In the next two years — assuming Congress doesn’t act — the vast majority of federal support in place for clean energy in the U.S. will be gone.

As a well-researched but jaw-droppingly incomplete new report posted by the Brookings Institution points out, spending levels for deploying clean energy technologies aren’t being gradually phased out; the industry is getting pushed off a cliff wearing cement shoes.

For those of us who care about clean tech and don’t just want to buy it all from China, the central question is: What can possibly be done to maintain and indeed expand federal support for clean energy in an era where exploding federal deficits and debt have, unsurprisingly, come to dominate the political debate — an era where one political party has proposed cutting most every clean energy program sharply.

One of the most important insightful statements I’ve ever heard on this subject came, unsurprisingly, from Henry Waxman (D-CA), the Ranking Minority Member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, in his opening statement for an oversight hearing on “Solyndra and The DOE Loan Guarantee Program.” In rebutting the standard GOP attack on the argument that Solyndra “shows the folly of federal investments in solar and other clean energy technologies” and that “the government should not pick ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ in the energy marketplace,” Waxman explained:

This sounds superficially appealing, but there is a fundamental flaw in their logic.  The majority of Republicans on this Committee deny that climate change is real. If you are a science denier, there is no reason for government to invest in clean energy.

That final sentence cuts through the fog of this debate like the Fresnel lens of a lighthouse lamp. For science deniers, clean energy is just another special interest, hardly different from, say, natural gas or, for them, even oil and coal.

The essential rationale for government action, as progressives and climate hawks know, is that we must start rapidly getting off of fossil fuels ASAP to preserve a livable climate — to maintain a carrying capacity anywhere near the projected mid-century population of this planet – by limiting warming to under 4°F. Indeed, we know that even if we miss that target, the shift is inevitable by midcentury, else we face warming far beyond 10°F globally — beyond 13-18°F over most of U.S.! – with multiple, simultaneous catastrophic consequences that  are almost beyond imagining.

Put another way, the reason the government needs to act in the energy marketplace is that clean energy has huge benefits to the nation and public health that are not reflected in its relative cost to fossil fuels (See, for instance, Economics Stunner: “Oil and Coal-Fired Power Plants Have Air Pollution Damages Larger Than Their Value Added.” Natural Gas Damage Larger Than Its Value Added For Even Low CO2 Prices.)

That’s why the single most obvious government policy for federal support of clean energy — one that mainstream economists (and think tanks) across the political spectrum have embraced — is a price on carbon.

So you would think that a 64-page report on clean energy policy by leading think tanks would have a big focus on climate change and a carbon price, particularly a report titled “Beyond Boom and Bust: Putting Clean Tech on a Path to Subsidy Independence.” After all, the only true way to achieve subsidy independence is for the price of fossil fuels to reflect their actual harm to humans. Until that happens, subsidies would seem inevitable. Once a rising price happens, most clean energy advocates would be happy to start phasing out virtually all subsidies.

And yet this report has no mention whatsoever of the words “climate change” or “global warming.”  Indeed,  the word “pollution” never appears. The report offers no actual rationale for why the government should be in the clean energy business at all, other than a passing reference to the tens of  thousands of jobs the sector has created. But, of course, oil and gas create jobs, too, albeit unsustainable ones.

Even more amazing, while the report devotes a full 20 pages to its policy recommendations section, “Putting Clean Tech on a Path to Subsidy Independence,” and offers some theoretically terrific ideas, it devotes not one single sentence to a carbon price. The phrase “carbon price” never appears.

It’s as if the whole notion of global warming and the cost of pollution and pricing carbon had been carefully scrubbed from the report. Yet those concepts represent a core rationale — if not the sine qua non — for writing a 64-page report  on federal intervention in the  energy marketplace to support clean energy.

