In 2009, the US Chamber of Commerce — funded by top corporations from Google to JP Morgan Chase — called for the “Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century” on the science of climate change. “It would be the science of climate change on trial,” said a top Chamber official.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, lawyers representing the Chamber of Commerce put the science of climate change on trial before the United States Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia. The Chamber is represented by Robin S. Conrad and Sheldon Gilbert of the National Chamber Litigation Center, the organization’s in-house trial-lawyer shop, as well as Jeffrey A. Rosen, Robert R. Gasaway, Jeffrey Bossert Clark, and William H. Burgess IV of the corporate legal firm Kirkland & Ellis.

In its filings, made jointly with a cavalcade of polluter interests and Republican politicians, the Chamber makes absurd global-cooling arguments and cites the work of the Heartland Institute’s Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC).

“It is arbitrary for EPA to rely on 21 years of twentieth-century warming as near-conclusive proof of human warming but then claim that the preceding 31 years of cooling and the following 13 years of no warming prove nothing”

“Over the last 65 years, temperatures have mostly been steady or declining, while CO2 levels have steadily increased”

“empirical data from independently derived temperature records show the pattern demanded by this theory and predicted by models does not exist”

“2009 Report of the NIPCC, Climate Change Reconsidered

The Chamber’s anti-science claims are the fever dreams of conspiracy theorists and hacks for hire.

When the Chamber of Commerce stood with climate deniers instead of scientific reality, corporations like Apple, PG&E Corp., Exelon Corp. and PNM Resources quit the group. However, many corporations that supposedly value science and the challenge of climate change have decided to endorse the chamber with their stockholders’ money.

Sum Of Us has launched a campaign to challenge Google to leave the Chamber. Google CEO Eric Schmidt laughed off the campaign, saying the right-wing lobbying group represents “good American values.”

After Google announced the phase out of its RE<C initiative last month, some in the press drew the conclusion that the tech giant was pulling out of renewables altogether. We quickly pointed out that it was a simple shift in Google’s strategy — moving from R&D to deployment, where the company could make a bigger impact.

Well, here’s more evidence of Google’s flair for renewable energy deployment. Adding to the $850 million in clean energy deployment investments, Google is putting another $94 million into four solar photovoltaic projects representing 88 MW of capacity around California. The projects will be built by a leading North American developer Recurrent Energy.

(Here’s a little factoid about the relationship: Recurrent CEO Arno Harris is the former general manager of EI Solutions, the company that installed a 1.6 MW PV system on Google’s headquarters. That was back in 2007, when a 1.6 MW system was a huge deal. Now it’s a regular occurrence to quickly install PV projects with tens of MW of capacity.)

This latest round of solar investments brings Google’s total clean energy portfolio to $915 million. Electricity from these installations will be sold to the Sacramento Municipal Utility District under a Feed-in Tariff over a 20-year period. The global financial firm KKR will co-invest with Google in the projects.

This rounds out the year well for the U.S. solar market, which saw 140% growth in the third quarter of this year, bringing installs to over 1 GW.

Developers are rushing to take advantage of the expiring Treasury Grant Program, which provides a 30% cash payment through the Treasury rather than a 30% investment tax credit. That program expires at the end of this month, and Congress does not look prepared to extend it. If the grant is not extended, solar analysts say the market could drop off substantially in 2012 —potentially preventing the creation of another 37,000 jobs, according to a report commissioned by the Solar Energy Industries Association.

Related Posts:

• Solar Industry: Extending the Treasury Grant Program Could Add 37,000 New Jobs by 2013
• Solar is the “Fastest Growing Industry in America” and Made Record Cost Reductions in 2010
• Google Phases Out Clean Energy R&D in Favor of Deployment, Citing the “Compelling” Cost Reductions in Solar PV

During an appearance at New York University on Wednesday, Google CEO Eric Schmidt was asked to respond to a 200,000-person petition calling on the Internet giant to leave the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Google, whose official motto is “Don’t Be Evil,” officially disagrees with the right-wing lobbying behemoth on climate change, Internet regulation, intellectual property rights, LGBT rights, privacy rights, net neutrality, and women’s rights, yet continues to fund the Chamber’s radical agenda. The new activist organization SumOfUs has launched the Google Quit The Chamber campaign to get Google to act consistent with its supposed values.

