Know a college student? As this holiday weekend rolls in and many of you might have college kids coming back to your home with huge bags full of dirty laundry, we’ve got something for you.

Know a college student with a dirty room? If you're nodding your head 'yes' right now, send them this link so they can be part of our quest to find the dirtiest room in the nation (or you – the friends or parents - can take a photo and enter them yourself!).

We're betting the dirtiest room we find, no matter how filthy, is still not as dirty as the coal that powers many of our nation's campuses.

The owner of the dirtiest room -- dorm, fraternity, or apartment -- will win a free, green cleaning service from the Sierra Club.

This is another step in our Too Dirty for College Campaign, which I've written about before. We've already had folks tell university presidents that it's time to move beyond coal and power our schools with 100 percent clean-energy solutions.

Now we're proving that no matter how dirty college gets, it's not as dirty as coal.

Your room (or your kid's or friend's room) might be completely filthy, but it's still not as bad as toxic pollution, mountaintop removal and global warming. Coal is dirty, dangerous and far too old to be fueling our nation's college campuses. It poisons people's water when we drag it out of our mountains, it fills our air with asthma and cancer-causing toxins, and then continues its dirty legacy when the waste is dumped in unlined ponds. We can do better and our schools must lead the way.

So show us that dirty room. To enter, go to this "2dirty4college" photo contest group, and join our online community. You can then upload your image by clicking "Add a photo" on the left-hand side of the page.

Again, the owner of the dirtiest room will win a free, green cleaning service from the Sierra Club. So, call that ex-boyfriend, pay a special visit to your friend's fraternity or call those gals living in the group house next door with the funky smell, and get them to enter today for the glory of being the dirtiest in country. (And a free clean up!)

Help us find the dirtiest room and show that while college can get pretty nasty, coal is still far, far worse.

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Earlier this month, the Department of Energy announced $155 million worth of grants to clean energy projects -- specifically targeted to CHP, waste heat recovery, and district energy. This was done as a part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), and therefore had a very specific focus not just on clean energy, but also on so-called "shovel-ready" projects that would quickly stimulate further private sector investment and job creation. According to the DOE press release, those $155 million federal dollars will bring forth an additional $634 million of private capital and save 14 trillion Btus to boot.

All good.

But there's an even better backstory. The $155 million of awards was selected from $9 billion of qualifying projects. (Applications were even higher.) The $155 million limit wasn't imposed by the size of the opportunity to reduce energy and create jobs, but simply by the size of the program. 

Budgets are limited, and it's to DOE/ARRA's great credit that they got this $155 million deployed. But there is a larger lesson here for clean energy broadly. It is a massive opportunity to create jobs, lower energy use, and turn the economy around. Those projects didn't go away by virtue of not getting funding -- but they didn't get built either. Meanwhile, we haven't exactly solved our energy, environmental, or economic dilemmas yet. There's an opportunity there.

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The New York State Legislature has not, of late, been able to agree on anything--the budget, same-sex marriage, and even, for awhile, which party was in the majority.

But there is one thing they are unanimous about: clean energy finanancing.  Last night, by a vote of 192-0, the famously combative body passed S66004-a/A 4000A-a, a bill that enables municipalities in the state to set up special financing districts to help residents finance investments in energy efficiency and solar. 

Called property assessed clean energy (PACE), it's a model that allows cities to issue bonds to help residents finance investments in energy efficiency and solar, and pay off the loans through a property tax assessment.

With New York, 15 states now allow these programs.

And if you are in New York, the next step is to get your town to set up a program.  Step-by-step guide here.

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There's a great new book out called How the West Was Warmed (www.howthewestwaswarmed.com), about responding to climate change in the Rockies. It's got intros and conclusions from two of the nation's leading implementers/rock stars of the new green economy--Gov. Bill Ritter of Colorado and Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper.

It also offers readers a candy store of great essays by excellent writers and thinkers in the West, including Outside contributor/N.Y. Times journalist Florence Williams, Water and drought expert Brad Udall, and editor Beth Conover, who has been in the green trenches for 20 years.