No doubt purely coincidentally, here is the list of authors:

UPDATE: Obviously, the presence of the four Breakthrough Institute authors, including the two famous founders, will inevitably leave the impression with some that this is a BTI show. Originally, the Brookings website had this clarification: “Editor’s Note: Mark Muro is the  lead contributor of the paper.” Now Brookings has updated its website to read “Mark Muro is one of the principal authors of the paper.”

No doubt the involvement of Brookings and WRI explains why, in a narrow sense, the report is excellent, with great charts and factoids on how President Obama sharply increased clean energy support in the recovery act, and how that is all set to disappear if Congress doesn’t act.

Whatever one thinks of the Breakthrough Institute, they have made clear they believe environmentalists are to blame for recent failures in energy policy, by talking too much about the climate and pushing policies built around carbon pricing. Their work inspired me to come up with a new term, “climate science ignorers.”

Since the new study offers not two words of explanation for why it ignores climate change or even why it fails to consider a carbon price, let’s look at how Shellenberger and Nordhaus make the case.  In an October piece, they blame Australian greens for even passing a modest carbon price, and use that to then launch an attack on everyone, everywhere who supports a carbon price:

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by Celine Ramstein

There was more huffing and puffing on Capitol Hill this week over the Environmental Protection Agency’s new mercury standards.

Once again, lawmakers are attacking the EPA’s plan to regulate mercury from power plants, creating a false dichotomy between the economy and public health.

Railing against the standard during a Senate subcommittee hearing on the health benefits of the standard, Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) called it “the most costly rule in the history of the EPA; one that typifies President Obama’s war on affordable energy.”

As one of the fiercest opponents of environmental regulations, it’s not a surprise that Inhofe counts oil, gas and electric utilities among his top five political donors — receiving over $600,000 in campaign contributions from those sectors since 2007.

Perhaps that’s why, despite analysis from the Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, Congressional Research Service, and the North American Reliability Corporation showing that the EPA rule will not threaten the electricity system, opponents like Inhofe continue to make grossly inaccurate claims.

So what are the facts? We’ve detailed them numerous times before. But the attacks on smart, effective environmental and public health standards are only picking up. It’s important to be armed with good information in order to combat the attacks:

• A CAP Analysis found that 22 members of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, a coal industry coalition which is leading the charge against the rule, has nearly $18 billion in cash reserve which could go towards scrubbers and other equipment necessary to slash these pollutants.
• The Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, Congressional Research Service, and the North American Reliability Corporation have all done analysis showing that the rule will not threaten Americans’ access to reliable electricity.
• Studies by the Center for American Progress and Ceres found that many of the plants already have the capability to meet the air toxics rule.
• The EPA concluded that increase in electricity price increase would be relatively small and would actually  account for the harmful costs of pollution on the public.
• The Economic Policy Institute determined that the rules would yield a net increase of  84,500 direct jobs by 2015.
• The rules go into effect in 2015 and the utility Exelon has testified that three years is enough time to implement pollution control technology.
• EPA also makes a fourth year option widely available.
• Opponents’ predictions of high costs are likely overblown.  History shows that estimates of reductions costs under earlier pollution laws  are always higher than the actual costs.  For instance, In 1989, the EPA calculated that complying with the acid rain program would cost $2.7 billion to $4.0 billion but a decade later, an EPA analysis found that the actual cost was substantially lower at $1 to $2 billion per year.

History has proven that it is possible to maintain a strong economy and strong environmental standards at the same time. The political arguments we hear today simply don’t reflect reality.

Celine Ramstein is an intern on the energy team at the Center for American Progress. Arpita Bhattacharyya and Stephen Lacey contributed to this report.

UpStart [uhp-stahrt] n. 1. A company or organization with innovative approaches to energy use, carbon pollution, resource consumption, and/or social equity, 2. A company or organization overcoming market barriers to build the new clean energy economy.

by Adam James

“Hello, my name is America, and I have a transportation problem.”

