Warming-charged Superstorm Sandy affected electric grid security throughout Tri-State area.

This morning, CAP Senior Fellow Daniel J. Weiss testified before the Subcommittee on Energy and Power of the Committee on Energy and Commerce about electric grid reliability. He made a strong case for confronting the elephant in the room –the impact climate change has on the reliability and security of the electric grid. The other elephant in the room is the effect that burning fossil fuels for electricity has on our climate.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify on “American Energy Security and Innovation: Grid Reliability Challenges in a Shifting Energy-Resource Landscape.”

Discussing electricity security and innovation while ignoring climate change is like discussing personal health while ignoring cigarette smoking, diet, and exercise. Any examination of this shifting landscape must acknowledge that our electricity-generation systems produce much of the carbon pollution responsible for climate change and that the effects of climate change impair electricity reliability. Since coal-fired power plants emit one-third of the climate pollution in the United States, it is irresponsible to assess changes in our electricity system while ignoring climate pollution and its impacts.

Americans understand that extreme weather is related to man-made climate change that costs our economy billions of dollars annually. A recent poll from Yale University and George Mason University found that many Americans believe that global warming caused recent extreme weather and climatic events to be “more severe.”

Extreme weather events — including storms, floods, droughts, heat waves, and wildfires — threaten electricity reliability. The Congressional Research Service concluded that, “[P]ower delivery systems are most vulnerable to storms and extreme weather events.”

These events also threaten American lives and the economy. The most severe and extreme weather events caused 1,107 deaths and $188 billion in damages in 2011 and 2012.

A Center for American Progress analysis found that federal natural disaster-relief and recovery spending cost taxpayers $136 billion in the fiscal years from 2011 to 2013, or $400 per household annually. And the National Climate Assessment draft warns us that we can expect more extreme and severe weather, including droughts and rainstorms. The severe 2012 drought, for example, interfered with electricity generation in California, Connecticut, Illinois, and New York by shrinking the amount of cooling water available for power plants. It also disrupted oil and natural gas production.

Superstorm Sandy and other severe storms disrupted electricity transmission and distribution by downing power lines and damaging substations. The National Climate Assessment draft predicts that future climate-change-related events will interfere with electricity transmission.

We urge the subcommittee to support policies to achieve a more secure, reliable electricity system by accomplishing the following three goals:

1. The subcommittee should support policies that slow climate change by reducing carbon pollution from power plants, the largest uncontrolled source of emissions.

Failing that, EPA must at least comply with the Supreme Court by setting such standards under the Clean Air Act.

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Daniel J. Weiss is a Senior Fellow and the Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Thanks to Mari Hernandez, Research Associate, and Jackie Weidman, Special Assistant, on the Energy Policy team of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Image: ChangingClimate.osu.edu

By Bill Becker, via Huffington Post

In its new assessment of America’s infrastructure, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) found that much of it is aging and substandard. Among the systems needing repairs are dams, levees and storm water controls that are important to protecting the American people from the growing impacts of climate change.

At a time when government funding is strained, can nature offer some of the protection that engineered structures were built to provide? And can nature do it at lower cost? I asked three of the United States’ premier experts on ecosystem services: Keith Bowers, president of Biohabitats Inc. in Baltimore; Dr. Bob Costanza, the ecological economist who coauthored one of the world’s first assessments of the economic value of ecosystem service; and Prof. Ed Barbier, a prolific author on the topic and a professor of economics at the University of Wyoming.

In Part 1 of the interview, we discussed how ecosystem services should be defined and how we can better quantify their value.

Q: Are there examples where ecosystems actually reduce pressure on local government budgets – in other words, on taxpayers?

Bowers: Yes. The classic example is the water supply system for New York City. Instead of upgrading and building new water treatment facilities, the City decided to invest in protecting the source of the water in the Catskills. As a result they have saved billions of dollars while indirectly protecting a whole host of ecosystem functions and services that are enjoyed by the region at large.

There are other examples around the world including the protection and restoration of mangrove wetlands that protect against storm surges along coastal areas while also providing the nursery grounds for the shrimping and seafood industry. We are also recognizing that tree canopy in urban environments modifies the microclimate and absorbs storm water, greatly reducing energy demands and the need for extensive storm water collection and treatment systems.

Q: What cities are making the most effort these days to utilize ecosystems and their services? Who are the leaders?

