by Rebecca Leber

Chevron Corp. announced fourth-quarter earnings today of $5.1 billion, falling from $5.3 billion a year earlier. However, the second-largest U.S. energy company had a record year-end profit of $26.9 billion, a 23.3 percent jump since 2010. Here are a few other useful facts about Chevron:

• Chevron has spent more than $9 million lobbying Congress in 2011.
• Chevron contributed $467,996 to federal campaigns in 2011, with 91% to Republican candidates.
• Chevron is the third-largest campaign contributor in the oil and gas industry.
• Chevron had $13 billion in cash on hand last year. The five oil companies collectively have cash resources of $59 billion.
• The company spent $1.25 billion on stock repurchases for Q4. They spent 16 percent — $4.35 billion — of annual profit to reinvest in their own stock. That enriches their shareholders, but it doesn’t add to oil supplies or investments in alternative fuels or other new technologies.

Earlier this week, ConocoPhillips reported record fourth-quarter profits of $3.4 billion — a 66 percent gain, with a 2011 profit totaling $12.4 billion. Exxon releases its fourth-quarter results this coming Tuesday.

In 1880, when modern global temperature records began, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were at 285 parts per million. In 2011, they are were over 390 parts per million. That has trapped a lot of extra energy on earth — see “The Radiative Forcing of the CO2 Humans Have Put in the Air Equals 1 Million Hiroshima Bombs a Day.”

As we’ve spewed greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere at at a faster pace, global temperatures have accelerated upward, particularly since the 1970′s. To illustrate this rise, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies released this fascinating video of 131 years of temperature records edited into a 30-second video.

“We know the planet is absorbing more energy than it is emitting,” said GISS Director James E. Hansen. “So we are continuing to see a trend toward higher temperatures. Even with the cooling effects of a strong La Niña influence and low solar activity for the past several years, 2011 was one of the 10 warmest years on record.”

Hansen said he expects record-breaking global average temperature in the next two to three years….  “It’s always dangerous to make predictions about El Niño, but it’s safe to say we’ll see one in the next three years,” Hansen said. “It won’t take a very strong El Niño to push temperatures above 2010.”

by Zach Rybarczyk

As the third-largest coal producer, Kentucky generates about 94% of its electricity from the resource. As a result, the state has some of the lowest electricity prices in the country. But that’s not the true cost of energy.

According to a health impact assessment by the Kentucky Environmental Foundation that examines research on the impact of coal in Kentucky, the health costs came in at more than $62 million in 2007 — and that’s just for asthma, which inflicts 1 in 10 Kentuckians and kills about 50 people in the state per year. Asthma rates for African Americans of high school age in Kentucky are at 22%.

More than 3.3 million residents in the state live within 30 miles of a coal fired power plant.

The report examines costs along the coal value chain, including mining, transportation and electricity generation. KEF cites a study from Public Health Reports that finds 2,347 – 2,889 yearly excess deaths from coal mining in Appalachia, costing the region an estimated $10 billion each year.

Data reviewed for this health impact assessment clearly indicates that coal poses significant health risks to people working at or living near coal facilities at each phase of its cycle – mining, processing, transportation, combustion, and waste disposal. Accidents in underground mines, and at or near surface coal mines can injure or kill workers or people living nearby. Pollution including soot, smog-forming chemicals, greenhouse gases and heavy metals travels through the air or water and can impact the health of people living close to coal-related activities, and the general public living hundreds of miles from the pollution source.

In fact, a recent report from some of the leading economists in the country found that accounting for these and other environmental harms would add “close to 17.8¢/kWh of electricity generated” from coal.

The health impact assessment was put together by KEF, a Kentucky-based environmental group, in order to raise awareness for policies supporting clean energy in the state. Kentucky currently has no requirement for efficiency or renewable energy generation. However, there is currently a bill in the legislature that would increase renewable energy targets to 12.5% of generation by 2022, increase efficiency by 10.25% by 2022, and create a feed-in tariff program as a support mechanism.

The Institute for Energy Research — an anti-clean energy free-market think tank — has praised Kentucky’s failure to embrace clean energy, saying it “has thus far avoided many of the costly energy policies.”

