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Buoyed by the potential promise of a green economy, Mr. Klebensberger, who heads the American branch of SolarWorld AG, a company based in Bonn, Germany, is ramping up production of solar cells in a retrofitted factory that had its grand opening last October “” in the teeth of the financial crisis.
SolarWorld’s plant here [Hillsboro, OR], which makes enough cells to fit 1,700 solar panels a day, is the biggest of its kind in the United States….
THE United States lost its status as the world’s leading solar manufacturer in the 1990s as interest surged elsewhere. Now it makes little more than 5 percent of solar panels worldwide….
Thank you Reagan, Gingrich and other conservatives for gutting our leadership in what is certain to be one of the major job-creating industries of the century! (see “U.S. left in dust, having invented solar PV technology” and “Why Anti-wind McCain had to deliver his climate remarks at a foreign wind company” and”Why other countries kick our butt on clean energy: A primer“)
Even as some of the weaker solar companies resort to layoffs, a number of big names “” including Schott, First Solar, SunPower and Sharp “” are building, expanding or looking to build manufacturing plants in the United States. Sanyo, the Japanese electronics company, is building a solar wafer factory in Salem, Oregon’s capital, that is to begin production this fall.
Thank you stimulus, progressive Congress, and team Obama! (see “First quarter cleantech VC funding still hits $1 billion “” green stimulus funds soar to $400 billion“).
Smart car charger could save money, and the grid
Researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash., have developed a device that will negotiate with the grid to find the best times to recharge electric cars.
The smart charger controller will save car owners money by seeking lower electricity prices and synchronizing car charge times to match those overnight schedules. The device can temporarily interrupt charging when there is elevated stress on the system.
“If a million owners plug their vehicles to recharge after work, it could cause a major strain on the grid,” scientist Michael Kintner-Meyer said. The new devices will make sure the cars divvy up their charge times to relieve power congestion.
“Plug in your vehicle and you forget about it, and next morning it would be fully topped off,” he said.
In places like California, where residents are offered time-based pricing, customers could save up to $100 a year by charging during off-peak hours, Kintner-Meyer said. That could mean lots of savings as automakers like General Motors Corp., Toyota Motor Corp. and Nissan Motor Co. bring new rechargeable vehicles to market as early as 2010.
Previous studies at PNNL, a Department of Energy laboratory, have found that the grid could support the electric conversion of as many as 70 percent of light-duty vehicles if charging is managed.
And from the Department of Not Terribly Reassuring Ideas, the people who gave us Chernobyl are at it again:
Russia to build floating Arctic nuclear stations
Russia is planning a fleet of floating and submersible nuclear power stations to exploit Arctic oil and gas reserves, causing widespread alarm among environmentalists.
A prototype floating nuclear power station being constructed at the SevMash shipyard in Severodvinsk is due to be completed next year. Agreement to build a further four was reached between the Russian state nuclear corporation, Rosatom, and the northern Siberian republic of Yakutiya in February.
The 70-megawatt plants, each of which would consist of two reactors on board giant steel platforms, would provide power to Gazprom, the oil firm which is also Russia’s biggest company. It would allow Gazprom to power drills needed to exploit some of the remotest oil and gas fields in the world in the Barents and Kara seas. The self-propelled vessels would store their own waste and fuel and would need to be serviced only once every 12 to 14 years.
In addition, designers are known to have developed submarine nuclear-powered drilling rigs that could allow eight wells to be drilled at a time.
Maybe I should have filed that under “Signs of the Apocalypse” along with “Couple pays $155,000 to clone dog” and “Drill Here, Drill Now” by Aaron Tippin.
Australia delays emissions scheme
The Australian government says it will push back a planned carbon emissions trading scheme (ETS) by a year. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said the delay was necessary because of the poor economic climate.
But he also suggested that Australia could pursue tougher emissions reductions targets if an international deal was reached. The ETS, which has been criticised by both industrial and environment groups, was due to launch in July 2010.
Business say the scheme will delay economic recovery and lead to job losses. The environmental lobby, meanwhile, says that the targets are not tough enough.
Australia has the highest per capita emissions in the developed world and coal is its biggest export.
Baucus preps for cap-and-trade debate with auction hearing
The Senate Finance Committee returns to global warming policy this week with a hearing on the auctioning of greenhouse gas emission credits under a cap-and-trade system.
Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) will play a major role in writing this year’s climate bill, especially the provisions on how to distribute valuable compliance allowances to industry and what to do with hundreds of billions of dollars in new government revenue that would come back to the Treasury via an auction.
Witnesses at this Thursday’s hearing will discuss how to set up an auction for the emissions credits, as well as the broader distributional effects a cap-and-trade program would have on the economy. An official from the European Commission is also expected to testify about the continent’s decision to give away most of the credits for free that are needed for compliance with the early years of an emissions trading system, a Baucus aide said.
Baucus has not given any indication on his preference for dividing up the credits, though past bills that have moved through the Senate have involved a hybrid between auctions and free allowances.
Senate action this year on global warming legislation has largely taken place behind closed doors as staff and members sift through the many complex hurdles standing in the way of a bill’s passage.
At a National Journal Group forum Friday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said he was looking to the House Energy and Commerce Committee for guidance on climate legislation, including emission allowances, as it tries to mark up a sweeping energy and cap-and-trade bill before Memorial Day.
“The House is a laboratory for us,” Reid said.
In past years, the Senate has been the primary battleground for climate legislation. And it has largely relied on the Environment and Public Works Committee to do the heavy lifting on cap-and-trade bills.
This time around, Senate committee action is expected from the EPW Committee, as well as the Finance, Energy and Natural Resources, Commerce and the Foreign Relations panels. Senate aides say they plan to begin a much more public rollout of legislative action after the House Energy and Commerce Committee acts on its bill.
But even with all those committees participating, Reid said he is still unsure if he can win 60 votes to beat back an expected Republican filibuster. “I can’t guarantee I can get things done,” he said.
So far, the House panel has not spelled out exactly how it plans to distribute emission credits. Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Energy and Environment Subcommittee Chairman Ed Markey (D-Mass.) are trying to convince about a dozen moderate Democrats to support the legislation, with the allowance language seen as a critical piece that can help secure votes.
Headed into the House debate, President Obama said he wanted a 100 percent auction of the credits, with a bulk of the revenue used to pay for the administration’s middle class tax cut. Obama said during a nationally televised press conference in March that he would be willing to back away from a complete auction approach “to take into account regional differences, it has to protect consumers from huge spikes in electricity prices.”
Obama’s comments have been viewed as a reflection of support for the electric utility industry’s request for an initial offering of 40 percent of the credits for free to help compensate customers who can expect higher energy bills. Other free credit demands come from domestic, energy-intensive industries, including steel, pulp and paper, who have asked for their own slice as protection from international competitors who won’t face such strict emission regulations.
Petroleum refiners are also pushing for between 5 percent and 30 percent of the credits for free, according to Rep. Gene Green (D-Texas).
Environmental groups support auctioning off as large a share of emission credits as possible, with the new revenue recycled back into climate-themed programs such as adaptation and renewable energy technologies. They also support direct tax rebates for low-income Americans who are most likely to feel a pinch in the pocketbook from the global warming legislation.
French Climate Negotiator Calls On Obama To Move Faster On A Green Economy
The French government is welcoming the “new atmosphere” that the Obama administration brings to international climate negotiations, but is looking for results. Brice Lalonde, France’s chief climate negotiator, sat down for an interview with reporters in Hotel Willard’s Cafe du Parc, following the Major Economies Forum convened this week in Washington, D.C. Lalonde dismissed corporate pressure to block green economy legislation in the United States as an “arri¨re-garde” doomed, in time, to irrelevance, saying that the “economic center is moving.”
$50B boost needed for U.S. transit systems — report
It will cost $50 billion to bring the nation’s seven largest rail transit agencies into good repair and billions more annually to maintain them, according to a government report released yesterday.
A Federal Transit Administration study found that roughly a third of the trains, equipment and facilities for the seven systems are in either marginal or poor condition, implying that the assets have either exceeded their expected useful life or will do so soon.
The seven systems — in Chicago, Boston, New York, New Jersey, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Washington — carry a total 3 billion passenger trips a year, or roughly 80 percent of the nation’s rail transit passenger load.
The systems rely on more than 6,000 miles of track, 1,700 passenger stations and nearly 15,000 rail vehicles. FTA estimated that merely to maintain the systems’ current state would require $5.9 billion annually.
Lifestyle and the Global Warming
Ted Kulongoski, the governor of Oregon, thinks that Americans will need to scale back their consumerism because it is harming the environment.