The book includes an essay I originally wrote for Orion magazine on why solving climate change offers humanity a shot at the kind of broad meaning that humans have always yearned for. In fact, I argue, solving climate change has the ability to endow our lives with some of the oldest human desires: a life of dignity, grace, and meaning. The last time we had a shot a something that so comprehensively addressed core human needs was when the world's great religions were created between two and four thousand years ago. Here's an excerpt from that essay.

To read more, please buy the book, you'll enjoy it!

Meanwhile, here's an excerpt from one essay in the book, titled "Climate Revelations: God, Climate and Hope."

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Almost anything that happens in our nation’s capital can be explained by a quote from Alice in Wonderland. Usually, that’s a bad thing. In the case of the Solar Technology Roadmap Act which the U.S. House of Representatives passed last week, however, invoking Alice is all for the good.

Lost in a land where nothing is what it seems, Alice asks the Cheshire Cat which way she ought to go. He answers, “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.”

The bill’s author, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) calls it a Roadmap for a reason: HR 3585’s greatest strength is that it knows exactly where it wants to go.

“Ultimately,” Giffords told the Solar Economic Forum last month, “the reason I get so excited about solar power is that it offers a viable solution -- at least in part -- to all of these major challenges: Economic competitiveness [jobs], energy independence [national security], and climate protection.”

Because the Roadmap doesn’t depend exclusively on “green votes” it passed in the House by a convincing margin of 310 to 106, with the backing of IBM, Intel and even the (beleaguered) U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

With the destination locked in, HR 3585 lays out a route for getting there.

•    Give solar power an institutional legitimacy and a stable presence inside the government.

The United States has never had a serious and sustained policy for sustainable energy. As a reaction to the oil price shock of the 1970s, the Carter administration created the Solar Energy Research Institute (SERI), led by Denis Hayes, the main organizer of the first Earth Day. SERI’s budget in 1981 was an astonishing $1.4 billion. The investment paid off handsomely. The U.S. led the world in solar technology.

After Ronald Reagan was elected president, SERI’s funding was slashed, with predictable results. America not only lost the lead -- we quit the race. Japan and Germany bought up the technology and hired researchers cut loose by Reaganomics. Solar power flourished in those countries while it withered here. Says Hayes, “We lost an entire generation of researchers.”

Watching the floor debate on the Roadmap must have been excruciating for those who know SERI’s history. GOP opponents like California’s Tom McClintock, bemoaned a history of “squandering” taxpayer money on solar R&D that always failed to deliver -- without mentioning his party’s role in decimating funding for renewable energy at a critical moment.

Giffords’ plan was modeled after the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors, an industry plan with a successful 20-year track record. HR 3585 creates an 11-member committee, drawn from government labs, industry, and academia. The committee will draw up a Roadmap for solar research, development, and demonstration projects (RDD) with goals for the short-term (2 years), mid-term (7 years) and long-term (15 years).

•    Fund solar power research, development and demonstration projects adequately and predictably.

The Roadmap authorizes $350 million for solar RDD beginning in October 2010. That amount rises incrementally over the next five years to reach $550 million.

Is that sufficient? Thirty-four Nobel Prize winning scientists don’t seem to think so. The group sent President Obama a letter in July citing the President’s own request for $15 billion annually for a decade to fund clean energy RDD. They urged the president to push Congress for that funding level in the Senate climate bill.

Roadmap supporters are quick to point out that the $15 billion was for all clean energy, not just solar. And, they add, the money authorized by HR 3595 exceeds federal spending on solar RDD in any year since SERI’s heyday nearly 30 years ago. Finally, the Roadmap isn’t the only funding mechanism for renewable energy. Yesterday, for example, President Obama announced $3.4 billion in grants to upgrade the nation’s electrical grid, a tremendous boon to the solar industry.

While Giffords' office doesn’t seek or expect funding from any sources other than those spelled out in the bill, I suspect that even they think of the Roadmap as a good start -- necessary but insufficient to achieve all of the bill’s goals.

