A major new report from the Center for American Progress (CAP) provides a detailed roadmap for avoiding catastrophic global warming and restoring our energy security, while maintaining economic development.
The report, "Capturing the Energy Opportunity: Creating a Low Carbon Economy," is by CAP's John Podesta, Kitt Batten, and Todd Stern. It is well worth reading, and I say that not because I am a senior fellow at CAP, but because the 88-page report lays out the most comprehensive set of plausible job-creating climate/energy policies I have seen.
The authors understand the scale of the problem:
The challenge we face is nothing short of the conversion of an economy sustained by high-carbon energy -- putting both our national security and the health of our planet at serious risk -- to one based on low-carbon, sustainable sources of energy. The scale of this undertaking is immense and its potential enormous.
The urgency of this issue demands a president willing to make the low-carbon energy challenge a top priority in the White House -- a centerpiece not only of his or her energy policy but also of his or her economic program -- to produce broad-based growth and sustain American economic leadership in the 21st century. This task is so encompassing it will demand that the incoming president in 2009 reorganize the mission and responsibility of all relevant government agencies -- economic, national security, and environmental.
The report explores the crucial steps needed to meet the challenge:
- Create a green-house gas emissions cap-and-trade program
- Eliminate federal tax breaks and subsidies for gas and oil industries
- Increase vehicle fuel economy -- 40 mpg by 2020, 55 mpg by 2030
- Increase production and availability of alternative low-carbon fuels
- 25% of our nation's transportation fuels by 2025
- Reduce life-cycle emissions from transportation fuels by 10 percent by 2020
- Fifteen percent of fuel "pumps" (including dedicated electricity charging stations for plug-in hybrid vehicles) provide low-carbon alternative fuels in any county in the U.S. where 15 percent of vehicles can run on these alternative fuels.
- Invest in low-carbon mass transportation infrastructure
- Improve efficiency in energy generation, transmission, and consumption -- 10 percent energy savings through efficiency upgrades by 2020
- Increase production of renewable electricity
- Use carbon capture-and-storage systems for carbon emissions from coal
- Create a White House National Energy Council
- Create an Energy Innovation Council
- Create an Energy Technology Corporation
- Create a Clean Energy Investment Authority
- Create a Clean Energy Jobs Corps
- Lead efforts to advance international global warming policies
Fortunately, while the challenge is great, the opportunity is greater -- and not just the benefits of avoiding catastrophic global warming:
Taking such action is not just good for our environment. Actions like these can provide a powerful charge to the economy. Our vision of a low-carbon economy includes vigorous private and public research pushing the envelope on technologies that will not only stabilize emissions at livable levels during the next 50 years but also create the clean-powered world that our grandchildren and their children will see at the dawn of the next century. Developing, deploying, and building at this scale recalls other great economic transformations in America's past, like the laying of our railroads and the construction of the interstate highway system. But in many ways our new challenge is even more complex since energy powers every part of the economy. Yet that's exactly why these advancements will drive economic growth and American leadership in a competitive global economy well into the 21st century.
Do we need to wait for breakthrough technologies, as Bush, Gingrich, and Lomborg argue? Of course not (in fact, we can't afford to delay any longer if we want to save a livable climate):
The good news is that the technology we need to begin the transformation to a low-carbon economy exists and the investment dollars are available if the policy ground rules are properly established. A great deal of investment and effort will be needed to make this vision real, but the hard work of ushering it in can become a powerful engine for growth, competitive advantage and jobs.
For the details on how we can take advantage of the energy opportunity, read the report here. A video summary is here. An online interview with Kit Batten on the report is here.
And this report is just one chapter in a much longer document, "Progressive Growth: Transforming America's Economy through Clean Energy, Innovation, and Opportunity" -- CAP's economic strategy for the next administration, with a summary here.
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Cash for Clunkers brought us ... more clunkers!
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GreenEngineer Posted 9:13 am
28 Nov 2007
Of greater concern, though, is 25% of our nation's transportation fuels (to be alternative low-carbon fuels) by 2025. Unless you include electricity as a "fuel", I'm not sure what they are expecting to see here. There ain't no way in hell that we're going to get 5 million barrels per day of biofuels by 2025, or ever.
Maybe I am misunderstanding their intent.
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Delay And Deny Posted 4:26 pm
28 Nov 2007
<Long Pause>.
Oh.
I see. This just in:
US virtually unscathed by '07 hurricanes
My Log
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randino Posted 11:09 pm
28 Nov 2007
Randy Cunningham
Randy Cunningham
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Bart Anderson Posted 1:38 am
29 Nov 2007
No mention of peak oil or other energy resource constraints. These will affect the viability and timing of alternatives, so omitting the issue means that the planning will not be realistic. Some oil execs and international agencies are finally getting onboard with the idea of peak oil (they call it "the end of cheap oil"), so it is time for environmentalists to start incorporating it into their analyses.
Keeping motoring cheap for Americans still figures as the centerpiece of energy policy. Fortunately the authors diplomatically demote corn ethanol to be merely a "transitional" measure. Switchgrass is seen as potentially a great answer. But is anyone seriously considering what the soil and ecological considerations would be for massive switchgrass plantations cultivated in perpetuity? Or what the effects would be on food supply?
If we are serious about doing something about climate change, we've got to reduce consumption and waste. The report does mention efficiency, but it somehow gets lost in the enthusiasm for jobs and new forms of fuel.
I imagine that at least some authors of the document are aware of these issues, but political considerations trump serious analysis here.
But this is the way things go... reality trickles into the political arena a little at a time. We've got some bitter truths ahead of us, and one doesn't win political campaigns by drawing attention to them.
Bart
Energy Bulletin
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amazingdrx Posted 1:42 am
29 Nov 2007
A tragic boondoggle that plays into the hands of the coal lobby. A diversion tactic by the coal industry.
"Eliminate federal tax breaks and subsidies for gas and oil industries"
Yes, this needs to happen for oil, but also for coal, fuel farming, and nukes. Gas, not so much. Gas should continue to be encouraged, especially conservation of gas by going to geo heat exchange heating/cooling. production of biogas from the waste stream, and conversion of coal to gas underground using bacteria.
Back to the drawing board with these parts of this presentation. Academia must catch up with reality ASAP!
Carbon cap and trade might work somehow if insider trading hedge fund scamming can be curtailed in this new trading system. That is a tall order though, since the political and economic power behind hedge funds has grown so large. Virtually every wealthy, powerful person (minimum investments are up in the multi hundred thousand dollar range) in the political and corporate sphere relies on hedge funds to preserve and expand their personal fortunes.
It allows one plausible deniability on conflict of interest insider trading problems. Take Martha Stewart for instance? Do you think she still trades her own stocks? Not very likely. It all goes through hedge funds now. People can slip their hedge fund friends inside information, at a party for instance, and not worry about the subsequent trades being linked back to them.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Sam Wells Posted 3:39 pm
29 Nov 2007
As to any special subsidy, I can think of one. That would be to restructure tax payments from a huge, natural gas rig off in the Gulf of Mexico - maybe several. Not Alaska and not imported LNG. We'd want the gas not the crude oil (although you do get condensate and some very small amounts of crude). If you believe natural gas is an acceptable Climate Change fuel as opposed to coal and liquid hydrocarbons, such a policy could be quite beneficial. If we could create the infrastructure to deliver more natural gas to people that would be a nice touch.
Onward through the fog
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