Bowers: Federal clean water regulations are driving many cities to begin utilizing ecosystem services to assist them with meeting performance criteria. It’s great to see that many cities are beginning to embrace what we call green infrastructure — that is, using natural systems and their processes to replace gray infrastructure — the pipes, roads, walls, and concrete that we have been using for the past 100 years. Cities with aging infrastructure are beginning to turn to green infrastructure as a viable, and in most cases, a cost-competitive and more effective alternative to conventional gray infrastructure. This is especially true when you begin to calculate the natural capital, or the ecosystem services that green infrastructure provides on top of its primary use.

Q: With all their benefits, ecosystems need to be understood as assets in our states and communities. Has anyone done an inventory of ecosystem services?

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By Bill Becker, via Huffington Post

On March 19, The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) released its new report card on the condition of America’s infrastructure. Overall, our infrastructure in 16 categories ranging from bridges to water systems earned only a D+. ASCE estimates the United States needs to invest $3.6 trillion by 2020 to bring America’s infrastructure up to good repair.

Among these systems are several that are critical to reducing the loss of life and property from the growing impacts of global climate change. Dams were graded D; levees earned only a D-; waste water and storm water control systems also were given a D. Drinking water and energy infrastructure — both vulnerable to extreme weather events — received a D and D+ respectively.

The bad news is that the cost of bringing these engineered systems up to par comes at a time when government budgets at all levels are strained, if not in crisis. The good news is that some of the services we receive from engineered systems can be provided instead by natural systems if we restore and protect them.

Ecosystems perform a wide variety of important services for free. Trees provide shade, purify air and water, and store carbon. Wetlands regulate flooding. Coastal marshes buffer communities from storm surges. Forests and soils store carbon as well as water. Many of these ecosystems have been degraded or destroyed by human development. Now, communities need to put nature back to work.

I asked three of the United States’ premier experts on ecosystem services about these issues. The first is Keith Bowers, president of Biohabitats Inc. in Baltimore. Mr. Bowers is working on conservation, restoration and regenerative design projects across the United States, from Fairbanks, Alaska to the Big Cypress Swamp in Florida. The second expert is Dr. Bob Costanza, the ecological economist who coauthored one of the first assessments of the economic value of global ecosystem services. The third expert is Prof. Ed Barbier, a prolific author and blogger on the topic and a professor of economics at the University of Wyoming. Because of the length of the interview and the importance of the topic, I’ll post it in two parts.

Q: It has been our practice in the United States not to value things we can’t count — particularly things we don’t think have monetary value. A great deal of work has been underway in recent years to express the value of ecosystem services in monetary units so we can quantify their benefits in terms that everyone understands. What’s the status of that work?

Costanza: In 1997, several colleagues and I made the first attempt to do this at global scale. We synthesized existing studies and produced an estimate significantly larger than global GDP. We estimated the global value of ecosystem services expressed in monetary units to be in the range of $15 to $47 trillion per year in 1995 dollars. That estimate has attracted considerable attention and discussion.

We are now finishing work to update those estimates based on the significant amount of new data, methods and research that has accumulated. These new estimates are significantly larger, indicating that the more we learn about ecosystem services the more comprehensive our estimates or their values become.

What do these analyses tell us? First, the ecosystem services concept makes it abundantly clear that the choice of “the environment versus the economy” is a false choice. If nature contributes significantly to human well being, then it is a major contributor to the real economy. The choice becomes how to manage all our assets, including natural and human-made capital, more effectively and sustainably.

Second, we should be clear that expressing the value of ecosystem services in monetary units does not mean that they should be treated as private commodities that can be traded in private markets. Most ecosystem services are public goods that cannot or should not be privatized. Their value in monetary units is an estimate of their benefits to society expressed in units that communicate with a broad audience. It’s also possible to express these same tradeoffs in other units, such as land area, energy, or time.

However, using monetary units to express the value of ecosystem services can help to raise awareness of their importance to society and serve as a powerful and essential communication tool to inform better, more balanced decisions regarding trade-offs with policies that enhance GDP but damage ecosystem services.

Barbier: Another important point here is how we define ecosystem services. A key contribution of natural resource economics has been to treat the environment as a form of capital asset, or natural capital. But it has been long argued that the concept of natural capital should not be restricted just to those natural resources, such as minerals, fossil fuels, forests, agricultural land and fisheries, that supply the raw material and energy inputs to our economies. Nor should we consider the capacity of the natural environment to assimilate waste and pollution the only valuable “service” that it performs.

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