For now, the road Giffords' bill must travel before it becomes law passes through what could be treacherous terrain: the Senate.

The morning after her bill passed the House, I asked Giffords how she felt about the Roadmap’s chances in the upper house. She was, unremarkably, “cautiously optimistic.”

“We’ve still got a long way to go,” she said. “But I’m hoping it will land on the president’s desk by the end of this year.”

But there’s little chance of that happening, given the other pressing issues before the Senate and the dwindling days in this session. It’s more likely to be taken up next session when it stands a good chance of passing.

There is, however, a tantalizing scenario in which the Roadmap could become law this year -- as an amendment to the climate bill now being debated in the Senate. Given the broad bipartisan support for the Giffords’ Roadmap in the House, the bill could actually attract a vote or two for the Kerry-Boxer Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act.

The chance that funding for solar power could actually be an enticement for Senators who emphasize national security and a pro-business agenda shows just how far the industry has traveled and how well Giffords has framed the debate.

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This post originally appeared at Sightline's Daily Score blog.

Last week, Dave Roberts blogged about a recent -- and very important -- study by the National Research Council on the enormous hidden costs of energy consumption.

I'm surprised that the study hasn't gotten more press coverage.  It's fact-rich, sober, and completely non-ideological -- and, at the same time, it's an incredibly damning indictment of the nation's energy system.  The report looks at a variety of "external" costs of energy -- that is, the costs that energy consumers themselves don't pay, but pass on to the public at large.  The costs they could pin down were largely related to air pollution, including the impacts on human health, crop and timber yields, and visibility. And the researchers find a big culprit:  coal-fired power.  From the NRC press release:

In 2005, the total annual external damages from sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter created by burning coal at 406 coal-fired power plants, which produce 95 percent of the nation's coal-generated electricity, were about $62 billion; these nonclimate damages average about 3.2 cents for every kilowatt-hour (kwh) of energy produced.  A relatively small number of plants -- 10 percent of the total number -- accounted for 43 percent of the damages.

Photo courtesy ittybittiesforyou via Flickr Based on my awesome powers of multiplication, and a quick trip to the U.S. Energy Information Administration website, these numbers suggest that the "hidden" costs of coal fired power in 2005 were roughly twice as high as the cost of the coal itself.  And those costs, according to the NRC, don't even include "damages from climate change, harm to ecosystems, effects of some air pollutants such as mercury, and risks to national security, which the report examines but does not monetize."

So any time someone tells you that coal is "cheap," just remember that in 2005 the real, comprehensive cost of coal was well over three times as high as the market price. 

The tally of damages that the NRC could calculate came to $156 million per coal-fired plant per year.  The biggest culprits seem to be in the Midwest.  According to this map in the NRC report, the Centralia and Boardman plants, in Washington and Oregon, respectively, don't rank particularly high for the kinds of costs the NRC was looking at.  But if you added in the costs for mercury emissions and climate risks, then the Northwest's coal plants might rank a bit higher.

Obviously, the National Research Council is no group of amateurs, nor is it driven by any sort of ideology.  It operates under the umbrella of the National Academies, a Congressionally-chartered non-profit that also houses the National Academies of Science and Engineering and the National Institute of Medicine.  In other words, it's a bunch of hard-core nerds:  people who care about, y'know, facts & stuff.  So tell your friends:  the experts have spoken, and despite what the market says, coal ain't cheap.

Related Links:

Prologue to Copenhagen

Vinod Khosla Nonesense

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

The new version of Energy Self-Reliant States manages to duplicate the fallacies of their previous reports, and adds new ones. Their takeaway: "… 3 in 5 states could get all of their electricity from in-state renewable resources." Their statistics actually support the need for transmissions. Some states can produce surplus power. Some states can't meet all their own needs. If we are going to move to 100 percent renewable energy (or nearly 100 percent), we need transmission lines to get power from states with surpluses to states without.

