With David Leonhardt's piece on a new weatherization program/jobs bill nicknamed "Cash for Caulkers" generating buzz, as well as questions, it seemed a good time to resurrect a post I wrote about a year ago on the general subject of energy efficiency improvement. I had been inspired by a lengthy Grist post on a post-carbon economy which observed that the way to jumpstart efficiency and incentivize improvements is to copy the British and set per square foot emissions levels for building (unlikely, I know). But more practically, we should also make energy efficiency a "utility" like electricity, gas, or water. Here's what I wrote:

Of course an efficiency utility wouldn't just cover insulation, caulk, and new windows -- it would cover heating systems, appliances, shower heads, etc. A further advantage to a utility model over the financing model that Leonhardt discusses -- the idea of adding weatherization costs to homeowner's property tax bills -- is that it addresses the fact that weatherization doesn't lend itself to one-size-fits-all solutions. As Leonhardt observes, the complexity of retrofitting old homes is enormous:

Even if they don't ultimately perform the work themselves, a utility would have the scale to provide the expertise as well as the data for what particular homeowners should do. Obviously, this kind of program would go beyond what any stimulus bill is likely to enact. But if we want to make efficiency a goal unto itself, a utility model -- not to mention per square foot emissions limitations -- is the way to go.

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Rural Electric Cooperatives: Efficiency measures more important

Confusion in the Senate regarding allowance allocation

Here’s a  stunner from Climate Wire (subs. req’d) today:

Rural electric cooperatives, which represent many small, coal-dependent utilities in the Midwest and raised a ruckus in the House debate, are eligible for a portion of allowances under the new draft.

But at a conference last week, the head of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, Glenn English, said “the basis for a deal” on climate would not revolve so much around allowances, but around whether people in coal-dependent regions would get enough help with efficiency retrofits on homes so they can manage potential electricity spikes.

Wow — somebody who would rather have smart policies than more allowances.

Interestingly, Boxer gave the Co-ops a real piece of the action:

Small Electricity Local Distribution Companies: For further consumer protection, small LDCs (including rural electric cooperatives) receive 0.5% of distributed allowances and will receive an additional 0.5% distribution of the supplemental allowance allocation described below each year from 2012 through 2025, phasing out by 2030.

I don’t see electricity price spikes resulting from the bill, since it has numerous cost-containment features, including a price collar (ceiling and floor), and regulated utility rates in general simply don’t move very quickly.

The good news is that stimulus bill had a massive amount of money for weatherizing homes — and the House bill devotes an astonishing amount of investment and incentives toward boosting efficiency (”The triumph of energy efficiency: Waxman-Markey could save $3,900 per household and create 650,000 jobs by 2030“).  Assuming the final legislation keeps all of the efficiency measures from the House, then electricity bills will probably stay pretty darn flat for a long time — see “EPA analysis of Waxman-Markey: Consumer electric bills 7% lower in 2020 thanks to efficiency — plus 22 GW of extra coal retirements and no new dirty plants.”  One obvious improvement to the final bill would be to have part of the electricity allowances go toward, just as one third of the allowances for natural gas distributors do.

In any case, I hope that English spells out in more detail exactly what he would like to see, since NRECA was slow to support the House bill, and as a result some of the local coo-ps still are still fighting the bill.

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According to an October 22nd  story in Environment & Energy Daily (“Climate:  GOP Fence Sitters Voice Concerns Over Allocations” by Darren Samuelson), several key swing-vote Senate Republicans -- including Senator Lisa Murkowski, ranking member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee -- are voicing skepticism about the Senate’s Boxer-Kerry climate bill’s cap-and-trade system because of the free allocation of some of the allowances to various recipients in the private (and public) sector.

There are sound reasons for considering allocation mechanisms other than free allocation -- for example, auctioning allowances (more about this below) -- but the distribution of those allowances that are freely allocated need not be a great source of concern.  In some respects, the new debate is repeating the confusion which was prevalent in the press and the blogosphere about the allowance allocation in the Waxman-Markey legislation in the House of Representatives (H.R. 2454).

As Denny Ellerman of MIT pointed out at the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearings earlier this week, “it is not enough to simply say that allowances should be auctioned or allocated freely.  The real issue is the use to which the newly created value will be directed and the households that will thereby ultimately receive the benefit of the allowance value.”   This is a point which I explained and quantified in a previous post on May 27th (“The wonderful politics of cap-and-trade:  A closer look at Waxman-Markey.”)

Rather than being a “massive corporate give-away” of 80 percent of the allowances to private industry -- as it was frequently characterized -- the H.R. 2454 allowance allocation would result in precisely the opposite, namely, about 80 percent of the value of allowances accruing to consumers, small business, and public purposes, and some 20 percent accruing to covered, private industry (a split which is roughly consistent with the recommendations from independent economic research).

And directly to Senator Murkowski’s and others’ concern, the nature of the free allocation of allowances (who gets how many allowances) does not -- with some relatively minor exceptions -- affect either the environmental performance or the overall social cost of the system.  (The independence of the equilibrium allowance allocation from the initial allocation in a cap-and-trade system was demonstrated by David Montgomery in a path-breaking article in 1972 in the Journal of Economic Theory, and is a more or less direct consequence of principles established by Nobel laureate Ronald Coase in 1960 in “The Problem of Social Cost.”  This independence does not, however, hold in all situations, a topic which Robert Hahn and I are currently analyzing for a conference to be held at the University of Chicago in December.)

I am not talking about the decision regarding whether to freely allocate or auction the allowances.  That decision certainly can affect aggregate social costs, because if some of the allowances are auctioned and if the revenue thereby generated is used to cut distortionary taxes, then the social cost of the overall policy (cap-and-trade plus tax cut) can be less than it would be if the allowances were freely allocated.  This is a well-known distinction both from theory and empirical analysis, with much of the relevant academic work having been done by Stanford University Professor Lawrence Goulder.

Many economists have long favored a system whereby allowances are auctioned and the auction revenue is used to cut distortionary taxes (on capital and/or labor), thereby reducing the net social cost of the policy.  But recent interest by Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) and others seems to be moving in the direction of a so-called “cap-and-dividend” approach.   In such a system (which was originally raised several years ago in the “Sky Trust” proposal), all allowances would be auctioned to complying firms, and the auction revenue distributed to U.S. households on a per capita basis.  This can address some of the distributional issues that would be raised by using the auction revenue to fund tax cuts (which could favor higher income households), but it would eliminate the efficiency (cost-effectiveness) gains associated with the tax cut approach.

In general, there are sound reasons to seek to compensate consumers for the energy prices increases that will be brought about by a cap-and-trade system for climate change, but it is important not to insulate consumers from those price increases (which -- as Professor Gilbert Metcalf of Tufts University pointed out at the Senate hearings -- dilutes the price signal and thereby reduces the effectiveness and drives up the cost of the overall policy).  So, in my language, “compensation” is fine, but “insulation” is not.

Distinct from that issue, however, is the politically salient question of how to distribute (that is, who gets) those allowances which are freely allocated.  This is the issue on which I have focused.  In this regard, the deal-making that took place in the House and will take place in the Senate for shares of the free allowances is an example of the useful, important, and fundamentally benign mechanism through which a cap-and-trade system provides the means for a political constituency of support and action to be assembled (without reducing the policy’s effectiveness or driving up its cost).

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It’s not just the ads showing a baby-boomer couple sitting in matching bathtubs on a beach at sunset where you can find performance anxiety these days. Try looking in the hardware aisle and at the gas station.

Rather than ban inefficient incandescent light bulbs, for example, California lawmakers set an efficiency performance standard -- which was adopted by the feds -- so in 2012, you won’t be able to buy energy-wasting bulbs. That spurred Phillips to develop and market their “Halogena Energy Saver” incandescent bulb that is 30 percent more efficient than conventional versions. The performance standard approach -- instead of government picking winners and losers -- clearly worked for both environmentally minded policy makers and bottom-line minded businesses.

The stealth performance standard that will hit another part of daily life -- your car -- relates to gasoline and diesel fuel. California adopted a “low carbon fuels standard” that says the carbon content of fuels sold in the state must decline 10 percent by 2020. Fuel sellers can achieve that by slashing emissions from refineries ahead of other carbon regulations; by blending petroleum with lower carbon-content fuels like sustainable biofuels; by selling non-carbon fuels like hydrogen; or anything else that reduces the carbon content of the total portfolio of fuels sold.

Senator Barack Obama embraced making this a national standard almost two years ago and many lawmakers of both parties like this technology-neutral, competition-enhancing approach to reducing carbon. Chevron, Toyota, and several others also have endorsed this approach, because it allows them to find the cheapest ways to comply with the policy goal and perhaps to develop solutions they can market to others. Nothing like a good profit motive to accelerate public policy.

Of course this spells trouble for companies that are hoping to market fuels made from high carbon-footprint sources like the Canadian tar sands. Given that it takes up to four times as much energy to extract and refine that gunk into anything useful, it’s a sure bet the resulting products won’t find much of a market if fuel sellers are trying to lower the carbon content of their products. An online investor news service has a list of stocks that are exposed, at least in part, to this significant/growing liability -- may be a good list to keep handy of stocks to avoid.

Based on the successes of the performance standards approach so far, academics and policy makers around the world are looking for more ways to use them, instead of prescriptive bans or mandates. At least in some human endeavors, it seems performance anxiety can be a good thing.

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Where else but the Washington Post editorial page — that bastion of un-fact-checked disinformation – would you find a misleading and misguided piece attacking federal efficiency standards written by a guy who “teaches environmental ethics”?!  Or is that “!?”

Now I can see a libertarian writing a misleading op-ed in defense of inefficient incandescent light bulbs — heck, they don’t much like government mandates for air bags.  But a true environmental ethicist would be shouting from the mountaintop — or at least from his blog — that we have grievously violated every principle of intergenerational ethics in creating this global Ponzi scheme, whereby current generations have figured out how to live off the wealth of future generations.  We have been stealing from our children and grandchildren an ever greater fraction of nonrenewable energy resources (especially hydrocarbons) and natural capital (fresh water, arable land, forests, fisheries), and, the most important nonrenewable natural capital of all — a livable climate.

But David Henderson (pictured above), who “teaches environmental ethics in the philosophy and religion department at Western Carolina University,” says government has no business creating environmental or efficiency standards for lightbulbs.  His muddled piece, “Let There Be (Incandescent) Light,” perpetuates one enormous myth — that somehow clean energy generation alone without energy efficiency can solve our energy and environmental problems — and a bunch of smaller ones.

On the one hand, Henderson acknowledges that the 2007 federal “minimum efficiency requirements for lighting” do not actually ban any technology (as the EU standards do) and that “there may very well be some improved incandescents on the market that will” meet the standard.  On the other hand, he keeps calling the minimum standard a “similar ban” to the EU asserting “this ban is still a bad idea.”

It’s not a ban.  As the NYT reported in a major article back in July, “Incandescent Bulbs Return to the Cutting Edge”:

Caption:  “A standard incandescent bulb, left, and a more efficient one using Deposition Sciences technology.”

When Congress passed a new energy law two years ago, obituaries were written for the incandescent light bulb. The law set tough efficiency standards, due to take effect in 2012, that no traditional incandescent bulb on the market could meet, and a century-old technology that helped create the modern world seemed to be doomed.But as it turns out, the obituaries were premature.

Researchers across the country have been racing to breathe new life into Thomas Edison’s light bulb, a pursuit that accelerated with the new legislation. Amid that footrace, one company is already marketing limited quantities of incandescent bulbs that meet the 2012 standard, and researchers are promising a wave of innovative products in the next few years.