Or rather, it has pushed the costs elsewhere in society.

• Economics Stunner: “Oil and Coal-Fired Power Plants Have Air Pollution Damages Larger Than Their Value Added.”

Other stories below: Singapore raises sea defenses against tide of climate; FirstEnergy to shut down six coal sites

Waxman: GOP ‘so stupid’ to include Keystone pipeline in payroll tax package

A senior Democrat on the payroll tax conference panel had some strong words Thursday for Republicans hoping to attach Keystone pipeline language to the package.

“That is so stupid, already, for them to be pushing the Keystone pipeline issue in this bill, in this conference,” Rep. Henry Waxman told reporters gathered near the Chesapeake Bay for the Democrats’ annual caucus retreat. “The pipeline issue is one that the Republicans are obsessing over.”

The California Democrat suggested that a provision forcing approval of the pipeline would alienate the Democrats on the panel and kill any shot at a bipartisan deal.

“Many of us believe that that pipeline will lock us into a 50 to 100 years of dependence on the dirtiest source of oil,” said Waxman, the senior Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. He characterized the GOP’s Keystone provision as a “special interest earmark” with no business on the tax bill.

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Bill Gates is one very confused billionaire philanthropist.

He understands global warming is a big problem — indeed, his 2012 Foundation Letter even frets about the  grave threat it poses to food security.  But he just doesn’t want to do very much now to stop it from happening (see Pro-geoengineering Bill Gates disses efficiency, “cute” solar, deployment — still doesn’t know how he got rich).

He love technofixes like geoengineering and, as we’ll see, genetically modified food.   Rather than investing in cost-effective emissions reduction strategies today or in renewable energy technologies that are rapidly moving down the cost curve, he explains that the reason invests so much in nuclear R&D is “The good news about nuclear is that there has hardly been any innovation.”  Seriously!

His Letter includes the ominous chart at the top, and he warns of the dire consequences of climate change:

Meanwhile, the threat of climate change is becoming clearer. Preliminary studies show that the rise in global temperature alone could reduce the productivity of the main crops by over 25 percent. Climate change will also increase the number of droughts and floods that can wipe out an entire season of crops. More and more people are raising familiar alarms about whether the world will be able to support itself in the future, as the population heads toward a projected 9.3 billion by 2050.

Strong stuff.

And yet, as the AP reported this week, the wealthiest of all Americans gets very prickly if you don’t wholeheartedly endorse his techno-fix adaptation-centric approach  to dealing with this oncoming disaster:

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Scientists are still studying the links between climate change, migration patterns and conflict. Because of the extraordinarily complicated range of factors that impact why people migrate and how conflicts are started, it’s nearly impossible to point to a single occurrence today and blame it on climate alone.

Clearly, factors that may impact conflict can be exacerbated by a warming planet. Demonstrations in Tunisia and Egypt that sparked the Arab Spring last year began partly because of protests over rising food prices — a persistent problem that will increase with more severe heat waves, droughts and floods — see Climate Story of the Year: Warming-Driven Drought and Extreme Weather Emerge as Key Threat to Global Food Security.

And in Darfur, a prolonged drought was one of the catalysts for the social unrest that caused a brutal decade-long civil war. Some have gone far enough to call it the “first climate war.”

However, in both of these cases, the political and social unrest contributing to these conflicts are deep and complex. Climate change certainly isn’t the sole driver — but it is one that we know will get considerably worse if we don’t act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions sharply.

Without a more integrated approach to the three D’s of foreign policy — diplomacy, development and defense — governments may find it difficult to get out ahead of problems.

“It is not only about hard security, about hard military power anymore. But you can prevent conflicts if you have smart development and sustainability policies in place if you preemptively invest and make sure that conflicts don’t even rise,” says Michael Werz, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, in an interview on the Climate Progress podcast.

Werz recently co-authored a report on the issue, which is the first in a series of reports exploring the link between climate, migration and conflict in different areas of the world.