Everyone knows we are addicted to oil — even oil man George W. Bush said ”America is addicted to oil” – and that coming up with feasible alternatives to treat that addiction hasn’t been easy.

The biggest cause of our oil dependence is the transportation sector, making up a whopping 71% of total U.S. consumption. Transportation has always been a tough nut to crack, simply because abundant fossil fuels have given people a cheap, easy way to get from place to place.

Not surprisingly, the number of registered vehicles has steadily climbed over the years – currently clocking in at 254,212,610 according to the most recent data. In 2008, transportation overtook the industrial sector as the leading contributor to emissions. In 2010, vehicles pushed an incredible 75,000,000 metric tons of CO2 to the atmosphere.

Putting aside the emissions problem (but don’t worry, we’ll come back to it), we are putting an enormous strain on our infrastructure, our wallets and our sanity. About 26 percent of our bridges are “structurally deficient or functionally obsolete,” and when it comes to our roads the American Society of Civil Engineers notes that:

“Americans spend 4.2 billion hours a year stuck in traffic at a cost to the economy of $78.2 billion, or $710 per motorist. Poor conditions cost motorists $67 billion a year in repairs and operating costs. One-third of America’s major roads are in poor or mediocre condition and 45% of major urban highways are congested.”

According to ACSE, we currently have a shortfall of $116.3 billion needed to improve conditions. And given that building more roads often just encourages more driving and more congestion, simply constructing more infrastructure for automobiles isn’t the answer.

Bikeshares: The Methadone of Transportation

If only there was a way to save money, offset emissions, stimulate local economies, increase public health and spur the construction of smarter cities. Oh wait, there is. Enter Bikeshare programs. Bikesharing is not a new concept. But in recent years, we’ve seen an explosion of new business models in cities around the country.

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Mitt Romney’s campaign has benefited from Big Oil and Big Coal’s backing, which have poured more than $16 million into ads attacking President Barack Obama’s energy policies. As a favor, Romney says he plans to open public lands and water to drilling while undoing safety and environmental protections.

Below, we take a side-by-side look at Obama and Romney’s policies and their divisions on fossil fuels, clean energy, public health, and pollution. Beneath the chart is a more detailed comparison of the candidates’ energy proposals and rhetoric.

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by John Farrell, via Energy Self Reliant States

Since it will take a battle to extend federal tax credits for wind power anyway, why not make community wind development easier at the same time?

Last month, President Obama’s Treasury Department released proposed reforms to a number of business taxes including the federal Production Tax Credit (PTC) for wind power projects.  The reform proposal would make the tax credit permanent, but more importantly, it would make it refundable.

A regular tax credit reduces the amount of taxes a business or person pays dollar for dollar, down to zero.  In the case of the PTC, it provides 2.2 cents for every kilowatt-hour produced by the wind power project, over 10 years.  But for the many individuals and businesses that don’t owe a lot of taxes, they have limited use.  That’s why there’s an entire “tax equity industry” made up of large banks and Wall Street firms that partner with wind and solar developers to reduce their tax bills.  The drawback of these partnerships is that as much as half of the tax credit’s value is consumed by the Wall Street firms and not the renewable energy project.

With a refundable tax credit, wind and solar project owners wouldn’t require big tax bills or Wall Street to finance projects.  Instead, any participant in a community renewable energy project would receive a check equal to the tax credit’s value.

The implications are significant.  The South Dakota Wind Partners project, for example, collected over 600 owners for 7 wind turbines, thanks to a temporary option to take the federal PTC as a cash grant.  Brian Minish, who helped develop the South Dakota Wind Partners community wind project, says that a refundable tax credit will similarly make a community wind project easier: “The refundable PTC is much better then the current PTC structure in that we don’t need to find tax equity investors and we don’t need to pay them a premium return.  This would allow more common investors to participate in community wind projects!”

Since community-owned wind projects create up to twice the jobs and over three times the local economic impact compared to absentee-owned projects, small policy changes that make community ownership easier can have a big impact.