Indeed, the incandescent bulb is turning into a case study of the way government mandates can spur innovation.

“There’s a massive misperception that incandescents are going away quickly,” said Chris Calwell, a researcher with Ecos Consulting who studies the bulb market. “There have been more incandescent innovations in the last three years than in the last two decades.”

… Osram will introduce a new line of incandescents in September that are 25 percent more efficient. The bulbs will feature a redesigned capsule with higher-quality gas inside and will sell for a starting price of about $3. That is less than the Philips product already on the market, but they will have shorter life spans. G.E. also plans to introduce a line of household incandescents that will comply with the new standards.

Some people might well consider this a resounding success.  Given that the entire world — including rapidly growing markets like China and India — are fast moving towards aggressive energy efficiency policies, pushing U.S. industry towards cleantech is a doubly smart strategy.  It reduces pollution while generating new jobs.

As Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter — arguably America’s leading authority on competitiveness — explained in Scientific American way back in 1991, “in the broader economy, strict standards may actually foster competitiveness” (see “Why the United States REQUIRES a strong climate bill to remain competitive“).

But Henderson wants none of it:

That this change is manifest in our daily lives makes it a meaningful and encouraging option, but it should be just that: a voluntary option. Light bulbs are a poor choice for regulation. Is there an overriding reason to regulate how Americans light their homes?

It’s true that compact fluorescent lights are widely appreciated among those with heightened “green” sensibilities. They are a welcome option for those who are trying to reduce their environmental impact. Replacing bulbs may be a small measure, but it is also something that can be done by people who may feel powerless or frustrated before the larger problems besetting our planet.

There is of course one very practical, overriding reason to put in place national energy efficiency standards.  If the federal government doesn’t do it, then individual states will put in place standards and that will severely complicate things for lightbulb manufacturers.  Indeed, back in the 1980s, the makers of many energy-consuming products actually went to Congress asking for national standards precisely because individual states were starting to regulate appliances and doing so inconsistently, forcing companies to meet multiple standards.

But, for now, let’s take this critique strictly on the basis of environmental ethics — not a policy or political or competitiveness perspective.  And on that basis it is absurd.  Lighting remains one of the biggest energy consumers and an unbelievably inefficient one at that.  As the NYT notes, the voluntary approach hasn’t worked that well:

Despite a decade of campaigns by the government and utilities to persuade people to switch to energy-saving compact fluorescents, incandescent bulbs still occupy an estimated 90 percent of household sockets in the United States.

For those who don’t care about environmental ethics, I suppose that is reason enough to do nothing.  But we owe it to future generations not to use up all their resources and leave them a ruined climate.  And the rich countries have an ethical obligation to act first — since we are responsible for most of the cumulative greenhouse gas emissions and since we got rich polluting.

But wait, says Henderson, government shouldn’t focus on efficiency, it should focus on direct emissions:

The environmental benefits of using only compact fluorescent bulbs are indirect — and less than what could be realized by changing standards governing, for example, coal use. Consider: The benefit of “reducing inefficiency” depends on where the energy is coming from. Improving efficiency without eliminating a harmful source may just free energy that is then used elsewhere. If there is no net reduction in energy use, where is the benefit? Direct regulation of harmful activities, such as putting firm limits on carbon emissions, is more likely to achieve the desired environmental result. (And this would only indirectly influence my bedroom decor.) A great deal of the wasted energy in lighting comes from excessive nighttime lighting in public spaces, which is an excellent issue for government to address. Banning traditional light bulbs as used in private homes seems an effort in the name of environmental protection that has very little payoff.

Yes, it is hard to believe that was written by someone who teaches “environmental ethics” as opposed to, Bjorn Lomborg, who preaches a smorgasbord of half-truths aimed at persuading people not to act on the gravest environmental threat facing humanity.

First, apparently unbeknownst to Henderson, Congress — which is to say the American people — has been requiring the Department of Energy to institute energy efficiency standards for appliances for decades.  These technology forcing standards — combined with federal efficiency R&D have achieved staggering benefits — were analyzed by the National Academy of Sciences (see “Energy efficiency, Part 5: The highest documented rate of return of any federal program“), which found a staggering $30 billion payoff on an investment of just several million dollars:

Three energy-efficiency programs, costing approximately $11 million, produced nearly three-quarters of this benefit. Most significant were advances made in compressors for refrigerators and freezers, energy-efficient fluorescent-lighting components called electronic ballasts, and low-emission, or heat-resistant, window glass. Standards and regulations incorporating efficiencies attainable by these new technologies ensured that the technologies would be adopted nationwide, thus dramatically compounding their impact.

Second, the appliance standards to do not “just free energy that is then used elsewhere,” whatever the heck that means.  They save immense amounts of energy, as has been well documented.  Here, for instance, is the savings just from refrigerator standards (see long article here):

This is some $20 billion a year savings!  Some 40 large power plants were never built — and no doubt a lot of those would have been fossil fuel plants.

Third, Henderson seems unaware that the President and Congress, are, finally pursuing direct regulation of greenhouse gas emissions — but that all of the environmentalists and scientists and politicians involved in developing those regulations understand that energy efficiency standards are a cornerstone of achieving the maximum emissions reductions at the lowest possible cost (see “The triumph of energy efficiency: Waxman-Markey could save $3,900 per household and create 650,000 jobs by 2030“).  The standards are needed precisely because there are several well-known barriers to individuals optimizing efficiency.  As but one example, consumers typically invest with a much higher discount rate than is justified on environmental grounds.  Indeed, an environmental ethicist would normally recommend government use a discount rate in standard setting that is perhaps one-tenth that of the typical consumer buying an appliance.

Fourth, the payoff is huge.  The new light bulb standards that Obama announced earlier this year, which include (and extend) the the phase out of inefficient incandescent products Congress mandated in 2007 (i.e. under the Bush Administration) — which, again, is not “Banning traditional light bulbs” — will achieve the following benefits:

The new standards announced will save up to 1.2 trillion kilowatt-hours over thirty years, an amount about equal to the total consumption of all homes in the U.S. in one year.  Businesses and consumers will gain up to $35 billion in net savings and global warming carbon dioxide emissions will be cut by up to 594 million metric tons, an amount equal to the annual emissions of nearly 110 million cars.

Not chump change.

Fourth, relatedly, it is a complete myth that one can tackle climate change by focusing on power plant emissions while ignoring energy consumption.  Carbon-free energy is not limitless nor is it free nor is it without its own environmental impact.  That should be obvious to an environmental ethics teacher.  Anyone who doesn’t understand this, such as Henderson, must watch this talk by the brilliant physicist Saul Griffth.  I have been meaning to blog on this — and I’ll try to do a separate post soon.

Henderson ends with this stunning argument:

There is more political will behind environmental reform than is generally appreciated, but it is not unlimited. We should invest our political capital where it will be most effective, not burn it in compact fluorescents. Congress should regulate matters that require the force of law, such as banning mountaintop removal in coal mining and new coal-burning power plants. Leave people to change their own light bulbs.

Huh?

An environmental ethicist making an argument based on his estimation of “political will.”  I’m not certain what the point of being an environmental ethicist is, if your final argument comes down to, “well, future generations, it was okay for me to recommend policies wasteful policies that take your resources and destroy your climate because I thought we lacked the political will needed to recommend what in fact ought to have been done on ethical grounds.”

What’s funny (or sad) about this particular argument is that Henderson gets it exactly backwards.  There has always been more political will for energy efficiency standards — that’s why we’ve had them for decades and the one that he is pointlessly complaining about was signed into law under the administration of George Bush and Dick Cheney!  He apparently failed to notice that, on the other hand, this country has failed to ever regulate carbon dioxide emissions from new coal burning power plants — and Bush and Cheney actively blocked efforts to do so.

So, yes, this is easily the worst article ever written by an environmental ethicist I have ever seen, but that just means its another typical piece of crap published by Fred Hiatt and the Washington Post.

See, also, “Let’s Ban the Light Bulb Confusion” by Dr. Bill Chameides, dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University.

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Treat energy efficiency like a utility

In other UK news: “Rain like this happens once every 1,000 years”

Let’s look at one of the illegally hacked emails in more detail

The Washington Post has yet another dubious spin on Obama today, “Environmental Groups Wait to See Definitive Action From Obama":

The abrupt resignation Saturday of White House “green jobs” adviser Van Jones has focused new attention on one of the Obama administration’s top priorities: the environment.

While Jones was criticized as a left-wing zealot, the Obama team’s record so far on the environment has been far from radical.

The White House’s main effort has been to undo several Bush-era policies on climate control, air pollution and the regulation of roadless forests. Those actions, combined with court decisions that have struck down other rules, have given President Obama a relatively blank canvas on which to redraw U.S. environmental policy. But the administration has been cautious, leaving key issues in limbo and questions unanswered about the way it would balance environmentalism and the economy.

Uhh, no, no, and no.  Van Jones was the green jobs advisor.  He was an ardent advocate for reducing pollution and poverty together with clean energy.  So a media story that starts with his resignation can’t utterly ignore the staggering achievements in both clean energy and greenhouse gas emissions that Obama has already attained — gains that exceed his four predecessors combined.  Well, I should have said a story “shouldn’t utterly ignore,” since this story does.

Obama’s record so far on clean energy and the most important environmental issue — global warming — may not be politically radical, but it is unparalleled in U.S. history.

Let’s remember, for instance, that Obama will raise new car fuel efficiency standard to 39 mpg by 2016 — The biggest step the U.S. government has ever taken to cut CO2. And the Obama EPA declared carbon pollution a serious danger to Americans’ health and welfare requiring regulation.  The final EPA announcement should come this month, leading to the first ever national global warming regulations (at least for new power plants) — no matter what Congress does.  Of course Obama helped get through the House of Representatives its first ever climate bill, which is also the first clean air bill in two decades — see The U.S. House of Representatives approves landmark (bipartisan!) climate bill, 219 – 212. Waxman-Markey would complete America’s transition to a clean energy economy, which started with the stimulus bill.

And then we have that amazing stimulus.  Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com, in his post “Obama Has Cut Taxes for 98.6 Percent of Working* Households**” asserts, “One thing I don’t quite get has been the White House’s reluctance to highlight the non-infrastructure parts of the stimulus package.”  In fact, the White House hasn’t done a very good job of touting the $100 billion in clean energy benefits of the infrastructure or most of its other energy and environmental achievements.  Since the media, among others, seems to have forgotten, let me excerpt from my April 26 post, “The Green FDR: Obama’s first 100 days make — and may remake — history":

Obama has clearly demonstrated he has a serious chance to be the first President since FDR to remake the country through his positive vision.  Indeed, if Obama is a two-term president, if he achieves even half of what he has set out to, he will likely be remembered as “the green FDR.”

As an interesting side note, President Reagan, who is held in some esteem with historians these days, will almost certainly be relegated to a second-tier, if not third-tier, president by the painful dual realities of global warming and peak oil.  After all, it was Ronald Reagan who put conservatives strongly and permanently on the pro-pollution, anti-efficiency, anti-clean-energy side, where they remain today (see “Who got us in this energy mess? Start with Ronald Reagan” and “Why is our energy policy so lame? Ask the three GOP stooges" and “Hill conservatives reject all 3 climate strategies and embrace Rush Limbaugh").  It is Reagan, more than anyone else, who put the GOP on the self-destructively wrong side of scientific reality (though Newt Gingrich is a close second).