“There’s a lifestyle issue involved in this, about our penchant for consumerism and consumption,” he said, while discussing his support for a state emissions cap-and-trade scheme during a recent interview in Portland.
“Other than taxes,” he added, “the hardest thing I find to talk with my constituents and my citizens about is about changing lifestyles.” He singled out the car companies for their production of sport-utility vehicles.
Compiled by Max Luken and Carlin Rosengarten
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Good MSM article on the consiquences of toxic climate change…
Climate change and your health
http://health.msn.com/health-topics/greenarticlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100236415
The debate is over; nearly all scientists (and politicians) agree that climate change is real, is here, and is the result of human activity. Experts also agree that the consequences of global warming are serious and far reaching. All too often, though, these consequences are framed in terms of the threat to polar bears, exotic wildlife, and beautiful glaciers. Without minimizing the value of stately bears and snow-covered peaks, many people find it hard to make lifestyle changes and economic sacrifices to protect such distant assets. But climate change threatens more than the earth’s vistas. It also threatens human health — and it’s already causing problems here in the United States.
The CDC have nothing on the web front page and no alerts in the relevant section.
Come on Climateprogress blogger lets petition them to start addressing the most important issue in the history of the human race (MIIHH) at the right level of alarm.
http://www.cdc.gov/contact/
The movement away from auctions to free giveaways for cap-n-trade is one of the reasons that cap-n-trade is a bad plan overall. It is simply too easy for powerful interests to game the process and and weaken it. The whole system is necessarily complex and that provides too many nooks and crannies where these interests can undermine the overall system without necessarily looking like they are doing so. Carbon taxes aren’t immune from the problem, but the concept and implementation can be simple so it may be easier to defend. I’m guessing that the giveaway is just the most visible aspect of undermining this, and that after-the-fact, many others will be identified.
Even if we do go to 40% free giveaways, is that just a startup aspect?
I like the idea of floating nuclear power stations. For some remote communities, island nations, or under-developed coastal communities, they could provide reliable and fairly safe power. Fossil fueled plants require continuous shipments of fuel, produce pollution, and the cost of power fluctuates and is generally much higher than power on the continents. Haiti is an example of where fossil generated electricity has been a near total failure. Floating a ship into the harbour at Port-au-prince would seem to be a cheap alternative to consider.
Does the idea of floating nuclear power station scare the willies out of anyone?
Dill Weed
Very useful resource
EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/index.html
This section of the EPA Climate Change Site provides information and data on emissions of greenhouse gases to Earth’s atmosphere, and also the removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
C’mon, Joe, play fair. I despise the right wing roadblocking and denying on climate change and clean energy initiatives just as much as anyone, but in the interests of fair reporting, you can’t blame Reagan and Gingrich for the decline of the U.S. solar industry in the 1990s without also blaming so-called liberal democrat Bill Clinton, who was President from 1992 through 2000. And Clinton had a Democrat majority in congress for his first two years, the same situation Obama is in right now. It should also be noted that even though he has since made up for it and deserves major credit for doing so, that Bill Clinton’s Vice President at the time, Al Gore, did precious little to advance clean energy manufacturing or press seriously for stronger emission regulation back then.
As far as I know, there was no Clinton-Gore legislation on climate change or clean energy incentives put forward during their 8 years in office. Although Gore symbolically signed the Kyoto Protocol in a non-binding gesture, the Clinton administration did not even officially put it before congress for a vote. But of course, on July 25, 1997 the entire U.S. Senate, including all 45 Democrats, unanimously passed the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98) by a 95-0 vote which stated the “sense of the Senate” was that they would not agree to ratification of the Kyoto Agreement. And Al Gore was President of the Senate at the time. So the leadership failure on climate change and clean-energy incentives was pandemic on both sides of the political aisle during the 1990s.
If we had had strong White House leadership and bully-pulpit speechifying from the Democrats between 1992 and 2000 (particularly during those all-important first 2 years when they controlled Congress), things almost certainly would be very different today. It was a major lost opportunity and if we are to be better than the deniers and speak truth to history, we have to acknowledge the past failure of vision and leadership on the part of the Democrats for what it was.