There are other solutions afoot for community wind, including the Community Wind Act.  This U.S. Senate bill would allow distributed wind projects – 20 megawatts and smaller – to take the upfront Investment Tax Credit instead of the PTC.  The change provides one big advantage: community wind projects have a harder time getting capital, so upfront cash helps secure financing.

Legal and tax barriers have created an uphill struggle for community ownership of renewable energy, so it’s nice to see improvements on the radar of the Obama administration and in Congress.

John Farrell is an Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) senior researcher specializing in energy policy developments that best expand the benefits of local ownership and dispersed generation of renewable energy.

This piece was originally published at Energy Self-Reliant States and was reprinted with permission.

Many television meteorologists question manmade climate change, including ones certified by the American Meteorological Society (AMS). The society’s statement on climate change is now more than five years old, overdue for a revision.

A few months ago, members of Forecast the Facts called on the AMS to pass a strong, science-based information statement on climate change. After months of delay, the AMS has finally completed a draft statement. The draft is only viewable by AMS members. Climate scientist Dr. James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has read the statement and offers his opinion below.  — Brad Johnson, campaign manager of Forecast the Facts.

From James Hansen:

As a climate scientist, I know that there’s a huge gap between what scientists understand about climate change and what the public knows. And when TV meteorologists get the science wrong, it just furthers public confusion.

The American Meteorological Society has an important role to play in clearing up the confusion by giving clear guidance to their members. I’m pleased to say that their new climate change statement is largely in line with current science, but there is an important caveat, as I will explain. Here’s what I saw when I read the statement:

– Overall, the statement is stronger than the AMS’ 2007 statement. The previous statement emphasized uncertainties and natural causes for climate change. By contrast, the new statement makes the unequivocal case for human-induced climate change.

– The draft statement defends the merits of climate models as a tool for understanding climate change. This is important, because TV meteorologists often call these models unreliable in order to create doubt about climate science.

– The draft statement acknowledges that severe weather events are expected to increase with global warming. The predictions include: More extreme precipitation events and more intense dry spells in between, more severe droughts, a higher proportion of strong hurricanes, and longer/more intense periods of extreme heat.

– The current statement does not adequately describe major climate threats that concern scientists. Their statement does not make clear that we will guarantee enormous undesirable consequences for young people if we continue with rapid fossil fuel emissions to the atmosphere. For example, they note that sea level will rise 20 cm by 2100 due to thermal expansion of ocean water, but that underplays the fact that continued rapid warming will cause much larger sea level rise via ice sheet disintegration. The difficulty in predicting exact timing of sea level rise and location of increasing extreme climate anomalies does not diminish the threats that they pose.

My principal concern with the statement is that it assumes emissions will continue to grow. We must never accept “business-as-usual” as inevitable. If the U.S. and the international community joined together to put an honest price on carbon emissions, the exploitation of unconventional fossil fuels and coal could rapidly be phased out.

Overall, I’m pleased that the AMS is headed toward a strong, science-based statement, which will go a long way toward educating broadcast meteorologists who cover this important topic. I’ll be sending a note to the AMS thanking them for their progress so far, and encouraging them to continue improving upon this draft before the statement is finalized. Can you please join me by doing the same?

Click here to send a note to the AMS.

Factually yours,
Dr. James Hansen
Director, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies

P.S. If you’re interested in becoming a member of the AMS, you may do so here. Members are allowed to log in and read draft statements, including the the latest statement on climate change.

Reposted from the Sierra Club’s Compass Blog

As the U.S. Export-Import Bank (ExIm) closed its 1912 — whoops, we mean 2012 — annual conference, it is clear that the future of the 21st century, to them, is coal. Despite giving lip service to clean tech, the bank awarded its prestigious Sub-Saharan exporter of the year award to Black & Veatch for its work on the Kusile coal fired power plant.