Here is a partial list of what Obama has achieved in his first 100 days, laying the groundwork for him becoming the Green FDR:

Years from now, long after the economy has recovered, this may well be remembered as the time that progressives, led by Obama, began the climate-saving transition to a sustainable low-carbon economy built around green jobs.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that this history-making first 100 days won’t remake history. It’s more than possible that we won’t stop catastrophic warming. But if we don’t stop the hundreds of years of misery, of "Hell and High Water,” that will almost certainly be because the conservative movement threw their entire weight behind humanity’s self-destruction (see “Anti-science conservatives must be stopped") — because conservatives in both chambers refuse to conserve anything, including a livable climate, and willingly sacrificed the health and well-being of the next 50 generations of Americans for their ideology.

But even if we fail to stop the catastrophe, there is no escape from Americans, indeed, all humans, ultimately having a low-carbon, low-oil, low-water low-natural-capital lifestyle.  And thus the vast majority of Obama’s initiatives will be recognized by future generations and future historians as the point at which the U.S. government embraced the inevitable and started down the sustainable path that presidents either chose to embrace voluntarily in time to avoid the worst impacts or were forced to embrace by the collapse of the global Ponzi scheme.

Obama is the first president in history to articulate both the why and how of the sustainable vision — and to actively, indeed aggressively, pursue its enactment.  And that is why he is likely to be remembered as the green FDR.

The Post claims the administration has left “questions unanswered about the way it would balance environmentalism and the economy.”  I don’t think so.  Obama has reiterated his view at every chance — and followed through with serious policies:

“The choice we face is not between saving our environment and saving our economy. The choice we face is between prosperity and decline…  We can allow climate change to wreak unnatural havoc across the landscape, or we can create jobs working to prevent its worst effects….  The nation that leads the world in creating new energy sources will be the nation that leads the 21st-century global economy.”

Obviously, if Obama fails to get a serious climate and clean energy bill through the Senate and onto his desk in 2010 — and thus fails to get a global climate deal — then he won’t be remembered as the green FDR.  So that must remain a top priority, and I expect it will.

But it is absurd to say today that Obama has been anything less than a top tier president on both clean energy and the most important environmental issue we face.

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Kennedy, the last surviving brother in a unique American political dynasty and one of the most influential senators in history, died late Tuesday night at his summer home on Cape Cod after a 15-month battle with brain cancer. He was 77.

He was a great champion of progressive causes, and his death is a great loss, particularly for health care reform. You can read read his staggering list of accomplishments here [PDF].

His legacy on “Protecting the Environment and Promoting Energy Efficiency” is below. How many Senators would even mention “energy efficiency” among their achievements?

Holding Oil Companies Accountable
During consideration of a 1975 tax cut proposal, Kennedy introduced a provision targeting the oil depletion allowance, which since 1926 had enabled oil producers to exclude 22 percent of their revenues from any taxes. Kennedy’s initiative passed overwhelmingly, trimming the allowance for independent producers and ending it for the major oil companies.

Raising Fuel Economy Standards
Senator Kennedy has a long and distinguished record supporting clean renewable sources of energy and reducing the nation’s reliance on fossil fuels. More than 30 years ago he cosponsored the first law to establish fuel economy standards. And in 2007, he supported a law which increased fuel economy standards, which is essential to cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Promoting Energy Research and Development
In 2007, Senator Kennedy’s “America COMPETES Act” was passed by both chambers of Congress and sent to the White House to become law. That bill established an Advanced Research Projects Authority at the Department of Energy to be the focal point of federal efforts to support breakthrough research on new clean energy technologies.

In 2009, Senator Kennedy urged that funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act be used to build a wind blade technology testing facility in Massachusetts, and in May 2009, Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced that $25 million of such funds will be available for the project at the Autoport in Charlestown.

Improving Energy Efficiency
Senator Kennedy was a strong proponent of increasing energy efficiency, which is an essential part of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. He was a long time supporter of programs like the weatherization assistance program and the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program that helps those most in need reduce their energy bills by improving home energy efficiency.

Here are more of his efforts to maintain high environmental standards:

Kennedy Fought to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Address Global Warming. During consideration of the FY 2002 Budget Resolution, Senator Kennedy cosponsored an amendment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and address concerns related to global climate change. The amendment sought to promote voluntary programs for reducing emissions in the near term. In addition, Senator Kennedy’s amendment included provisions designed to assist developing countries in addressing the danger of global warming and specifically increased funding to help them reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Finally, the amendment provided additional funding for programs that assist U.S. businesses willing to export clean energy technologies to developing nations.

Kennedy Criticized the Administration’s Proposed Changes to the Clean Air Act. Senator Kennedy was a vocal critic of the Bush Administration’s efforts to essentially repeal the “New Source Review” section of the Clean Air Act. The New Source Review provision requires industrial plants to install modern pollution control mechanisms when expanding or upgrading their old facilities. This standard has helped reduce smog- and soot-forming pollution by hundreds of thousands of tons each year. President Bush’s proposal eliminated this requirement, significantly increasing the probability of higher pollution levels and endangering the lives of millions of children, mothers, and elderly persons. Senator Kennedy strongly supported an amendment that would have delayed implementation of the new rule until a study was completed to determine its effect on air pollution and public health. The amendment failed on a party-line vote.

Kennedy Fought for Additional Personnel to Enforce Environmental Regulations. After a 2003 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report detailed the Agency’s substandard efforts to enforce the Clean Water Act, Senator Kennedy cosponsored an amendment to the VA-HUD Appropriations Act to reverse proposed cuts in the EPA enforcement staff. The amendment provided additional funding to maintain personnel levels and prevent layoffs to enforcement officers. The failure of the EPA to address a significant number of environmental violations exposed the negligence of cutting enforcement personnel. Senator Kennedy’s amendment maintained the previous year’s officer level.

Kennedy Opposed the Permanent Nuclear Waste Storage Facility at Yucca Mountain. Senator Kennedy is a strong opponent of the plan to create a permanent storage facility for nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The potential for groundwater contamination from the site is yet to be determined, and the transfer of nuclear materials to Nevada from almost every state in the nation raises serious safety concerns. In addition, in March 2005, the Department of Energy admitted that falsified documents were used to ensure the credibility and safety of operations at Yucca Mountain. Until questions are resolved that will guarantee the health of both the public and the environment, it is irresponsible to approve a permanent storage site for nuclear waste.

And his efforts “Supporting the Improving Mass Transit and Reducing Pollution and Congestion":

Kennedy Cosponsored Legislation to Increase Funding for Amtrak Senator Kennedy cosponsored legislation to increase funding for passenger rail service in the United States. Amtrak is a vital component to the country’s transportation infrastructure, especially in the Northeast. Despite its importance, the Administration over the last three years has severely underfunded the passenger rail system, forcing it to delay critical capital investments. In his budget for FY 2006, President Bush proposed to eliminate all funding for Amtrak, hoping to force it into bankruptcy and shift the bill for passenger rail to state governments. Senator Kennedy’s bipartisan amendment would have restored the subsidy for Amtrak, ensuring service for the next fiscal year. Kennedy sponsored a similar amendment in 2003, which allowed Amtrak to maintain critical services during 2004.

Kennedy Fought for Increased Mass Transit Benefits for Commuters During consideration of the highway bill, Senator Kennedy was a key cosponsor of an amendment that increased the monthly amount of the employer-based federal mass transit tax benefit from $105 to $200. This puts the monthly benefit on par with the current federal parking benefit. The amendment was modeled after the Commuter Benefits Equity Act, of which Senator Kennedy is a cosponsor, and could help up to 194,000 T commuters in and around Boston. Encouraging the use of mass transit will help reduce traffic congestion and lower the cost of commuting, especially important at a time of escalating energy prices. Kennedy’s amendment was included in the highway conference report, which was signed into law by the President.

Kennedy Secured Record Transportation Funding in Highway Bill In 2005, Senator Kennedy successfully secured record transportation funding in the Transportation Equity Act, also known as the highway bill. Massachusetts will receive $3.658 billion for highways for the next six years – a $568 million increase over the last highway measure signed into law. In addition, the bill includes a substantial increase in funding for mass transit priorities in the state. The funds contained in the highway bill are critical to improving infrastructure in Massachusetts and reducing traffic congestion for the state’s commuters.

And his efforts to protect our oceans and land:

Kennedy Supported Additional Funding to Protect Water Resources. In 1972, the Federal Water Pollution Act was enacted to provide funding to states for water pollution prevention and clean-up. Despite substantial progress in protecting and improving water quality in the United States, serious pollution problems remain. A 2002 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) study disclosed a $535 billion gap between current spending and projected water funding needs over the next 20 years. Payments from the Federal Water Pollution Control State Revolving Fund are essential to protecting vital water resources, wildlife and the public health in the U.S. To ensure adequate funding for the account, Senator Kennedy introduced an amendment to the FY 2006 Budget Resolution that expressed support for increasing water pollution payments to states.

Kennedy Fought to Cleanup Brownfields Sites and Revitalize Local Communities. In 2001, Senator Kennedy was a lead sponsor of the Brownfields Revitalization and Environmental Restoration Act, which authorized funds for assessment and cleanup of “brownfields” sites. Brownfields are former industrial sites that at one time were determined unsuitable for development because of environmental contamination. Today, however, these sites are being cleaned up and redeveloped, enhancing the environment, creating jobs and expanding economic development in communities across the country. Massachusetts alone has identified over 7,000 such sites in the state. With over 500,000 brownfields sites in the United States, Senator Kennedy’s legislation provided important grants and revolving loans to states and local governments to inventory, assess, and cleanup contaminated sites. Unfortunately, despite its ability to bring economic vitality to communities throughout the country, the Administration’s budget for FY 2006 incorporated large cuts in the program.

Kennedy Fought to Prevent Oil Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) represents one of the last remaining protected wilderness areas in the country, and is home to a variety of unique wildlife. The FY 2004 Budget Resolution contained language allowing energy drilling in ANWR, opening the environmentally protected area to development. Senator Kennedy introduced an amendment to eliminate the language and prevent the consideration of drilling in the refuge. Energy Department forecasts predict that, if retrieved all at once, the refuge would produce at most six months' worth of American oil, and would not start flowing until 2013. This is a fruitless effort that would convert this spectacular ecosystem into nothing more than an oilfield, and damage the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for future generations.

Kennedy Supported the Goals of National Oceans Week. Oceans contribute vitally to the nation’s economy, the quality of the environment, and the health of the population. Providing oxygen to breathe, food to eat, and a wealth of natural resources, these waters play a critical role in sustaining life on earth. As a result, the United States has a responsibility to promote and practice stewardship of the ocean. In 2003, Senator Kennedy cosponsored a resolution to designate the week of June 9, 2003, as National Oceans Week, and urged the country to exercise programs to advance ocean literacy and education.

Kennedy Worked to Expand Ocean Research and Apply it to Human Health In 2004, Senator Kennedy cosponsored legislation to establish a federal research program examining ocean resources and their application to human health. The bill would have created the Oceans and Human Health Program at the Department of Commerce, and directed the Department to establish an outreach effort with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Centers for Disease Control (CDC). This coordination would help merge oceanographers and biomedical researchers to collaborate on marine research and its impact on human health. Senator Kennedy’s legislation passed in the Senate, but stalled in the House of Representatives.

Kennedy Cosponsored Legislation to Protect Coastal Lands and Wetlands In 2003, Senator Kennedy introduced legislation to help preserve America’s coasts and wetlands, and protect these unspoiled areas from development. The bipartisan bill would have provided grant funding to states and non-governmental organizations for land conservation at the state and local level. Funding would have been targeted to protect important coastal and wetland areas with significant conservation, recreation, and ecological value. The program would have supported coordination between private organizations and federal, state, and local governments for land acquisition and protection. The Coastal and Estuarine Land Protection Act failed to reach the floor for consideration.