Admitting that he knew about the petition effort, Schmidt said that the “Chamber of Commerce has helped us in some areas.” As an example, the Chamber helped him in a dispute over meeting the Chinese prime minister. He said this work was “representing good American values.” With a chuckle, Schmidt said that Google will “see what happens” with the SumOfUs petition:

There are plenty of things we disagree with them on. But I’ll let the petition continue (chuckle), and see what happens.

Watch it:

“Where is Eric Schmidt’s moral compass?” SumOfUs President Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman responded in a statement to ThinkProgress. “The Chamber of Commerce represents the opposite of ‘good American values’ –- not to mention Google’s values. Hundreds of thousands of Google users have made it clear that the Chamber of Commerce’s wars on internet freedom, LGBT and women’s rights, the climate, financial reform, good jobs, and much more are morally incompatible with our own values and with the values of Google’s employees. We call on Eric Schmidt to clarify exactly which ‘good American values’ he believes the Chamber of Commerce represents — and to get Google out of the Chamber immediately. The Chamber’s policies are, frankly, evil. Google, abide by your own principles and don’t be evil.”

Media incorrectly report Google is abandoning renewables. In fact, the company is increasing clean energy investments.

Buried at the bottom of an innocuous “spring cleaning” post on Google’s blog yesterday, the internet giant made a very important announcement: it will stop funding its Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal (RE<C) initiative.

But that’s not the whole story. And if you believe the headlines — “Google Abandons Renewable Energy Push” or “Are Google’s Green Days Over?” — you might think this is a negative development. But if you look at the details, it’s a story about how the company is adapting to a changing market and actually increasing investments in renewables.

Announced in 2007 by Google, RE<C was focused on driving down the cost of renewable electricity (mostly solar and geothermal) to meet the cost of generating electricity from coal. The initiative funded R&D in capital-intensive, early-stage technologies that would enable cheaper Enhanced Geothermal Systems and Concentrating Solar Power projects.

But Google says it’s now shifting its focus to project financing rather than R&D, citing the need for more sophisticated research on CSP technologies beyond Google’s scope, and the rapidly changing economics of solar PV:

Over the last few years, we’ve seen a lot of progress in clean energy. We’re excited that some technologies are so quickly approaching cost competitiveness with traditional forms of energy in parts of the US and the world. Power tower technology has come a long way, too. But the installed cost of solar photovoltaic technology has declined dramatically over the past few years, making solar photovoltaic technology a compelling choice for consumers.

At this point, other institutions are better positioned than Google to take this research to the next level. So we’ve published our results to help others in the field continue to advance the state of power tower technology, and we’ve closed our efforts. We will continue our work to generate cleaner, more efficient energy—including our on-campus efforts, procuring renewable energy for our data centers, making our data centers even more efficient and investing more than $850 million in renewable energy technologies.

Although the news was hidden at the bottom of a blog post, this is a pretty important announcement. (Only at Google would they casually “spring clean” millions of dollars in R&D investments for renewable energy).

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE OR COMMENT

Read more

You’re looking at a whole lot of heat.

Southern Methodist University’s Geothermal Laboratory recently released a map that proves once again how much potential energy is locked beneath America. SMU’s resource map, which took years to develop with funding from Google.org, shows that there are enough technically recoverable resources throughout the U.S. to equal 10 times the amount of coal capacity in place today.

Other maps have shown similar data. Last year, SMU issued a map (also funded by Google) that showed massive geothermal potential under West Virginia, an area not typically seen as suitable for the technology. In 2007, MIT Researcher Jeff Tester analyzed deep “hot rock” resources, showing that the U.S has 100 GW of potential for Enhanced Geothermal Systems [EGS] — an emerging type of plant design in which a developer creates an artificial well by pumping water through deep rocks, rather than using direct steam from hot water reservoirs closer to the surface.

So big deal, right? Another map shows we have tons of resources. Why is this so different from the others?

Well, geothermal exploration can be a very risky business. It’s not uncommon for a developer to spend 3/5ths of capital on the exploration and drilling phase of a project. And if the resources aren’t there, that’s millions of dollars down the…bore hole.

This map and corresponding study gives the geothermal industry another great tool for evaluating resources, particularly in areas on the East Coast where developers haven’t ventured. SMU provides an explanation (and a good video of EGS starring Energy Secretary Steven Chu):

Read more