“The trajectories that we can observe are pointing in the same direction, which means there is a need to do something. And the fact that we’re not entirely certain about the scientific relation between climate change, human mobility and conflict does not mean that we do not have to act. It means the opposite: uncertainty should be a driver for action, and not vice versa.”

So what might that new national security framework look like exactly? We’ll talk with Werz about how the international community can prepare for the climate-conflict nexus — even with so many unanswered questions.

To listen, play the podcast above.

If you want to get automatic updates of our podcast, subscribe to us in itunes. You can simply go to itunes, search for Climate Progress, and click “subscribe free.” If you don’t use itunes, you can follow our RSS feed.

Related Post:

• Sandia Labs study: “It is the uncertainty associated with climate change that validates the need to act protectively and proactively.”
• USGS Expert Explains How Global Warming Likely Contributes to East Africa’s Brutal Drought
• An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts: How We Know Inaction Is the Gravest Threat Humanity Faces

This week NASA released what it calls “the most amazing high definition of earth” ever taken — a shot snapped on January 4th from the agency’s newest satellite.

The satellite, which is a joint project between NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,  was launched last October to collect more detailed data about earth’s atmosphere and oceans, while also enhancing climate forecasting capabilities.

The next generation of climate and weather satellites are scheduled for launch in 2017. However, some onlookers are concerned that government underfunding of satellite programs make the future of projects like this uncertain.

by John Farrell, reposted from Energy Self Reliant States

Last week I wrote about the time-of-use pricing scheme that PG&E offers in San Francisco, and how solar power is worth 14% more compared to a standard flat-rate electricity plan.  In reality, it’s 36% or more.

In the interest of simplicity, I only looked at the rates PG&E charges for using up to ~250 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per month (their “baseline” rate).  But baseline rates only apply to the first 3,000 kWh consumed per year, one-third the U.S. average.  Very few customers use so little electricity.

Rather, most customers will consume electricity in Tier 2, which applies to consumption from 3,000 to 6,900 kWh per year, or even Tier 3, which applies to consumption up to 14,500 kWh.  And the electricity rates in these tiers are substantially higher.

For each peak hour kWh used in Tier 1 (the baseline), a customer pays 28 cents per kWh.  But once they’ve used up their baseline amount, each peak kWh will cost 29.6 cents in Tier 2.  If the customer hits Tier 3 rates in a given month, their peak electricity will cost 44.6 cents per kWh!

A solar array provides two benefits under this scenario.  First, it produces electricity during peak periods, and second, it also reduces overall consumption.  Thus, the electricity offset by a rooftop solar array is the most expensive, and it also can push the customer into a lower usage tier, reducing the rate paid on grid electricity.

A few examples:

1. A customer uses 3,000 kWh per year (the Baseline) and has a 2 kW solar array.  The solar array provides 97% of the annual household consumption, and the value of the electricity produced by the solar array (based on the cost of grid power at the time it produces) is 22% higher than under a flat rate plan.
2. A customer uses 6,900 kWh per year (Baseline and Tier 2 power) and has a 2.5 kW solar array.  The solar array provides 53% of the annual household consumption (but nearly all of the Tier 2 electricity), and the value of the electricity produced by the solar array (based on the cost of grid power at the time it produces) is 36% higher than under a flat rate plan.
3. A customer uses 10,000 kWh per year (Baseline, Tier 2 and Tier 3) – the U.S. average – and has a 2 kW solar array.  The solar array provides just 20% of the annual household consumption (but nearly all of the Tier 3 electricity), and the value of the electricity produced by the solar array (based on the cost of grid power at the time it produces) is 253% higher than under a flat rate plan.

The chart at the top illustrates the good matchup between solar and time-of-use rates (the rates shown are for summer weekdays).  The bars show the pricing by hour, as well as the higher prices in higher tiers of consumption (for Residential Schedule E-6).  The green line shows the percent of daily solar output that falls during a particular time-of-use pricing period.

Overall, solar power is a pretty good fit with time-of-use pricing, a policy that should be used in more locales to improve the economics for local solar power.

Thanks to Mark, whose timely comment last week notified me of a change in PG&E’s residential time-of-use pricing plan.