And finally, you can see his major votes in recent years on energy, oil, and the environment here.

They say no one is indispensable, but some are irreplaceable. Ted Kennedy was both.

Related Links:

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This post was written by ProPublica's Marcus Stern and Jake Bernstein.

To supporters, the “cash for clunkers” program miraculously jolted the moribund car market back to life, engendering hopes that it might help revive the broader U.S. economy.

Skeptics saw it differently: The automotive industry had hijacked an environmental bill and turned it into a bailout for itself with the help of the Obama administration and a Congress besotted with wishful thinking and a hair-trigger for stimulus spending.

Both views may turn out to be correct. But one thing is certain. The sight of car buyers back in showrooms these past two weeks has raised hopes that U.S. consumers are ready, primed by government stimulus, to spend again. Those hopes gained momentum by the release Friday (8/7) of employment data showing a reduced pace of job losses in the overall economy.

The idea, in concept, anyway, was simple: Bring in a clunker – a used car with lousy mileage – and collect up to $4,500 in government money against the purchase of a new car with a government-approved mileage level. The clunker, or more properly, its engine, is destroyed. Pollution and oil imports go down by at least some amount, not just this year but by many years into the future – because many of the clunkers otherwise would have remained on the road. And inventories of new cars are cleared from dealers’ lots, allowing dormant factories to restart. Some dealers are even saying  that potential buyers whose used cars don’t turn out to qualify for the program are ending up taking a more normal trade-in and buying a new car anyway.

Questions, of course, remain. Having been broadly revamped at the behest of the powerful National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA), will the program deliver, along with economic stimulus, a meaningful increase in the fuel efficiency of America’s automotive fleet? How necessary was the $2 billion expansion of the original $1 billion program that Congress passed with stunning speed last week? And what about the increasingly frustrating paucity of believable, well-sourced data about the program?

“I am completely infuriated by the lack of information,” said Therese Langer, director of the transportation program at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, a nonprofit research organization promoting energy security and environmental protection. “We asked for the transaction-by-transaction data, but (the Transportation Department) refused to give it.”

By knowing the mileage rating of the turned-in clunkers and the mileage rating of the new cars bought to replace them, analysts can get a better idea of the actual gas savings likely to be realized. The Transportation Department is releasing those numbers in summary form, but not the raw data that analysts like Langer seek.

“All of this information is being gathered and will be made public as soon as it’s available,” said Eric Bolton, a press officer for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which is managing the clunkers program.

The problem, added NHTSA spokesman Rae Tyson, is that the rebate vouchers the agency had received as of last Friday contain personal information that must be redacted before the data can made public.

“It will happen, we just don’t know when,” Tyson said.

A brief timeline underscores the rapid pace of developments.

In January, Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, joined by Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, introduced a bill to fund a national program to stimulate the economy and get gas-guzzling vehicles off the roads. Similar programs had been successful in several states and countries.

The auto industry opposed the bill’s tight fuel-efficiency standards. But instead of simply resisting the measure, NADA, a key lobbying group, seized the idea and converted it to its own purposes. In June, the House approved an industry-backed bill with looser fuel-efficiency standards. A similar industry-backed bill was introduced in the Senate.

Under the Feinstein bill, consumers would receive $4,500 only if they purchased a passenger car with a fuel efficiency rating of at least 13 miles per gallon higher than the clunker they were dropping off. In the bill passed by the House, the rating difference was lowered to 10 miles per gallon or more.

That NADA could bring off this change is no surprise. Its enormous clout begins with its universality – there are car dealers in nearly every House district. The association made more than $7.5 million in campaign contributions to House members in the past six years and $773,000 to senators, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. Separately, it spent almost $3.2 million on lobbying in 2008 alone, according to a database maintained by the U.S. Senate.

At first, the environmental proponents behind the original version were outraged. “The truth is, the House bill and its Senate counterpart are another big bailout,” Feinstein and Collins wrote in an opinion piece called “Handouts for Hummers,” published by the Wall Street Journal. “These bills are expertly designed to provide Detroit one last windfall in selling off gas guzzlers currently sitting on dealer lots because they’re not a smart buy.”

The bottom line, they argued, “is that fuel-efficient vehicles should be the main focus of any ‘cash for clunkers’ bill.”

But the competing legislation never went before the Senate for a vote. Instead, the industry-backed version was slipped into a completely unrelated war-spending bill that Congress approved on June 18.

Moreover, even Feinstein and Collins acquiesced after getting an oral commitment from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., that the Senate would consider increasing the bill’s fuel efficiency standards if more money was needed for the program, according to Senate sources.

Thirteen days later, on July 1, the industry-backed version of the legislation became law with the formal name of the Car Allowance Rebate System, or CARS, and the weaker fuel efficiency standards. The $1 billion program was expected to provide rebates of up to $4,500 each for 250,000 auto sales.

For the next 24 days, the Department of Transportation hammered out the program’s rules as sales-starved dealers around the country began lining up deals.

The Transportation Department completed the rules and waved the green flag to start the program on July 24. Dealers across the country immediately began promoting the program and making deals.

Six days later, on July 30, trade publications reported that the money was running out. Unattributed reports said Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood would suspend the program at midnight for lack of funds.

The LaHood reports proved erroneous, but the media that evening began a brief shift in attention away from the health care debate to the delicious story of cash for clunkers, a government program that was so successful it had burned through $1 billion in stimulus funds within days.

The news reports were based on NADA’s spot survey of dealers, which estimated that 250,000 clunker sales already had been completed or were in the pipeline less than a week after the program began. Nobody, including the NADA and its dealers, was prepared for the popularity of the program.

Just 24 hours after the first press reports that the program was running out of money, the House hastily approved a $2 billion extension designed to underwrite 500,000 more sales. The money was taken from a renewable energy loan program.

Last Monday, after a briefing by the Transportation Department, Feinstein and Collins reversed themselves and agreed to support the $2 billion extension of the program, even with its lower industry-favored fuel-efficiency standards.

“The original intent of the clunkers program was to encourage people to buy more fuel-efficient vehicles, and the data so far tells us that’s exactly what’s happening,” Feinstein said. “So, I believe the right decision at this time is that the program should be extended.”

Environmental groups such as the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy also ended up backing the additional money for the program.

The Obama administration, waging a full-court press, clearly was gaining support for the costly extension of the rebate program through the week, despite some Republican opposition. On Thursday, the Senate approved the $2 billion extension. A week after the media frenzy about the program had erupted, the Senate forwarded the legislation to a president eager to sign it into law.

Calling it a “proven success,” President Obama responded to the news with a statement claiming that the program is “getting the oldest, dirtiest and most air polluting trucks and SUVs off the road for good,” and “businesses across the country—from small auto dealerships and suppliers to large auto manufacturers – are getting people back to work as a result of this program.”

Ultimately, the nation will have to wait months or even years to find out whether government got it right this time.

Has the program actually revived the traditional “animal spirits” among American car buyers, and jump-started an economy that needed a jolt, or has it simply borrowed sales that would have been made by this fall anyway? How truly clunky are the clunkers destroyed by the program, and how much better are the mileage ratings of their replacements. How much will gasoline use be reduced after a year, five years, 10 years?

Meanwhile, the nation’s new-car showrooms, for the first time in a long time, are buoyant and busy, despite some severe computer glitches during the first week of the program that delayed rebates and soured some dealers.

Sales employees at Shottenkirk Chevrolet in Quincy, Ill., appear pleased overall with the cash for clunkers program, even though it took them as long as 10 hours to log one deal on the government computer system at one point.

“Everyone is running out of cars,” Rich Poe, the dealership’s general manager, told the Quincy Herald-Whig. “Ultimately, the program has done what it was designed to do—sell more cars and get better gas-mileage cars on the road.”

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More than perhaps any other company, McKinsey has documented how an aggressive energy efficiency strategy sharply lowers the cost of climate action (see "McKinsey 2008 Research in Review: Stabilizing at 450 ppm has a net cost near zero").

Today they released their most comprehensive analysis to date of this country's energy efficiency opportunity, "Unlocking energy efficiency in the U.S. economy." Bottom line: If this country get serious about energy efficiency - for instance, by passing a climate and clean energy bill like Waxman-Markey - then we can sharply reduce existing emissions at a large net savings to the public and U.S. businesses. McKinsey has a new cost-curve just of efficiency measures (click to enlarge):

The width of each column on the chart represents the amount of efficiency potential (in trillion BTUs) found in that group of measures.... The height of each bar corresponds to the average annualized cost (in dollars per million BTU of potential).

For those expecting to seeing efficiency below the line (i.e. negative cost), McKinsey has added a dashed line that represents the average cost of a new power plant. McKinsey said at the press conference today that all the measures above have a positive net present value.

McKinsey explains that these measures, if fully enacted over the next decade, would save a remarkable 1.2 billion tons of CO2 equivalent, which is 17% of U.S. CO2e emissions in 2005. In other words, the entire 2020 target in the Waxman-Markey climate bill could be met with energy efficiency at a net savings to U.S. consumers and businesses of $700 billion.

And what is even more stunning about this analysis is that it didn't even look at the transportation sector, where we know huge savings opportunities are possible (see "U.S. can cut half its transportation emissions by 2050").

McKinsey explains "The central conclusion of our work":

Energy efficiency offers a vast, low-cost energy resource for the U.S. economy - but only if the nation can craft a comprehensive and innovative approach to unlock it. Significant and persistent barriers will need to be addressed at multiple levels to stimulate demand for energy efficiency and manage its delivery across more than 100 million buildings and literally billions of devices. If executed at scale, a holistic approach would yield gross energy savings worth more than $1.2 trillion, well above the $520 billion needed through 2020 for upfront investment in efficiency measures (not including program costs). Such a program is estimated to reduce end-use energy consumption in 2020 by 9.1 quadrillion BTUs, roughly 23 percent of projected demand, potentially abating up to 1.1 gigatons of greenhouse gases annually.

The United States is only beginning to tap the efficiency opportunity. McKinsey has a separate, much shorter report released this month on the stimulus, "Energy: Investing in efficiency," which finds, "nearly $100 billion in new spending on energy-related projects will have a huge impact."

Whereas McKinsey thinks we could save 9.1 quads after a decade of serious investment, an analysis by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) says the Waxman-Markey bill will "only" achieve that some time in the mid-2020s (see "The triumph of energy efficiency: Waxman-Markey could save $3,900 per household and create 650,000 jobs by 2030").

The new McKinsey report has an excellent discussion of the barriers to efficiency and how to address them, which they summarize in this figure:

The good news is that the climate and clean energy bill - together with the stimulus and Obama's budgets - would address many of those barriers with strong building and appliance efficiency standards, a large increase in R&D for efficiency technologies, major investments in energy efficiency by states and utilities, and, of course, a price on carbon. I would add that the key to breaking down the remaining barriers is to two terms of an Obama administration led by efficiency advocates like energy secretary Steven Chu and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission chair, Jon Wellinghoff - see FERC chair on new nuclear and coal plants: "We may not need any, ever."

I am especially pleased that the report analyzed combined heat and power since it is a core, but neglected climate solution. I will discuss what they say about CHP - and what needs to be done to break down the barriers to more CHP - in a later post.

Kudos to McKinsey for another first-rate piece of work.

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Confusion in the Senate regarding allowance allocation

Building energy codes are the key.Are 100 new nuclear plants the solution to our climate troubles? I asked that question in a post last week.

The answer lies buried deep within the 1,428-page Waxman-Markey climate bill (H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act), passed by the House and now under consideration in the Senate. It is Section 201, pages 320-348. It is this section that makes H.R. 2454 worth passing.

