roddy and Dr. Reynaud Serrette. Roddy is a former builder/developer who works for a commercial solar business.  Serrette is an Associate Professor of Civil Engineering at Santa Clara University.

The climate-conscious home builder may ask him or herself: “What’s the most C02-friendly method of building a home?” We wanted to find that out as well, so we compared three different materials — steel, timber and concrete.

Surprisingly, it’s not timber. The answer is steel, which has a CO2 Index of 1 compared to 1.52 for concrete and a 4.44 for a timber-framed home.

Here’s how we found the answer by using a single-story, ranch-style house in Texas with three bedrooms, two baths and a garage for a model. The living space was approximately 116 square meters, plus an attached 47 square meter garage and storage area.

The structural systems for all three construction materials were designed by professional engineers.  Contractors then developed cut lists and block totals from engineered drawings.

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A member of the local boy scout troop that meets at Fort Monroe and call themselves the Moat Monsters shows his support for protecting the fort, a historic Civil War site.

– Christy Goldfuss, in a CAP cross-post

Unless you are a history buff or a resident of Hampton Roads, Virginia, you probably have not heard of Fort Monroe. This key Civil War site, however, is about to be thrust into the spotlight by western members of Congress anxious to keep public lands open to developers and extractive industries at all costs. This week, it is expected that one of several western conservative members will launch a legislative effort to block President Obama from protecting this priceless link to our past, as well as other places threatened by development.

Last week, hundreds of people who support protecting Fort Monroe as part of American history attended a public meeting with the National Park Service. The fort is often considered the site that marked the beginning of the end of slavery, when a Union general designated three escaped slaves as “contraband of war” and refused to return them to their Confederate owners. Following the incident, more than half a million African Americans were granted safer harbor in the Union under the “contraband of war” label.

On September 15th, the fort will become the responsibility of the state of Virginia due to an Army initiative to realign and close bases.

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Our guest blogger is Noreen Nielsen.

This morning, BP announced $5.6 billion in profits in the second-quarter of 2011, a decrease from Q1, “disappointing” investors who expected even more. Despite making $11 billion in profits in just 2011 alone, BP and its other Big Oil allies continue to aggressively lobby Congress to maintain their billions of dollars in oil industry tax breaks. A quick look at some other key facts:

– BP has already spent $2 million lobbying Congress this year.

– BP has made over $40,000 in political contributions in just 2011, with 93 percent going to Republicans.

– The Big Five oil companies — BP, Exxon, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Shell — made more than $900 billion in profits (figure in 2011 dollars) – almost a trillion dollars – over the previous decade.

Moreover, BP — responsible for the worst oil spill in U.S. history, has only paid out $4 billion of the $20 billion fund set up to pay restitution to the economic victims of its Gulf of Mexico. BP claims that the Gulf Coast economy is booming, despite evidence that suggests otherwise.

Last week, Gov. Mary Fallin (R-OK) called for a statewide day of prayer to pray for rain.  It is, sadly, likely to have the same effect as her neighbor to the South found (see “Texas Drought Now Far, Far Worse Than When Gov. Rick Perry Issued Proclamation Calling on All Texans to Pray for Rain“).

TP Green notes:

In 2007, Fallin, then a U.S. congresswoman, laughed off greenhouse pollution, saying people “need to be more concerned about global warming in the U.S. caused by a nuclear attack.” Earlier this year, Fallin attacked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for attempting to enforce clean air and clean water laws on her state’s oil and gas industry.

As the map above shows, Oklahoma is ground zero for extreme heat, with most of the state averaging more than 6°F above normal temperatures  for the first three weeks of July — which is to say, they are having a pretty mild July for the second half of this century, assuming we keep listening to their own inane anti-science politicians:

That’s especially callous and nonsensical considering that this brutal heat wave — “Oklahoma City has been above 100°F for 30 days this summer — has probably killed over a dozen Oklahoma residents.”  But then, Inhofe has so little sense, he didn’t even know enough not to swim in an algae bloom exacerbated by the heat wave and drought.

The Oklahoma drought  is shockingly worse than it was even three months ago:

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