Mitt Romney has turbo-charged his support for Big Oil by selecting Paul Ryan as his running mate. The House-passed Ryan budget would retain $40 billion in tax breaks over a decade for Big Oil while demanding huge cuts in the budget for innovation and clean energy. In addition, the Romney-Ryan budget would provide $2.3 billion in new tax breaks for the five largest oil companies. This 2011 post ran after Ryan first introduced his radical plan.

By CAPAF’s Daniel J.  Weiss and Richard W.  Caperton

House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) proposed FY 2012 budget resolution is a backward-looking plan that would benefit big oil companies at the expense of middle-class Americans. It retains $40 billion in Big Oil tax loopholes while completely eliminating investments in the clean energy technologies of the future that are essential for long-term economic growth.

This budget would lock Americans into paying high, volatile energy prices. It would ensure that millions of clean energy jobs are created oversees–not here in the United States. It is a path backward to Bush-Cheney Big Oil energy policies that cost jobs and harm American competitiveness. In short, the Ryan plan ensures that we lose the high-stakes competition for the $2 trillion worldwide clean tech market.

Ryan claimed in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that his plan “rolls back expensive handouts for uncompetitive sources of energy, calling instead for a free and open marketplace for energy development, innovation and exploration.” This is false. Ryan’s proposal actually violates his assertion in two ways. It maintains wasteful subsidies for Big Oil, while cutting valuable investments in the clean energy technologies of the future.

Let’s consider each of these in turn. First, Ryan’s plan would continue “welfare” for big oil companies.

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by Harsha Nahata

July was the hottest month ever recorded in the U.S. with 3,135 record temperatures set. The heat, together with the excessive drought facing 63 percent of the nation, have animals across the U.S. struggling to stay cool and find food. Here are a few examples of how animals are adjusting to the heat.

• Zoo Animals Struggle In The Heat: At zoos around the country, animals are having trouble coping with constant triple-digit temperatures. Zookeepers at Henson Robinson Zoo in Springfield, Illinois, for example, are monitoring animals to ensure they don’t fall sick, allowing animals to spend more time in sheltered areas and replenishing water and even frozen food.

• More Black Bear Encounters: The heat has Black Bears coming out of hiding, as they look for food in a water-scarce habitat. Most of the country is facing drought, which has dried up their stock of berries and greens. Because of the depletion in their food supply, bears are turning to alternatives — combing through garbage, breaking through screens, and looking inside cars to find food. In northern New York state, a bear broke into a candy store looking for sweet treats to munch on.

• Number Of Fish Kills Rise: The record heat has raised water temperatures as well. With bodies of water in the Midwest reaching up to 97 degrees, more fish than usual are dying off. Reports suggest that fish are dying in the tens of thousands. Fish kills are common year round, as part of a natural cycle. But this year the record heat and drought have increased this number, leading to “tens of thousands” of fish kills, worse than ever before in the Midwest.

The mild winter and record hot summer have taken their toll on animal behavior and survival in a variety of ways. For instance, Chicago has seen a decline in its squirrel population, as more older squirrels survive a milder winter and compete for resources, leaving newborns more vulnerable. Lemurs, which usually do what they can to steer clear of water, lately have made exceptions to seek relief in cooler, wetter parts. The shortage of food due to the drought combined with a loss in appetite because of the heat have also affected farm animals like cattle and pigs, making some thinner and less healthy. Overall the heat has caused some animals to become lethargic and lose their appetites, also placing them at risk for heatstroke.

– Harsha Nahata is an intern with the ThinkProgress War Room.

Photomatt28, via Flickr

by Clint Wilder, via Clean Edge

For two days in mid-July, 100 miles off the northern coast of Oahu in Hawaii, the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Nimitz played host to the first large-scale demonstration of the Navy’s Great Green Fleet. More than 70 aircraft, including F/A-18 Hornet fighter jets, E-2 Hawkeye early warning aircraft, and helicopters, as well as destroyers and other ships, participated in the biannual Rim of the Pacific naval exercises with sailors and pilots from 21 other nations. A 50-50 biofuel/petroleum blend powered virtually all of the Navy’s ships and aircraft.