No matter what else is compromised or changed in the climate bill as it works its way through the Senate, Section 201 must not be changed or weakened. Why? Because all other energy- and emissions-reduction approaches pale in comparison to what Section 201 will accomplish. Without it, we simply cannot meet the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction targets called for in the bill. We won't even come close.

Section 201 covers building energy codes -- that's right, building energy codes -- that will transform the entire built environment in the U.S. by 2050. That's because Section 201 affects all new buildings and major renovations, and by 2050 more than three-quarters of the built environment in the U.S. will be either new or renovated.

Section 201 requires updating national building energy codes to meet the following energy reduction targets:

The targets outlined in Section 201 are simply more effective than any other energy and emissions reduction approach. The following graphs compare Section 201 with the call by some in Congress for a massive U.S. effort to build 100 new nuclear power plants in an attempt to move the country toward energy independence and significant GHG emissions reductions:

The proof is in the data. There's simply no comparison. Whereas the 100 nuclear power plants only act as a replacement energy source, the updated building energy codes of Section 201 actually reduce energy consumption, eliminating the need for more plants. The codes also achieve more than six times the emissions reductions of 100 nuclear power plants. The codes accomplish all of this at a fraction of the cost. Here are the facts:

The targets in Section 201 are set at a reasonable and beneficial pace for change that will achieve the reductions necessary within the timeline called for by the scientific community. Implementing these targets will reduce building sector energy consumption by:

Implementing the targets in Section 201 would also reduce building sector CO2 emissions by:

It is clear that the building energy code targets set in Section 201 are not only essential for achieving the energy consumption and GHG emissions reductions needed, but they are also the most cost-effective approach for doing so.

What about China and India? The U.S., through our multi-national architecture and engineering design firms, heavily influence the global built environment. As our firms move the U.S. built environment into the 21st century, they will, in both practice and influence, move China's and India's as well (see a list of multi-state and national firms that have adopted the 2030 Challenge in Appendix B of the Architecture 2030 Fact Sheet [PDF]).

To read Architecture 2030's complete analysis of H.R. 2454, Section 201, with sources and citations, download the Architecture 2030 Fact Sheet [PDF].

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Enhancing cooperation on climate change and energy efficiency should be a major plank of U.S. Russia policy and should be discussed at the highest levels when President Obama meets with President Medvedev next week.This Center for American Progress post, by Senior Fellow Andrew Light, Senior Policy Analyst Julian L. Wong, and Fellow Samuel Charap, was first published here.

The summit between President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev in Moscow on July 6-8 comes in the middle of a packed international schedule of bilateral and multilateral meetings for the United States. on climate change. In the run up to the critical U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen at the end of this year, when the extension or successor to the existing Kyoto Protocol must be agreed upon, it is crucial that the United States and Russia-both major emitters of greenhouse gases and potentially leaders on this crucial issue-explore ways of working together to ensure a positive outcome at these talks. Enhancing cooperation on climate change and energy efficiency should be a major plank of U.S. Russia policy and should be discussed at the highest levels when President Obama meets with President Medvedev next week.

Russia, like the United States, is a significant contributor to global warming. If the European Union is disaggregated Russia is the third-largest emitter of carbon dioxide behind the United States and China and still currently ahead of India. More importantly Russian per capita emissions are on the rise, and are projected at this point to approach America's top rank as per capita emitter by 2030. Russia is also the third-largest consumer of energy and one of the world's most energy-intensive economies. Making Russia a partner on these issues could be critical in order to advance a sound global climate change agenda.

The Center for American Progress report "After the ‘Reset': A Strategy and New Agenda for U.S. Russia Policy" will be released on July 2 and outlines three avenues of U.S.-Russia bilateral cooperation on climate and energy issues: cooperation on a new international climate change agreement, building Russia's capacity for carbon trading, and cooperating on energy efficiency. Here we expand on these proposals.

Our approach is based on the principle that the best way to engage Russia on global warming is to frame cooperation as a form of advancing economic modernization. We must convince the Russians that joining the community of nations on this issue is in their best economic interest.

The United States should directly engage Russia on reaching a new international climate change agreement.

The build up to the climate summit in Copenhagen is making it clear that broad-based involvement by all countries-but especially the developed countries and major emerging economies in the developing world-is needed to create a consensus on global climate change action. Most of the attention is focused on the United States, the European Union, China, and India as the major players necessary to forge a global deal, and there is insufficient thought given to the role Russia could play in a post-Kyoto agreement. There are however at least two reasons-besides the fact that Russia is a Kyoto signatory and a major emitter-to engage Russia directly in Copenhagen.

First, we should expect some resistance to a Russian embrace of an extension to or replacement of the Kyoto Protocol given the unique history of the relationship between the original assessment of their 2012 Kyoto targets and the transformation of their economy following collapse of the Soviet Union.

Our approach is based on the principle that the best way to engage Russia on global warming is to frame cooperation as a form of advancing economic modernization.

The agreed-to carbon reduction targets in the Kyoto Protocol were indexed to 1990 emission levels. Those countries signing the treaty were obliged to reduce their emissions to an agreed-upon level by 2012 relative to the baseline of their 1990 emissions. Russian emissions dropped considerably because of the economic contraction that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. As a result, without any additional efforts Russian emissions will not return to their 1990 levels before at least 2020 and Moscow will not be required to curb its emissions by the end of the Kyoto commitment period in 2012.

This means the Russians are likely to oppose stronger caps on emissions, which will be a necessary part of the hoped-for Copenhagen treaty. Indeed, Russia was the last major economy to announce its proposed post-Kyoto targets of 10 to 15 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. Such a proposed range has left many observers underwhelmed because it will actually allow for absolute increases in emissions from Russia's current state, but the international community should view this as an opening bid rather than final offer by actively engaging with Russia in constructive dialogue.

If we cannot strengthen the treaty and move progressively toward gradual but greater emissions cuts then we will not reach the goal of halving global emissions by 2050, something the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change argues is necessary to avoid the worst consequences of climate change. Given the sheer quantities of Russian emissions-regardless of their dip below 1990 levels-the Obama administration should work with the Russians to demonstrate that abatement measures are in Moscow's long-term economic interest.

Improvements in energy efficiency and energy intensity, for example, further economic modernization-one of the Kremlin's oft-repeated goals-and they will promote more sustainable economic growth. But for the United States to make this argument we must take the lead and make steady progress in adopting strong domestic clean-energy and climate policy, such as the American Clean Energy and Security Act that passed in the U.S. House last week. We must also be prepared to listen to our Russian counterparts and not lecture, since a finger-wagging approach will only backfire in the Russian context.

Second, Russia could be one of the unacknowledged keys to success at Copenhagen given the likely structure of the treaty. According to the architecture of the first U.N. climate treaty the Kyoto Protocol could not have been enacted unless at least 55 countries signed and ratified it representing at least 55 percent of global carbon emissions. When the first round of commitments were announced enough countries were willing to ratify the treaty but their emissions did not add up to the required amount for implementation. So if Russia had not ratified the treaty in November 2004 it would have not gone into effect. Russian participation could again be critical this time because we can expect a similar proviso in the post-Kyoto treaty.

We need to bring the Russians on board for an ambitious agenda before Copenhagen sooner rather than later to avoid a deadlock in the international climate negotiations. Immediate bilateral cooperation and engagement is key in making Russia a partner in addressing climate change-it is not in the U.S. interest for Russia to be a spoiler.

But this cooperation faces significant challenges. There are many in the Russian political establishment who believe that the effects of climate change will be positive for their country. What's more, policymakers tend to view climate agreements in exclusively economic and not environmental terms. Russian policymakers, like their Chinese counterparts, emphasize that any emissions caps should not threaten Russia's economic development. However, Russia has recently released a draft climate doctrine that acknowledges the threat posed by climate change-a positive sign.

The United States should help Russia capitalize on the substantial amounts of emission credits it now possesses with the goal of ultimately reducing its emissions.

Russia currently sits on a veritable treasure of tradable carbon credits-by some estimates 1.5 billion euros. Russia is not linked to any existing emissions trading system, such as the European Trading Scheme, and it lacks the institutional capacity to do so. The United States is in a good position to provide capacity building expertise to Russia in establishing an emissions trading market because of our experience in establishing emissions trading markets, most notably the highly successful sulfur dioxide trading scheme in the 1990s and more recently regional (Western Climate Imitative, Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, and Midwestern Initiative) and voluntary (Chicago Climate Exchange) carbon emissions trading initiatives.

We need to bring the Russians on board for an ambitious agenda before Copenhagen sooner rather than later to avoid a deadlock in the international climate negotiations.

The administration should also create incentives for these U.S. trading centers to collaborate with the Russians to launch a pilot emissions trading scheme in one or more of Russia's heavy industry sectors. Such efforts can include guidance on how to set up inventory systems for tracking greenhouse gas sources and sinks and to establish the architecture and infrastructure for the actual trading of emission credits, with the long-term goal of linking Russia (or specific sectors) into broader trading systems.

Developing Russia's capacity in emissions trading will help it to be in a better position to join a large trading scheme as a full participant if and when it agrees to begin stemming its current emissions. This proposal is likely to be met with support from major Russian enterprises, including the state-controlled oil major Rosneft, which has already demonstrated interest in related emissions trading projects. The larger objective of such cooperation should be clear: demonstrating to the Russian government that joining international efforts to solve global warming can be profitable to them by providing a way of joining the international carbon market. The revenues from carbon credit trading will offset the cost of taking on additional cuts at home.

The United States should also propose a series of cooperative agreements on increasing Russia's energy efficiency.

One of the most striking features of Russia's energy profile is its energy intensity-the amount of energy consumed per unit of gross domestic product-which is higher than any of the world's 10-largest energy-consuming countries, 3.1 times greater than the European Union, and more than twice that of the United States. This massive potential for improvement makes working with the Russians to increase their energy efficiency the most effective short-term way to help them reduce emissions and points toward the clearest path for demonstrating the economic advantages of taking on climate change.

It is important for the United States to adopt this stance to take advantage of the opportunity that has recently opened up in Russia. For the first time the Russian government has demonstrated an interest in increasing efficiency. President Medvedev signed a decree in June 2008 that includes measures aimed at reducing Russia's energy intensity by at least 40 percent by 2020 compared with 2007 levels. And Prime Minister Vladimir Putin issued a government order earlier this year that calls for a significant increase in the energy efficiency of the Russian electric power sector. Medvedev has on several occasions publicly acknowledged the economic benefits of energy efficiency for Russia's economy. As such energy efficiency represents an enormous opportunity for collaboration between our two countries.

Fortunately the United States has a ready and successful model for such collaboration in its experience in working with China on industrial energy efficiency. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a research institution supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, has worked with Chinese scientists and the Chinese government to establish an industrial energy efficiency program that benchmarks China's top 1,000 energy-consuming industries to global best practices.

We recommend that the Obama administration propose a similar type of program that targets Russia's industrial sectors given the potential for substantial financial savings through energy efficiency in Russia's industrial sector and the Russian government's interest. Funding for such a project would come from both the U.S. and Russian governments, working through public-private partnerships, and that any potentially new energy-saving technologies that could emerge from this collaboration be fully shared. We should also frame this project as an opportunity for U.S. and Russian scientists to collaborate on contributing to Russia's innovation agenda and produce technologies that benefit both countries because of the sensitivity of U.S. involvement in the Russian economy.

Further, the United States can play a role in increasing Russian efficiencies by offering expertise to improve energy conservation at Russia's end-user level. The United States has had considerable success with a domestic energy efficiency program called Energy Star, which is administered jointly by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy. Energy Star adopts the public-private partnership model-a concept gaining traction in Russia-by pairing up with businesses to develop energy efficiency compliance codes for a full range of products and practices, which now cover buildings and facilities and over 60 product categories, such as home appliances, office equipment, lighting, home electronics, and more.