– John Farrell is a senior researcher at the Institute for Local Self Reliance. This piece was originally published at Energy Self Reliant States.

by Kiley Kroh and Jorge Madrid

Tonight, the four remaining Republican presidential contenders head to Jacksonville, Florida for the final debate before the battleground state’s January 31^st primary.

Although the candidates’ energy platforms are firmly anchored to the  “drill, baby, drill” platform, the call to eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency, and the denial of climate change, those messages won’t necessarily resonate with Floridians. The state has long been wary of offshore drilling, and south Florida ranks among the nation’s most vulnerable areas to climate change-induced flooding and erosion.

Given the importance of these environmental issues for Floridians, here are five key themes to keep in mind for tomorrow night’s debate:

1. Tourism
2. Wetlands
3. Clean energy
4. Sea-level rise
5. Fishing

Here’s why each of these five are important:

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Other stories below: Climate change set to hit UK poorest hardest; Vermont considers banning fracking

U.S. Agencies Cast Doubt on Republican Bill to Push Keystone XL

A Republican-backed bill to advance TransCanada Corp.’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which was delayed by the Obama administration, poses jurisdictional and legal issues, representatives of two U.S. agencies said.

The bill requiring the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, an independent agency, to issue a permit raises “serious questions,” Kerri-Ann Jones, assistant secretary in the State Department’s Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, said today at a House Energy and Commerce Committee panel hearing in Washington.

FERC, which oversees interstate transport of electricity, oil and natural gas, lacks authority to locate oil pipelines, Jeffrey Wright, the agency’s director of the Office of Energy Projects, said today at the hearing. The bill doesn’t give FERC enough time to adequately assess the project, Wright said.

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by Daniel J. Weiss

Today President Obama will give two speeches about his clean energy blueprint announced Tuesday during the State of the Union address. The first talk will occur at a United Parcel Service facility in Las Vegas where he plans to discuss American workers developing American energy. Buckley Air Force base in Aurora, Colorado will host the second address, which will focus on energy security.

In conjunction with these speeches, the White House released more details about its clean energy proposals beyond the State of the Union address or the Blueprint for America document.[1] Here is brief rundown on the details of these proposals that rely on existing executive authority, and do not require legislation.

• The lease sale of 7,250 unleased blocks covering 38 million acres in the central Gulf of Mexico could yield 1 billion barrels of oil and 4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.  The minimum bid for these leases will be nearly triple the previous amount.  This could raise nearly $4 billion if companies lease every available acre.  The leases will stipulate that companies must develop these areas promptly or risk losing them, which should increase oil and gas production.

• The Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) — will announce a new research competition to develop innovative methods to use natural gas as transportation fuel.  Hopefully, this contest will lead to the development and deployment of breakthrough technologies that can dramatically reduce oil use and pollution, create new jobs, and save drivers money.

• The Navy will add 1 gigawatt (1,000 megawatts) of renewable electricity generation capacity for its “shore-side” installations.  This is enough power for a quarter-million homes.   The Navy will use “existing authorities such as power purchase agreements… [to] ensure these energy projects are cost neutral and require no up-front investments by the government.”

There are also proposals that would require legislation to become law, so Americans depend on Congress to act:

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by Noreen Nielsen

This morning, ConocoPhillips announced its 2011 fourth-quarter earnings, reporting profits of $3.4 billion — a 66 percent gain– bringing total profits in 2011 to $12.4 billion. Below is a quick look at some other facts about ConocoPhillips:

• ConocoPhillips has spent over $16 million lobbying Congress in 2011, ranking in as the fifth largest spender last year – and number one in the oil and gas industry.
• ConocoPhillips has contributed over $200,000 to federal campaigns in 2011, with 90 percent of the contributions going to Republicans.
• ConocoPhillips used 88 percent of their 2011 profits – $11 billion – to buy back their own stock.  That enriches their shareholders, but it doesn’t add to oil supplies or investments in alternative fuels or other new technologies.
• The five biggest oil companies – BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell – are likely to make $130 billion in profits in 2011. Added together, the Big Five oil companies are sitting on cash resources of $59 billion and made nearly $1 trillion in profits over the past decade.