“Using dirty 20th-century technology, this plant will ensure that South Africa’s Highveld continues to exceed limits for dangerous pollutants for decades to come,” said Justin Guay, Sierra Club International Climate Program Representative. “Meanwhile, apartheid-era contracts will keep the price of power below market rates for industrialists while forcing South Africans to endure extreme rises in the price of electricity, forcing many of the poor off-the-grid.”

South Africa isn’t the only place where ExIm is embracing coal. Reliance Power CEO J.P. Chalasani sat on the “Opportunities in India” panel. Reliance received over $800 million in U.S. taxpayer financing for its Sasan coal-fired plant, despite challenges around land acquisition and the cover-up of a smokestack collapse that killed at least 30 workers. Now Reliance’s Krishnapatnam coal-fired power plant has stopped construction and could face 11 lawsuits because the high price of coal has made the plant unviable.

However, ExIm did provide perplexing support for clean technology. There even was a clean energy panel, which openly acknowledged that off-grid renewable energy is lucrative, better capable of addressing energy poverty, and less vulnerable to international fossil fuel price fluctuations. “While ExIm has dramatically increased its renewable energy financing, we are confident that the bank will continue miss the Congressionally-mandated 10% renewable energy target that would help make the U.S. competitive in this emerging global market,” said Doug Norlen, Policy Director for Pacific Environment.

Nicole Ghio, Campaign Liaison for the Sierra Club. summed up the conference: “Aside from the unexpected, albeit cursory, nod to clean technology that could help reduce energy poverty and ensure a safe and healthy future for generations to come, it is clear that ExIm is working to keep the U.S. in the 20th century for another 100 years.”

This piece was originally published at the Sierra Club’s Compass blog and was reprinted with permission.

Our round-up of the top climate and energy news. Please post additional links below.

TransCanada Corp. submitted a reroute of its Keystone XL oil pipeline to the Nebraska state government Wednesday, moving a step closer to reviving the project after it was rejected by the U.S. government earlier this year. The reroute will avoid an environmentally sensitive area in the U.S. Midwest state, and comes a day after Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman signed a bill allowing the state’s review of the pipeline to continue. [Wall Street Journal]

U.S. coal exports to China could more than double to over 12 million tonnes in 2012 thanks to depressed freight rates and a fall in domestic demand in the United States, the chief of top U.S. coal exporter Xcoal Energy & Resources said. The expected increase in coal shipments could further push down coal prices in Asia where a supply glut following a deluge from the United States and Colombia has forced prices to slump recently. [Reuters]

Global warming, pollution and human activity in marine habitats are not generally regarded as good things — unless you’re a jellyfish. Then — according to a study of the jellyfish population by University of B.C. researchers — they have an upside. [Canada.com]

The National Park Service is launching a new initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from its properties. Park service officials will discuss the program at a news conference Thursday at the Lincoln Memorial. [Washington Post]

The 14^th Dalai Lama, named Tenzin Gyatso, needed few notes for a subject he is passionate about; the merging of scientific research into global warming with spiritual practice.  He was joined on stage by two world renowned Scripps Institute of Oceanography researchers to discuss global warming and the need for environmental change. [Fox 5]

Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) took on a brave new title on Wednesday: zombie killer. Standing alongside a giant photograph of a highway road sign flashing the words “Caution! Zombies! Ahead!!!”, Polis took to the House floor to warn his colleagues of “zombie” earmarks that have returned from the dead and crept into the transportation bill they were debating. The best way to ward them off, he said, would be to pass his amendment banning the return of once-killed earmarks. [Huffington Post]

In one of the least-shocking political developments of 2012, four major environmental groups simultaneously endorsed President Obama’s reelection bid Wednesday. [Washington Post]

Serious doubts have been raised over the prospects for carbon capture and storage in the UK in the first comprehensive investigation into the technology, just two weeks after the government launched a £1bn competition to build the first demonstration CCS plant. [Guardian]