In over 17 years of operation Energy Star has engendered collaboration among 15,000 private- and public-sector organizations, and led to estimated energy savings that translate to $19 billion in 2008 alone. It will be further strengthened by the aforementioned American Clean Energy Security Act should a companion bill in the Senate also pass. We recommend that the United States and Russia use the American experience with Energy Star to develop long-term Russian institutional capacity for establishing best practices, setting energy performance standards, and monitoring energy consumption across a wide range of end uses in Russia.

Russia and the United States were incapable of discussing important issues in the final months of the Bush presidency. The Obama administration now has the opportunity to build a relationship of trust and cooperation to fight a common threat. Working together on advancing energy efficiency in Russia and demonstrating the economic advantages of attending to climate change offers both countries an ideal platform for a new era of constructive diplomacy and joint action. Climate and energy efficiency can also expand the U.S.-Russia relationship beyond the traditional areas of arms control and nonproliferation. President Obama should capitalize on this opportunity starting next week in Moscow when he meets with Medvedev. Confronting this neglected challenge may very well wind up being a key to solving the climate crisis.

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Copenhagen: Getting past the urgency trap

The road to Copenhagen

The enemies of energy efficiency have unveiled their new tactic to keep you from saving money and energy: they're just going to tell you ridiculous lies and hope you believe them. It seems that because they have had a hard time weakening the money saving efficiency provisions in the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), they have decided to make up policies and claim they are in the bill to convince folks that being more efficient is not a great idea.

The anti-efficiency crowd have alleged that the ACES bill is going to require Americans trying to sell their homes to undergo some sort of energy inspection or meet some sort of green requirements-"or else". Of course, when I have heard and read this claim there isn't a provision cited, and for good reason-- it doesn't exist!  This "down with efficiency" story is simply a complete fabrication.

I've blogged several times on what the bill actually says, but I can simplify:

The bill says that new buildings are going to be more efficient in the future and as a result consumers are going to save billions (with a "B"). Buildings that already exist today will not be required to do anything, while buyers of more efficient new homes will save tens of thousands of dollars over the term of their mortgage-- just because of ACES' better building standards policy. If the efficiency improvements don't save money, they won't be required. It's as simple as that. I guess making something up is easier than explaining why better buildings that save money are bad.

The (real) bill also says that EPA is going to develop a building energy label so interested consumers can know how efficient their homes are and how efficient they could be. There is no requirement to improve the building to a certain level of efficiency after you get your label. In fact there is no requirement at all, because the label is completely voluntary!

The label will evaluate the whole building, so if you have invested in new windows or efficient appliances, then you are going to have a better score. I bet a potential buyer is going to be interested in how much money he/she is going to save because of the improvements that have been made. Here again, making up something must be easier than explaining why consumers don't have the right to know the efficiency of their homes and offices.

I think it's pretty clear why the anti-efficiency crowd doesn't want these policies or the bill passed into law. It's because they make money at your expense right now and they want it to stay that way. Fortunately the authors of ACES know this opportunity to inject billions of dollars in savings back into our economy is too important to waste just to please the worst elements of the construction and real estate industry.

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Fourteen Democratic senators stick up for coal

House passes landmark health-care bill with one GOP vote

President Barack Obama doesn't think he can solve global warming by changing his f**king light bulbs, but he's going to do it anyway. More importantly, he's going to change the light-bulb industry.

Obama unveiled new energy-efficiency standards for lighting and appliances on Monday -- the latest in a string of energy-focused announcements and events for the president. On Friday, he praised the House for passing the landmark American Clean Energy and Security Act. On Saturday, he focused his weekly address on the bill and the importance of clean energy -- a last-minute change, as the address had been intended to focus on health care. And on Sunday, he sat down with a group of reporters for a lengthy interview about the climate bill and energy in general, emphasizing that he thinks the clean-energy market is poised for explosive growth.

On Monday, with Energy Secretary Steven Chu at his side, Obama said the Department of Energy is at work on new standards for fluorescent and incandescent lighting. And in the meantime, he's changing the light bulbs in the White House.

"Now I know light bulbs may not seem sexy, but this simple action holds enormous promise because 7 percent of all the energy consumed in America is used to light our homes and our businesses," Obama said.

The president estimated that the new lighting standards would cut 594 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions between 2012 and 2042 and save American energy users $1 billion to $4 billion each year over that period -- conserving enough energy to eliminate the need for as many as 14 new coal-fired power plants.

Obama also announced that the Department of Energy has outlined tougher efficiency standards for household appliances, responding to a request from the White House in February to speed up the delivery of new rules, and he noted major federal investments in energy efficiency for buildings.

"One of the fastest, easiest, and cheapest ways to make our economy stronger and cleaner is to make our economy more energy efficient," said Obama. "By bringing more energy-efficient technologies to American homes and businesses, we won't just significantly reduce our energy demand; we'll put more money back in the pockets of hardworking Americans."

Obama highlighted the gains that California has made in efficiency since the 1970s, which have put the state's energy usage 40 percent below the national average. In the process, he said, the state has created 1.5 million jobs in energy efficiency. Obama predicted that the new federal standards will have similar effects -- creating jobs, reducing emissions, and saving money.

The president also announced that $346 million from the economic stimulus bill will be invested in efficiency for commercial and residential buildings, which account for 40 percent of domestic energy use and 40 percent of domestic CO2 emissions. Of that money, $100 million will be invested in advanced building systems research, $70 million in residential buildings, $53.5 million for commercial buildings, and $72.5 million for buildings and appliance market transformation.

Obama took the opportunity to again praise the House's passage of the climate and energy bill on Friday, a move he said will help make "clean energy the profitable kind of energy." He praised legislators who voted for the bill for being "willing to place America's progress ahead of the usual Washington politics."

For more, read Obama's full remarks.

Here are President Obama's full remarks:

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Today we are an oil-based civilization, one that is totally dependent on a resource whose production will soon be falling. Since 1981, the quantity of oil extracted has exceeded new discoveries by an ever-widening margin. In 2008, the world pumped 31 billion barrels of oil but discovered fewer than 9 billion barrels of new oil. World reserves of conventional oil are in a free fall, dropping every year.

As I note in my latest book Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, discoveries of conventional oil total roughly 2 trillion barrels, of which 1 trillion have been extracted so far, with another trillion barrels to go. By themselves, however, these numbers miss a central point. As security analyst Michael Klare notes, the first trillion barrels was easy oil, “oil that’s found on shore or near to shore; oil close to the surface and concentrated in large reservoirs; oil produced in friendly, safe, and welcoming places.” The other half, Klare notes, is tough oil, “oil that’s buried far offshore or deep underground; oil scattered in small, hard-to-find reservoirs; oil that must be obtained from unfriendly, politically dangerous, or hazardous places.”
           
This prospect of peaking oil production has direct consequences for world food security, as modern agriculture depends heavily on the use of fossil fuels. Most tractors use gasoline or diesel fuel. Irrigation pumps use diesel fuel, natural gas, or coal-fired electricity. Fertilizer production is also energy-intensive. Natural gas is used to synthesize the basic ammonia building block in nitrogen fertilizers. The mining, manufacture, and international transport of phosphates and potash all depend on oil.

Efficiency gains can help reduce agriculture’s dependence on oil. In the United States, the combined direct use of gasoline and diesel fuel in farming fell from its historical high of 7.7 billion gallons (29.1 billion liters) in 1973 to 4.2 billion in 2005—a decline of 45 percent. Broadly calculated, the gallons of fuel used per ton of grain produced dropped from 33 in 1973 to 12 in 2005, an impressive decrease of 64 percent.

One reason for this achievement was a shift to minimum- and no-till cultural practices on roughly two fifths of U.S. cropland. But while U.S. agricultural fuel use has been declining, in many developing countries it is rising as the shift from draft animals to tractors continues. A generation ago, for example, cropland in China was tilled largely by draft animals. Today much of the plowing is done with tractors.

Fertilizer accounts for 20 percent of U.S. farm energy use. Worldwide, the figure may be slightly higher. As the world urbanizes, the demand for fertilizer climbs. As people migrate from rural areas to cities, it becomes more difficult to recycle the nutrients in human waste back into the soil, requiring the use of more fertilizer. Beyond this, the growing international food trade can separate producer and consumer by thousands of miles, further disrupting the nutrient cycle. The United States, for example, exports some 80 million tons of grain per year—grain that contains large quantities of basic plant nutrients: nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. The ongoing export of these nutrients would slowly drain the inherent fertility from U.S. cropland if the nutrients were not replaced.

Irrigation, another major energy claimant, is requiring more energy worldwide as water tables fall. In the United States, close to 19 percent of farm energy use is for pumping water. And in some states in India where water tables are falling, over half of all electricity is used to pump water from wells. Some trends, such as the shift to no-tillage, are making agriculture less oil-intensive, but rising fertilizer use, the spread of farm mechanization, and falling water tables are having the opposite effect.

Although attention commonly focuses on energy use on the farm, agriculture accounts for only one fifth of the energy used in the U.S. food system. Transport, processing, packaging, marketing, and kitchen preparation of food are responsible for the rest. The U.S. food economy uses as much energy as the entire economy of the United Kingdom.

The 14 percent of energy used in the food system to move goods from farmer to consumer is equal to two thirds of the energy used to produce the food. And an estimated 16 percent of food system energy use is devoted to canning, freezing, and drying food—everything from frozen orange juice concentrate to canned peas.

Food staples such as wheat have traditionally moved over long distances by ship, traveling from the United States to Europe, for example. What is new is the shipment of fresh fruits and vegetables over vast distances by air. Few economic activities are more energy-intensive.

Food miles—the distance that food travels from producer to consumer—have risen with cheap oil. At my local supermarket in downtown Washington, D.C., the fresh grapes in winter typically come by plane from Chile, traveling almost 5,000 miles. One of the most routine long-distance movements of fresh produce is from California to the heavily populated U.S. East Coast. Most of this produce moves by refrigerated trucks. In assessing the future of long-distance produce transport, one writer observed that the days of the 3,000-mile Caesar salad may be numbered.

Packaging is also surprisingly energy-intensive, accounting for 7 percent of food system energy use. It is not uncommon for the energy invested in packaging to exceed that in the food it contains. Packaging and marketing also can account for much of the cost of processed foods. The U.S. farmer gets about 20 percent of the consumer food dollar, and for some products, the figure is much lower. As one analyst has observed, “An empty cereal box delivered to the grocery store would cost about the same as a full one.”

The most energy-intensive segment of the food chain is the kitchen. Much more energy is used to refrigerate and prepare food in the home than is used to produce it in the first place. The big energy user in the food system is the kitchen refrigerator, not the farm tractor. While oil dominates the production end of the food system, electricity dominates the consumption end.

In short, with higher energy prices and a limited supply of fossil fuels, the modern food system that evolved when oil was cheap will not survive as it is now structured.

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Memo to Washington Post: Please, please trade editor Fred Hiatt to the Wall Street Journal editorial page where his penchant for allowing unfact-checked crap into the paper - and for writing it himself - would no longer hurt the reputation of a (once) great newspaper.

There are lots of reasons for progressives and the progressive media to criticize the "B-" grade Waxman-Markey bill. Most notably, the 2020 target is too weak, too easy to meet with the over abundance of low-cost clean energy strategies available in this country. There are lots of reasons for status quo centrists to criticize the bill. Most notably, they don't get that global warming is a big deal (see "David Broder is the stenographer of those centrists who are fatally uninformed about global warming").