Chevron Corp. plans to release its quarterly figures on Friday, followed by Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell next week.

How to Build America’s Energy Future

Schott Solar employee trims a photovoltaic panel in a glass room at the company's plant in Albuquerque, NM. A strong clean energy industry will give rise to more American manufacturing jobs and in turn will help rebuild our struggling middle class and create a more sustainable and fair economy. AP Photo

by Kate Gordon

President Barack Obama last night presented in his State of the Union address a blueprint for sustained growth in our economy consisting of four key parts: manufacturing, energy, worker preparedness, and American values. When it comes to America’s global leadership on clean energy, these four are inextricably linked.

A strong clean energy industry will give rise to more American manufacturing jobs, especially for skilled workers. This in turn will help rebuild our struggling middle class and reinforce the basic American idea that the economy must work for everyone, not just a wealthy few. Here’s how the four parts work together to build what the president says is an economy that can last.

Scaling up America’s clean energy sector

America is already in a leadership position on clean energy. In 2011 we reclaimed the title of “World’s Largest Energy Investor” from China. U.S. investment in these technologies rose a staggering 33 percent to nearly $60 billion, whereas investment in China remained steady at about $47 billion. Globally, U.S. venture capital dominates the cutting-edge clean energy investment market, with U.S. venture dollars accounting for 76 percent of the $2.2 billion in clean-technology venture investments across the world in 2011. Visionary programs such as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s targeted subsidies to renewable energy developers have catapulted us into this leadership position, and contributed to bringing renewable energies to a place where they are nearly cost-competitive with the much more established, much longer-subsidized traditional fossil fuels.

The president’s energy recommendations in his State of the Union address will continue this trend. As my colleague Dan Weiss writes, the speech included important recommendations to increase renewable energy development on public lands, provide incentives to businesses to upgrade their buildings and factories, and support the U.S. Navy in its goal of making the largest purchase of renewable energy in history. President Obama also called on Congress to show similar leadership by passing a clean energy standard, and by finally extending the Production Tax Credit for clean energy development.

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Current proposed and forecasted coal-fired capacity in the U.S., as projected by the Energy Information Administration’s scenario in 2011.

In 2010, the U.S. Energy Information Administration projected that coal would drop to 44% of America’s electrical generation by 2035. Actual generation dropped to that level in 2011.

This week, the agency again adjusted its long-term figures for coal in the U.S., projecting that generation will fall to 39% by 2035. But groups on the front lines of fighting coal plants say those figures are still far too conservative.

Due to a combination of cheap natural gas, higher coal prices, increasingly cost-competitive renewable energy, and an aggressive community of activists working to prevent the build of new coal plants, the coal sector is facing an unprecedented decline in generation. At least, that’s what leaders of Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign are saying.

“The pipeline has essentially dried up,” said Bruce Nilles, the senior director of the Beyond Coal campaign, to Climate Progress. “Our view is that the rush is almost over.”

Here are some of the top indicators for coal’s future that Sierra Club pointed to after this week’s release of the EIA’s figures:

• At least 33,000 megawatts worth of existing coal-fired power plants are expected to retire in the coming decades, not including any retirements due to the recently-finalized mercury and air toxics standard from the Environmental Protection Agency. For reference, an average-sized coal-burning power plant is approximately 500 megawatts.
• The biggest difference from last year’s EIA projection is that more coal retirements will be driven by rising coal prices, state renewable energy standards and EPA clean air standards. All these signs point to reduced market share for coal and expanded market share for clean energy.
• No new coal plants are predicted to be constructed in the time period, beyond those few that are already under construction.
• The share of electricity production from clean energy sources (including hydropower and biomass) should increase from 10 to 16 percent during the time period.
• Overall electricity demand growth is expected to remain below one percent annually.

Certainly, the outlook for coal isn’t good. But there’s a common misconception that coal is completely dead.

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AP/Rich Pedroncelli

by Daniel J. Weiss

President Barack Obama described a “Blueprint for an America Built to Last” in his State of the Union address last night. It is designed to keep alive the promise of “an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.”