[JR: Man, you are mixing apples and oranges here. And "as far as you know" isn't very far. If you are going to attack people, at least spend a few minutes doing some research online. First off, Clinton came in and began to ramp up the energy efficiency and renewable energy budget with his very first budget for FY94. He had two dozen programs to increase deployment of clean energy technologies. The Dems, foolishly or not, only supported steady but gradual increases. Remember -- Dingell was chairman of energy and commerce. But by early 1995, Gingrich came in and tried to shut down all applied energy research at the department. They zeroed out virtually all of the deployment programs. So yes the GOP killed a major funding effort that would have helped revitalize the US solar industry.
I have said many times that the Clinton administration did not handle the Byrd-Hegel amendment correctly, or global warming for that matter. But when you see how hard it is to pass serious climate legislation now, just imagine how impossible it would have been 12 years ago -- before the prediction of climate scientists had been so thoroughly vindicated (at least to anybody who is paying attention)!]
Fires in Eastern Russia
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=38399&src=nha
The fires are probably a mixture of intentional agricultural fires (especially those along the Amur/Heliongjiang River, which separates China and Russia) and natural or accidental forest fires (the large, smoky ones). According to news reports, fires have been breaking out in the region since early or mid April.
New NSF climate change report: http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/climate/
Just out:
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Media Advisory: Conference Call to Discuss President Obama’s Commitment to Biofuels and Proposed Rulemaking on the Renewable Fuel Standard
(Washington, D.C. – May 4, 2009) Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson will hold a conference call to brief reporters on President Obama’s commitment to advance biofuels research and commercialization and to unveil a notice of proposed rulemaking on the Renewable Fuel Standard. The call will be held tomorrow, Tuesday, May 5, at 10:00 a.m. Eastern. An RSVP is required to participate.
WHO: Tom Vilsack, Secretary of Agriculture
Steven Chu, Secretary of Energy
Lisa Jackson, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator
WHEN: Tuesday, May 5, 2009, 10:00AM Eastern
HOW: To receive dial-in information, please RSVP to media_affairs@who.eop.gov
Dill Weed,
Very few are aware of the conservative arguments against nuclear power: Nuclear requires strong central governments; it requires gov’t subsidies, regulation, and bureaucracy; it creates concentrated economic and political power, which is always corrupting.
And remember the Axis of Evil and the threat of terrorists getting WMD? Nuclear power raises threats that reduce our freedom.
Try that on your conservative friends (and watch for exploding heads).
Wise words….Michael Meacher,
UK Labour MP, environment minister 1997-2003
Responding to the triple crunch
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/04/financial-crisis-climate-policy
Financial meltdown, climate change and dwindling energy supplies demand a newer world order
There is no sense of vision. The world faces not just the credit crunch, but a triple crunch – in financial meltdown, in energy supply and in intensifying climate change. The global peaking of oil is imminent, leading to a potentially cataclysmic rundown in supplies within perhaps 40 years, and of gas supplies within 100 years. Most scientists now believe that on present trends, global average temperatures will reach 3-4ºC higher than pre-industrial levels by 2100, twice the “safe” threshold, unleashing destruction of croplands, biodiversity and water supplies that could threaten the survival of a majority of the world’s population. Yet the political response worldwide to these overwhelming challenges is glacial.
There can be no sustainable new world order that does not tackle these threats together, since they are all inter-connected. This is not a doom-laden prophecy, but rather an opportunity that brings together the pieces of the jigsaw in a remarkable fit. A central reason why neoliberal finance capitalism imploded is that it had to generate unsustainable credit and financial bubbles, including the derivatives shadow-currency universe, in order to constantly inflate demand to keep the system going. Now that is ruled out, the only source of demand with the capacity to drag the world out of profound depression is a globally negotiated de-carbonisation of the global economy. It should be the centrepiece of the international ministerial conference in December at Copenhagen
Dan Froomkin in the Washington Post today discusses torture. We might be seeing climate change inserted for torture sooner than expected.
“While it’s true that the public’s outrage over torture has been a long time coming, one reason for that is the media’s sporadic and listless coverage of the issue. Yes, there were some extraordinary examples of investigative reporting we can point to, but other news outlets generally didn’t pick up these exclusives. Nobody set up a torture beat, to hammer away daily at what history I think will show was one of the major stories of the decade. Heck, as Weisberg himself points out, some of his colleagues were actually cheerleaders for torture. By failing to return to the story again and again — with palpable outrage — I think the media actually normalized torture. We had an obligation to shout this story from the rooftops, day and night. But instead we lulled the public into complacency.”
I love these little news things! But as an Australian, I hate my governments lack of commitment to tackling climate change. Oh, for an Ozzi-bama!