But what kind of newspaper would attack the bill because it sets a standard that requires new buildings to become more energy efficient? That is a hard-core conservative critique. Pretty much everybody else understands the multiple market barriers that work against energy-efficient design - including the fact that the overwhelming majority of buildings are not built by the people who occupy them. Construction and management companies emphasize minimizing first cost, spending the least amount of money upfront, which has the effect of maximizing lifecycle cost, leading to much higher energy bills that otherwise rational decision-making would lead to.

And so most reasonable, non-conservative observers understand and support national standards for energy-efficient appliances and buildings, such as you find in the Waxman-Markey bill (see "Better buildings soon? Energy and climate bill would set national energy codes"). But not if you work for the editorial page of the Washington Post, which is usually derided as leftist by the right-wing and derided as centrist by progressives, but is now just plain derided by everybody.

Let's go through the critique in Sunday's unsigned Washington Post editorial, a piece that is both naïve and paranoid at the same time (which one can safely assume ed page editor Fred Hiatt had a big hand in) and Hiatt's signed column today (which he apparently wrote because Krauthammer, Will, Samuelson, and the occasional Schlesinger column don't satisfy his need for pushing right wing disinformation).

First we have the conspiracy-theory pushing Sunday editorial:

Buried Code
The unexamined federal regulation in a House energy bill

The thesis of the piece is that the people who wrote the bill are trying to conceal its provisions from the public and the media, including energy-efficient building codes. How diabolical of Reps. Waxman and Markey!

Only thing is, the bill has been on the web for weeks, and on Tuesday the Committee published a summary of the key provisions (here), emphasizing upfront that one of the highlights of the bill is:

Mandate new energy-saving standards for buildings, appliances, and industry.

And then the Committee detailed in the accompanying summary:

Building Standards. ACES establishes new standards for building efficiency, requiring new buildings to be 30% more efficient in 2012 and 50% more efficient in 2016. States are offered allowances that they can sell to support adoption and enforcement of the new standards. The Department of Energy must enforce the standards in states that do not incorporate the building standards into their state building codes.

Apparently, the Washington Post, whose journalists once routingly won Pulitzer prizes for uncovering the deepest, darkest secrets of the government, can't even use the Internet these days. Their editorial opens:

THE RUNNING joke in Washington is that nobody has read the 900-plus-page energy bill sponsored by Reps. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) and Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), which the House will consider in coming weeks.

Uhh, actually this isn't a running joke in Washington, since most everyone here knows that the bill is no more complicated than a typical major piece of environmental legislation, like the Clean Air Act or Clean Water Act. Certainly some people have criticized the bill as too long and complicated, but mostly those are folks who are unfamiliar with the legislative process - which I guess now includes the Washington Post editorial page.

The bill would transform the energy system of the country over the next few decades to remove virtually all greenhouse gas emissions from the U.S. economy. That ain't easy, it can't be done simply, and this is certainly the most ambitious piece of legislation ever contemplated by the U.S. Congress. Only an editorial page editor who is very politically naïve, who has little understanding of the scale of the climate problem and the scale of the energy solutions required, would start his or her critique by focusing on the length of the bill.

What you hear from its backers is that its cap-and-trade provisions would create a market-based program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions - which should mean that a simple, systemwide incentive encourages polluters to make the easiest reductions in greenhouse gases first, keeping the costs of fighting global warming to a minimum. In fact, the bill also contains regulations on everything from light bulb standards to the specs on hot tubs, and it will reshape America's economy in dozens of ways that many don't realize.

Wow.

The writer is both incredibly naïve and incredibly paranoid in the same paragraph. The Washington Post enters tin-foil hat land when it accuses the backers of misleading people about the contents of the bill. Most of the backers I know are ecstatic about the energy-efficient standards and eager to tell people about them. That's why Waxman and Markey made it a lead bullet in their Tuesday web summary. That's why I featured a post discussing the provision in detail.

The naïveté is even more staggering. How could you possibly cut US greenhouse gas emissions 83% in four decades with a few simply, systemwide incentives? The Post is in fairy-dust land on this one. I have been meaning to write about a recent Carnegie Mellon University report that explains what I think should be obvious, but until I get around to that, you can look at the Green Car Congress piece on it, "CMU Paper: Market-Based Mechanisms for CO2 Reduction Will Be Insufficient to Attain Mid-Century Goals."

According to the bill's advocates, America's buildings account for perhaps 40 percent of U.S. greenhouse emissions, and technology is available for builders to meet the targets in ways that are economical for building owners. Much of the problem is old buildings that waste huge amounts of energy, which wouldn't necessarily be touched by the new code. But it would be good if builders met these efficiency goals with new construction.

Is the best way to achieve that, though, to federalize what has long been a matter of local concern?

This is a purely right-wing ideological critique with no basis in substantive policy analysis. We have appliance efficiency standards in part because appliance manufacturers lobbied Congress so they wouldn't have to design appliances for 50 different state standards. In the case of buildings, most states simply aren't doing anything on energy efficiency. As noted in the summary above, the bill even provides allowances to allow states to incorporate the new standards into their building standards, and only goes to the trouble of enforcement if the states don't do it.

And if the point of cap-and-trade is to change market incentives, why does Congress, and not the market, need to dictate these changes? Those are a few questions that emerge when you begin to read through the 900 pages.

Once again, market-based mechanisms, which is to say price-based mechanisms, do not drive energy efficiency very well (see "why the allocations do not undermine energy efficiency efforts"). Why? As all of the experts on energy efficiency have said many times, energy efficiency is cost-effective today. If you want energy efficiency, which is the cheapest mitigation strategy, you need to tear down the market barriers that block it. Many of those barriers impede energy efficiency from being adopted in new buildings as noted above.

The Post compounds this naïve paranoia by letting editorial page editor Hiatt write an op-ed piece today, "Gridlock's Irresponsible Heir?" to repeat his bewildering talking points:

For moderate voters clinging to some faith in government, the question over the past two decades of mostly two-party rule was: Can't Washington do anything?

Now, with one party pretty much in control, the question has become both more hopeful and more anxious: Will Washington do anything responsibly?

Yes, "responsibly" is a freighted, finger-wagging word. But it seems a fair question to ask of a radically remade capital.

So Hiatt speaks for "moderate voters" - which, as we'll see, are really center-right voters - and uses the uber-loaded word radical to describe Washington. Yes, I'm aware he said "radically remade," but as my father was a newspaper editor I am more than aware that this is one profession that chooses each and every word very carefully. He wanted to use the word "radical" and he did.

Hiatt is another of those right-of-center "centrists" like Broder who are fatally uninformed about global warming:

There's no easy answer on climate change, either, but most economists would say the sensible approach would be to levy a tax on oil, gas and coal and then get out of the way. Higher prices for those fuels would discourage use and encourage investment into wind power, conservation and other good things. To cushion the blow, you could rebate the money in a progressive or at least neutral way.

Hiatt has no way whatsoever of knowing what "most economists would say." He is just making up crap here to defend his position. Not that the Post bother to fact check opinion pieces anyway, but they certainly aren't going to fact check Hiatt's.

You simply can't do a tax by itself because one of the points of a climate bill is to be able to go to other countries and say these are the emissions targets that the US government and American people have agreed to. Without targets and a clear-cut way to meet them, an international deal is impossible and the problem is unsolvable.

I dare so many if not most major economists who follow this issue fully understand that - see Nobelist Krugman strongly endorses Waxman-Markey: "The claim that carbon taxes are better than cap and trade is, in my view, just wrong." and Robert Stavins.

Just Imposing a price on carbon can't possibly solve this problem (see also the CMU report cited above).

But Obama and Congress don't want to take responsibility for raising taxes any more than they do for limiting health-care options. So Democratic leaders in the House have fashioned a 946-page climate change bill that forces industries to pay to exceed a gradually declining limit on carbon emissions. It's a tax with deniability, and with huge enforcement challenges.

Here the Post goes again with the "946-page climate change bill" criticism that their editorial page had raised just the previous day. Uber-lame and uber-naive.

Hiatt's entire thesis is built around the notion that a tax is inherently and irredeemably superior and more honest than cap-and-trade - and that that supposedly fact is a widely known in the policy community, so that choosing the cap-and-trade path is irresponsible. There is no truth whatsoever to that assertion (see here and here).

Indeed, most Americans view the Europeans as more informed and more aggressive on climate action, and yet they chose the cap-and-trade path (see "Europe poised to meet Kyoto target: Does this mean the much-maligned European Trading System is a success?")

Hiatt may not be a status quo center-right/conservative no nothing when it comes to energy and climate - but if not, he does a better job of hiding it than the authors of Waxman-Markey have done hiding its energy efficiency provisions.

Trade him to the WSJ, already.

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The Center for American Progress Action fund had a recent event on clean energy jobs keynoted by Van Jones, who is not the President’s “green-jobs czar,” but “the green-jobs handyman.”

Besides being the administration’s point person on clean energy jobs, he is the best speaker on the subject — because he studies rhetoric and persuasive speechmaking (see “Van Jones and the English Language“).

So he is worth hearing, and for the video click here.

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Treat energy efficiency like a utility

Why won’t Lisa Jackson/Nancy Sutley visit a mountaintop removal site?

Senators opposed to Clean Energy Jobs Act are ignoring bill’s benefits to Americans—Part 2

By Daniel J. Weiss, Daniel Wagener

1. The Waxman-Markey bill will create jobs by spurring investment in renewables and efficiency.
2. Boosting investments in low-carbon energy will help the United States regain the lead in the manufacture and sale of clean-energy technologies.
3. The global warming threat is growing, and we have no more time to lose.
4. The bill would cut greenhouse gas emissions enough to equal pollution from half a billion cars.
5. It would increase new building efficiency by 50 percent.
6. It limits impact from energy costs on families and would make emitters pay to pollute.
7. It provides a smooth transition for energy-intensive industries.
8. Opponents of action would continue the status quo of doing nothing, which cost the average family a $1,000 increase in energy bills over the past eight years.
9. Investments in carbon capture-and-sequestration research and development to reduce global warming pollution from coal-fired power plants.
10. The bill has critical industry support.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee today will begin consideration of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, sponsored by Committee Chair Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Energy and Environment Subcommittee Chair Edward Markey (D-MA). This bill is a huge step forward in the effort to achieve a clean-energy economy transformation and has attracted broad support from legislators and businesses nationwide.

The ACES establishes a three-part program to transition to a low-carbon economy: increase energy efficiency; invest in clean-energy resources such as the wind and sun; and reduce global warming pollution. While the original draft of the bill reduced emissions sooner and had a separate national energy efficiency resource standard, the current version represents enormous progress after eight years of stasis. Passage of the bill in the Energy and Commerce Committee is an essential first step to policies that will accelerate economic recovery and achieve long-term growth.

On May 13, President Obama praised the draft legislation as “a major step forward in building the kind of clean-energy economy that will reduce America's dependence on foreign oil.”

The bill includes many critical steps to transform the United States to a low-carbon economy. Here are 10 key reasons to support it.

The bill includes a renewable electricity and efficiency standard of 20 percent by 2020. This requires utilities to provide 15 percent of their electricity from renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power. They would also have to reduce annual electricity use by 5 percent through efficiency measures. Investments in clean energy and efficiency would create jobs, particularly in struggling sectors such as manufacturing and construction, by increasing demand for steel for wind turbines and construction of energy-efficient buildings.