The plan includes a clean energy agenda that would help achieve this promise with well-paying jobs, lower energy bills, and cleaner air and water. Hopefully Republican congressional leaders will help him build it.

These energy proposals are reinforced by the Energy Information Administration’s just-released Annual Energy Outlook 2012 Overview, which includes the latest energy data and future projections. These predictions reveal that we must invest more in energy efficiency and clean renewable electricity while we produce more domestic oil and gas.

Below are the highlights of President Obama’s proposal and the new Energy Information Administration information that reinforces their importance. They include:

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Voters just love government investment in renewable energy — much more than their representatives in Washington, it seems.  I was reading an analysis of the State of the Union Address based on the response of “a group of 50 swing voters armed with dial meters” and came across this nugget:

Not surprisingly, the moment in the speech that brought the most positive reaction was Obama’s mention of the death of Osama bin Laden. It drew an average reading of 80 on the 0-100 scale used by the meters. Obama’s call for more investment in renewable energy drew nearly as strong a reaction, however, said Andrew Baumann, another of the pollsters who conducted the study. The passages of the speech that talked about phasing out subsidies for oil companies and competing with China and Germany for new developments in wind power and solar energy did particularly well.

And while small dial groups are hardly definitive by themselves, Climate Progress readers know that poll after poll after poll show the same thing (see Democrats Taking “Green” Positions on Climate Change “Won Much More Often” Than Those Remaining Silent and links to polls therein).

This enthusiasm has not waned even with all the attacks on clean energy — see Independents Support Federal Investment in “Green Jobs” 2-to-1 Despite Solyndra Media Storm:

In dozens of focus groups we have conducted this month across the country on a wide variety of subjects, when voters are asked where they would like new jobs in their state to come from, the first words out of their mouths are almost always the same – clean energy and related technology.  Voters believe that the clean energy economy is here and is growing, and they want their state to have a part of it.

And yet in the face of this overwhelming popularity of clean energy, we’re staring at job-killing cuts in federal clean energy investment and tax credits.  Why?  As a German State Minister explained: We Can Decarbonize With Renewables Because “We Don’t Have the … Koch Brothers.”

Again, the Kochs haven’t won over the majority of Americans or even the majority of swing voters — only the majority of that narrow slice of the electorate that drives conservative politics, the Tea Party (see “Independents, Other Republicans Split With Tea-Party Extremists on Global Warming“).

Some day, some masterful, Churchillian politician will figure this all out and lead the country toward true clean energy revolution. Some day.

The Chevy Volt has received the highest ratings possible for overall safety

by Roland Hwang, reposted from NRDC’s Switchboard

Top safety regulators at the National Highway Traffic Safety Transportation Administration (“NHTSA”) have closed the books on the Chevy Volt safety investigation. NHSTA concluded last Friday that it does not believe the Volt and other electric vehicles “pose a greater risk of fire than gasoline-powered vehicles.” This is good news for drivers, the economy, and our energy future.

Unfortunately, there are some in Washington D.C. that are attempting to turn a prudent safety investigation into a referendum on our nation’s commitment to clean energy and ending our dependence on oil. Congressman Darrell Issa will hold a hearing today with the country’s top safety regulator, David Strickland, and the CEO of GM, Dan Akerson, as the main witnesses.

Let’s quickly review the facts of the investigation:

• First, no fires have been reported in real-world to be caused by lithium ion batteries that power the Volt and other electric vehicles including the Nissan Leaf, Tesla Roadster, and the hybrid versions of the Hyundai Sonata, Infinity M35, Buick LaCrosse, and Mercedes S400. The Volts in question caught fire under laboratory test conditions that NHSTA and GM were unable to replicate in subsequent tests. With an abundance of caution due to the novelty of the technology, NHTSA chose to launch its safety investigation in the absence of any real world incidents, something it rarely does.
• Second, GM moved quickly to install retrofits that strengthen the battery case and ensure the integrity of the liquid cooling system. Crash tests by both NHTSA and GM of Volts with these modifications have produced no fires.
• Third, gasoline vehicles carry a significant risk of fire.  According to the National Fire Protection Association, there were 184,500 reported vehicles fires in 2010. This is high rate of fire, about 0.75 fires for every 1,000 vehicles.  With about 17,000 Volts and Leafs driven tens of millions miles to date, the first year of electric vehicle experience supports NHTSA’s conclusion that the Volt and other electric vehicles do not pose a greater risk of fire than gasoline-powered vehicles.