“The military has done a lot of things that start a tidal wave throughout our culture, and I think this is one of those things,” Navy Lt. Commander Jason Fox, an E-2 Hawkeye pilot, told Forbes.

Meanwhile, stateside in the deserts of California, SunEdison is constructing the massive 350 MW Oro Verde solar PV plant in Kern County that will power part of Edwards Air Force Base where the plant is located. SunPower is preparing for the October opening of a 14.8 MW solar plant at the Naval Air Weapons Station at China Lake. And SolarCity’s SolarStrong initiative for military residential PV installations across the U.S. continues to progress, with last month’s announcement of solar deployments on 850 Air Force Base residences in California and Colorado.

All these activities are part of the U.S. military’s major push into clean energy, a trend presented in this space earlier this year by Environmental Entrepreneurs co-founder Nicole Lederer. In a very bumpy year for the clean-tech industry, the Pentagon’s development of clean energy continues to be one of the brightest lights. It is creating markets and jobs, and seeding next-gen technology developments. At the same time, organizations like Veterans Green Jobs and Airstreams Renewables are promoting training and hiring of military veterans in the clean-tech sector.

The Pentagon has ambitious goals to reduce fossil-fuel use in both combat operations and on bases; the Navy and Air Force, for example, both aim to get half their fuel from non-petroleum sources by 2020. And with good reason: fuel convoys to supply infantry in Iraq and Afghanistan have proven to be one of the most vulnerable aspects in the war theater. In an all-too-common example on July 18, a bomb planted by the Taliban destroyed 22 NATO tanker trucks in northern Afghanistan. This occurred in the same week as the Navy’s Great Green Fleet exercises occurred in Hawaii, showcasing a better way.

But now, in Congress, a great deal of this may be in jeopardy.

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San Diego-based Qualcomm Inc. recently announced that it has partnered with the automaker Renault for a field trial of its new wireless electric vehicle charging system later this year in London.

According to Forbes:

“The California-based company signed a memorandum of understanding with Renault to work on the field trial and to figure out how to integrate the wireless charging technology into Renault’s cars. Qualcomm also announced on Tuesday that Delta Motorsport, an automotive engineering company in the United Kingdom, plans to put Qualcomm’s wireless technology into its electric cars, which will then be used for the same field trial in London later this year.”

The goal of the trial is to test both the commercial and technical viability of wireless electric vehicle charging. Qualcomm would also like to gain an understanding of the potential challenges of deploying and integrating wireless charging on a large scale.

The device, a pad that the company is calling Halo, is placed under a parked vehicle and communicates wirelessly with a corresponding receiver on the underside of a car. The Halo stays off until the receiver pad, which is unique to each vehicle, is in range. Once that happens the pads pass a current between them, charging the car’s batteries without the need for any sort of plug.

From EE Times:

“The technology is based on inductive charging across the air gap between a transmitting pad in the road surface and a receiving pad on the underside of a vehicle.It typically works at frequencies below 300-kHz but the final details are not yet decided and subject to standards negotiation. It is not yet clear whether the technology uses simple inductive magnetic coupling or resonant inductive coupling.”

Through the Halo, Qualcomm hopes to tackle one of the most significant challenges to the electric vehicle market: the lack of a suitable charging infrastructure. Currently EV charging stations are fairly major installations, requiring extensive wiring, and in many cases, EV drivers must take great pains to seek them out. (Though some cities are taking major steps to become more EV friendly.) The Halo, however, holds the promise of a small, potentially portable, low-maintenance, and infrastructure-free method of EV charging.

One of the most exciting things about this new technology is the potential for wireless, in-motion charging.

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