A February analysis by HSBC Global Research in Hong Kong projects that nearly 40 percent of China’s proposed $586 billion stimulus plan—$221 billion over two years—is for clean energy investments, including an advanced electric grid, low-carbon vehicles and high-speed rail. The leading global consumer of coal for electricity, China has emerged in the past two years as the world’s leading builder of more efficient coal power plants capable of capturing and storing carbon, mastering the technology and driving down the cost.

The European Union committed to 20 percent renewable energy by 2020. As of 2006, the United States had less absolute renewable power capacity than either China or the 27 EU countries. While renewable energy deployment in the United States is lagging, 66 other countries worldwide have committed to national standards.

Establishing a market price on carbon pollution would make investments in renewable energy sources and efficient technologies economically competitive. Investments in their research, development, and production would help make the United States a global leader in the export of clean energy.

Global warming has major human impacts, posing health, economic, and security threats. Margaret Chan, the director-general of the World Health Organisation, states “Climate change will affect, in profoundly adverse ways, some of the most fundamental determinants of health: food, air, water."

A recent study by the University of Washington found that higher temperatures will exacerbate asthma attacks and allergy symptoms because they will prolong pollen seasons, expanding the range of bee habitats and increasing airborne mold and other irritants. Higher health care costs and lower productivity will negatively affect the economy.

In February, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA) declared a state of emergency in California because of the drought. The state faces nearly $3 billion in economic losses this year from the lack of rainfall. The dry conditions also worsen the state’s perennial wildfires. Research suggests that wildfires are a significant contributor to global warming by depleting carbon-absorbing vegetation while releasing more carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

There has also been an outpouring of new evidence that unchecked pollution has caused harmful changes. Rising temperatures have caused the 18,000-year-old Chacaltaya glacier in Bolivia to completely vanish, and scientists predict that the North Pole will have almost no summertime ice as soon as 2020. The melting of polar ice would allow the release of vast deposits of methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.

Waxman-Markey aims to reduce U.S. global warming pollution by requiring a 17-percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels by 2020. This is like removing greenhouse gases from 500 million cars—about half the world’s cars in 2020.

This cut would reduce emissions at a faster rate than the proposal President Barack Obama made in his budget request. The cuts would increase over time to a 45-percent cut by 2030, 65 percent by 2040, and 85 percent by 2050. While the 2020 reduction is lower than first proposed, the later targets are the same as in the original draft.

Nearly half of American’s energy powers our buildings, and too much of this energy is wasted. The Waxman-Markey bill would attack this waste by requiring new buildings use 50 percent less energy by 2016.

Many studies point toward these benefits from building energy efficiency. According to a 2009 study by the Environmental Defense Fund on efficiency investments in Texas, efficiency investments in buildings can avoid over 50 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions and avoid $17 billion in electricity bills annually by 2030.

And an analysis from McKinsey and Company suggests that the United States can achieve savings of $33 billion per year by 2030 from cumulative buildings-sector efficiency improvements.

Currently, greenhouse gas emitters can pollute the sky without paying any cost. The Waxman-Markey bill would put an end to this practice. Large emitters would have to annually purchase a permit for every ton of carbon dioxide they release into the atmosphere. Charging companies for what was once free will create an economic incentive to produce less of it.

Nearly a third of all U.S. greenhouse gas pollution comes from coal-fired electric power plants. To limit the impacts of higher energy costs from the new price on carbon, the Waxman-Markey bill would give 30 percent of the pollution permits to regulated electric companies (“local distribution companies,” or LDCs). The LDCs could sell the pollution permits on the open market to emitters, and state public utility-service commissions would be responsible for ensuring that the revenue is used to offset the higher electricity prices.

The bill would also provide allowances for consumers of natural gas and heating oil. In addition, revenue from 15 percent of the allowances would be “distributed to low- and moderate-income families to protect them from other energy cost increases. These allowances will be distributed through tax credits, direct payments, and electronic benefit payments.”

To smooth the transition for energy- and trade-intensive industries such as steel and cement, the Waxman-Markey bill would grant them 15 percent of all pollution permits for free starting in 2014 and with a phase-out beginning in 2025. Companies would receive allowances equal to the average emission rate for their industry. Firms that produce less pollution than average could sell their extra permits, so they have an economic incentive to clean up.

The auto industry would also receive incentives to manufacture electric and other advanced technology vehicles. The bill would give the auto industry “Three percent of allowances from 2012 through 2017, and after that will receive 1 percent of allowances through 2025.”

The bill’s “cap-and-trade” system is different than the EU’s Emissions Trading System, which distributed too many pollution permits. The companies sold their excess permits, kept the money, and raised rates anyway. After the European Commission corrected the mistake, the system functioned properly, and in 2008 carbon dioxide emissions were cut by 3.1 percent, while the economy grew by 0.8 percent. The Waxman-Markey system would avoid the early mistakes of the EU system.

Opponents of the Waxman-Markey bill would continue the pro-big oil energy policies developed by Vice President Dick Cheney and vigorously pursued by President George W. Bush. Billions of dollars in subsidies were plowed into extremely rich big oil and energy companies, and efforts to remove these payouts were mostly blocked by conservatives. Clean-energy policies—such as a renewable electricity standard—were also blocked.

The result of these pro-industry policies? Spiraling gasoline and electricity prices for families, and a nation more dependent on coal and oil. Between 2001 and the recession that began in December 2007, the typical annual American household expenditure for energy rose by $1,130. Bill detractors may use dilatory tactics to thwart the majority’s support and retain the status quo.

In addition, Ranking Republican Joe Barton (R-TX) plans to offer a substitute energy bill from last year that would invest heavily in nuclear power while allowing oil companies to freely develop dirty, water-consuming oil leases. It is an expensive, dirty proposal that ignores global warming while enriching big oil and energy companies.

Technology currently exists to capture CO2 emissions from coal-fired plants—which provides half of U.S. electricity —and to sequester that CO2 in underground geologic formations. The technology is not yet commercially available, however, and widespread deployment of CCS systems will not be easy. Recognizing this, the Waxman-Markey bill provides a financing mechanism to set the stage for deployment of carbon capture-and-sequestration technology at a scale that would significantly reduce coal plant emissions.

Widespread CCS deployment—in combination with other policies to reduce CO2 emissions and diversify energy sources—could be invaluable in meeting our emission reduction goals for greenhouse gases and would encourage the export of CCS technology around the world, particularly to developing nations that depend on low-cost coal to fuel economic growth.

Many CEOs from big energy and manufacturing companies realize that we must reduce oil use and cut greenhouse gas pollution, or face devastating economic and national security consequences. Some of these leaders have joined together with a handful of nonprofits to form the U.S. Climate Action Partnership. Their proposal to cut greenhouse gases by 14 percent to 20 percent by 2020 was the starting point for the Waxman-Markey bill.

Jim Rogers, the CEO of Duke Energy, (a U.S. Climate Action Partnership member) recently praised the Waxman-Markey bill during an Energy and Commerce Committee hearing. He said, “If we design this bill right, if we get the transitions right, it will put us in a position to be stronger. It will not weaken our economy over time.”

Another U.S. CAP member, Charles Holliday, Jr., chairman of DuPont, testified that, "I believe that this may be the single greatest opportunity to reinvent American industry, putting us on a more sustainable path forward... A federal climate program has the potential to create real economic growth through innovation."

Despite the forward-looking outlook of these and other leaders, many of their companies belong to trade associations that are vigorously lobbying Congress to retain the status quo. Duke Energy plans to leave the National Association of Manufacturers because of NAM’s campaign to block progress. Ten thousand small businesses petitioned the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to end its multifaceted campaign to stop the Waxman Markey bill.

Daniel J. Weiss is a Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy and Daniel Wagener is an Assistant Editor at American Progress.

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Q. Hi Umbra,

You've made several mentions of living off the grid in previous columns, and I was wondering where someone should find such things? It seems as though there are secret communities and communes that everyone seems to know about but me. How would you find an off the grid community, or go about living off the grid yourself?

Anica
Corvallis, Ore.

A. Dearest Anica,

No one is hiding anything from you, don't worry. You just haven't met any off-the-grid folks. By the way, if you do find anything that could qualify as a secret community, off the grid or no, I would bicycle fast in the other direction. Especially in Oregon or Southwest Washington.

Grid expectations.iStockYou have two distinct questions, but of course pursuing either may result in an answer to both. Living off the grid mainly refers to finding some way to produce your own electricity and hence eschew reliance on the public electric grid. This is done firstly through reducing the need for electricity, and secondly through alternative power generation via wind, solar, or hydro. So, to go about living off the grid, I would start researching the potential for wind, solar, or hydroelectric power at my own home. If I were a renter, I would start looking for a home to buy in an area where one of these things was possible. I wrote about micro-wind and solar some time ago, and mayhap it will soon be time for this column to touch on microhydro as a home power source.

Meanwhile, let's say you do own a home, and you want to start researching whether you can afford a solar array, or put up a wind turbine. You can start with my old columns, which could give you some basics on whether you have enough sun or space for a turbine, but then I would immediately start an internet hunt for solar interest groups or vendors in Oregon in general, and in Portland, Corvallis, and Eugene. I would also keep a sharp eye out at co-ops, natural food stores, libraries, and other places frequented by well-meaning environmentalists who like to post fliers, and I would read those very fliers, hoping for workshops about anything related to off-the-grid living.

The larger "off-the-grid" scene could include workshops on growing your own food, raising your own animals, serious energy conservation, home energy efficiency ... things like that. I would go to available workshops, or events, or festivals, and if I were feeling less shy than usual, I might even work up the nerve to talk to someone who looked friendly. If there were a solid-looking solar or wind group on the internet, I might pump myself up to give them a phone call and start getting information. If you want to meet likeminded people, workshops are a good place to start, whether or not they are directly related to your specific needs. Eventually you'll meet enough people, and they'll know people, and you'll find that the secret club has let you in.

In terms of entire communities living off the grid, or at least less reliant on the grid: if the word of mouth and flier technique above does not lead you to them, then you'll need to formally look for "intentional communities" that have an off-the-grid focus. Start with Communities Magazine and see where it takes you. Some of those Oregon intentional communities could be pretty darn fun to visit (this one has hot springs).

One crazy human wonderful thing I learned about over the winter is kind of related to off-the-grid communities: the Haul of Justice. It's a group of bicycling volunteers who originally joined together in Eugene and now do yearly rides in various parts of the country, helping anyone who needs assistance. Thanks to my off-the-grid, intentionally communitizing best bud for the inspiring reading about these bicycling wonders, who are now in their own off-the-grid community in Missouri. See, it's no secret cabal, it's just human connection -- I know my friend, she knows all these people ... you will soon know such people too.

Best of luck in your quest for an ungridded life.

Zingily,
Umbra

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This weekend, The New York Times Magazine ran as its cover story an article entitled "Why Isn't the Brain Green?" (i.e. why humans don't generally make environmental choices automatically, even though it's good for us in the long term). And a front page Monday story in The Washington Post, chronicled how "going green" could lead to discord in families as, for example, one spouse wanted the heat on and another wanted to shiver for the planet.

I wish this article had included an important point: it's only hard for individuals to be green because our society remains so un-green. Turning on a lightswitch shouldn't be a source of agony - it should come from solar electricity made possible by government support and strict limits on polluting fuels. Consumers shouldn't have to worry about whether or not the fish they buy that the supermarket is endangered or not - supermarkets and restaurants shouldn't be allowed to serve endangered fish like red snapper and bluefin. And we shouldn't have to squint at ingredients labels to find out if our cookies contain rainforest-destroyers like palm oil: it should be banned from import. That's why the greenest thing anyone can do - better even than not flushing - is to organize their communities to demand that their elected officials and corporate leaders make our society go green - so that it becomes automatic for the rest of us.

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