The Volt received the highest ratings possible for overall safety from both NHTSA and the independent Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (”IIHS”), neither of which intends to alter its ratings as a result of the investigation. The IIHS crash tests found no evidence of damage to the Volt’s battery packs. “If we had found that the battery pack had been damaged or certainly if we had subsequent concerns about fire risk – that would have raised red flags,” IIHS spokesman Russ Rader told Reuters.

Rather than promoting clean energy technologies to get America off oil, electric vehicle naysayers in Washington D.C. have chosen instead to attack the Volt. If successful, these attacks will only serve to benefit oil-exporting countries in the Middle East and elsewhere, at the expensive of workers building electric cars in Michigan, Tennessee, and California.

Fortunately, Volt owners know better. Ninety-three percent of Volt drivers told Consumer Reports they would “definitely buy (the Volt) again,” the highest ranking of any car ever included in the survey.  That’s a hopeful sign that consumers are ignoring the political theatrics and are voting with their wallets for an oil free future.

Roland Hwang is the transportation program director for NRDC’s energy program. This piece was originally published at NRDC’s switchboard.

What’s the only thing worse than turning a Congressional investigation into a months-long political circus? The leaders of that investigation not having a firm grasp of the policies they’re supposed to be examining.

California Republican Darrell Issa chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, one of the top bodies responsible for looking into the loan guarantee to the now-bankrupt solar manufacturer Solyndra. So you’d think that Mr. Issa would, after almost four months of investigation, be able to distinguish the extraordinary differences between a tax credit and a loan guarantee.

You would, sadly, be wrong.

In a shockingly ignorant commentary on the President’s State of the Union address last night, Issa blamed tax credits — the foundation of energy policy in this country — on the Solyndra bankruptcy, calling them a “scandal.” He was responding to this tweet, which was a response to the President’s call for Congress to extend vital tax credits for wind and other clean energies:

In a YouTube video message, Issa explained:

“We know that not only doesn’t it work out, but there are loads of additional scandals coming out and certainly the Administration is trying to double down on his ability to play political favoritism in the name of clean energy.”

Never mind that Issa has been a strong supporter of loan guarantees for nuclear energy and has requested multiple grants for clean energy companies in his district. Issa has also been a vociferous supporter of permanent tax credits for the oil and gas industry, which he calls absolutely necessary for job creation.

Yet, somehow, Issa and his colleagues in Congress have been completely silent on extending expiring short-term tax credits for the wind industry — a lapse that may cost the American wind industry 37,000 jobs next year. And when asked for his characterization of tax credits for clean energy, Issa gets them confused with loan guarantees and calls them a “scandal.”

For the record, here is the gaping difference between the two:

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Visit the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund website. Support climate scientists – give to the fund

by Scott A. Mandia, Climate Science Legal Defense Fund

Joshua Wolfe and I are very pleased to announce the official launch of the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund (CSLDF) home page. CSLDF is now a project of the non-profit group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The official press release is below.

Please spread the word to all so that CSLDF can grow its support base. Cross-post the press release, Facebook it, Tweet it, e-mail it, etc. to all of your contacts and tell them to do the same.  Let us send a strong message to those that have harassed and attacked our scientific experts and dissuaded countless others from entering the field of climate science.

CLIMATE SCIENCE LEGAL DEFENSE FUND GETS NEW BACKING

PEER Sponsors Effort to Counter Fossil-Fueled Attacks on Climate Scientists

Washington, DC — The Climate Science Legal Defense Fund (CSLDF) has found a non-profit home in Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) which provides it fiscal sponsorship and logistical support. CSLDF lets scientific colleagues and the public directly help climate scientists protect themselves and their work from industry-funded legal attacks.

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