There are a few other tricks here. The New Rules Institute considers storage cost for meeting 20 to 35 percent of electricity needs via renewables; for that small a percent of the grid you can get by with between zero new storage or at worst a few minutes of peak power. But if we are to supply really high percentages of power from renewables we will need hours of storage. That gets expensive. Given both daily and seasonal variation in delivery of renewables, transmission (which can reduce the need for storage drastically) is the cheaper alternative. New Rules skews the numbers by not including storage needs when comparing the cost of a local mostly renewable grid to a national mostly renewable grid. A smart grid, while useful, reduces but does not replace either transmission or storage. That is because transmission and storage can both handle cases where there is zero or nearly zero power available for a brief period of time, whereas a smart grid can never reduce demand to zero or close to zero.

Other tricks: a lot of this "renewable energy" is "combined heat and power" -- parasitic electricity generated by using waste heat from industrial process. To the extent we can make the industrial processes more efficient, or run them on renewable electricity, CHP resources are lower than estimated. Similarly they have high estimates for small scale hydro, without considering how much of that small scale hydro damages the environment in ways that compare to large scale hydropower per kWh.

Another trick here is that they don't consider electricity needs if we substitute electricity for a large portion of transportation energy, and possibly for industrial needs. I know that the New Rules Institute tends to be optimistic about biomass, and possibly they think that biomass can drive transportation and industry. But when we consider both returning nutrients to the soil, and not displacing food or wilderness, I think we will find biomass potential limited compared to renewable electricity for these purposes.

Here is the bottom line: we should learn from nature in reconstructing our infrastructure to be sustainable. And nature is not purely local, not "self-reliant". Salmon migrate thousands of miles, as do many fish species. Gray Whales travel around the globe. Birds and insects cross continents.  Many local plants depend on nutrients transported thousands of miles by rivers. We should try to rest lightly on the land, making it sustainable and beautiful, efficient, robust and reliable. And if we do that we will find the right balance between local and global without prejudging where that balance lies.

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For years now, many members of Congress have insisted that cutting carbon emissions was difficult, if not impossible. It is not. During the two years since 2007, carbon emissions have dropped 9 percent. While part of this drop is from the recession, part of it is also from efficiency gains and from replacing coal with natural gas, wind, solar, and geothermal energy.

The U.S. has ended a century of rising carbon emissions and has now entered a new energy era, one of declining emissions. Peak carbon is now history. What had appeared to be hopelessly difficult is happening at amazing speed.

For a country where oil and coal use have been growing for more than a century, the fall since 2007 is startling. In 2008, oil use dropped 5 percent, coal 1 percent, and carbon emissions by 3 percent. Estimates for 2009, based on U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) data for the first nine months, show oil use down by another 5 percent. Coal is set to fall by 10 percent. Carbon emissions from burning all fossil fuels dropped 9 percent over the two years.

Beyond the cuts already made, there are further massive reductions in the policy pipeline. Prominent among them are stronger automobile fuel-economy standards, higher appliance efficiency standards, and financial incentives supporting the large-scale development of wind, solar, and geothermal energy. (See the data.)

Efforts to reduce fossil fuel use are under way at every level of government -- national, state, and city -- as well as in corporations, utilities, and universities. And millions of climate-conscious, cost-cutting Americans are altering their lifestyles to reduce energy use.

For its part, the federal government -- the largest U.S. energy consumer, with some 500,000 buildings and 600,000 vehicles -- announced in early October 2009 that it is setting its own carbon-cutting goals. These include reducing vehicle fleet fuel use 30 percent by 2020, recycling at least 50 percent of waste by 2015, and buying environmentally responsible products.

Electricity use is falling partly because of gains in efficiency. The potential for further cuts is evident in the wide variation in energy efficiency among states. The Rocky Mountain Institute calculates that if the 40 least-efficient states were to reach the electrical efficiency of the 10 most-efficient ones, national electricity use would be reduced by one-third. This would allow the equivalent of 62 percent of the country's 617 coal-fired power plants to be closed.

Actions are being taken to realize this potential. For several years DOE failed to write the regulations needed to implement appliance efficiency legislation that Congress had already passed. Within days of taking office, President Obama instructed the agency to write the regulations needed to realize these potentially vast efficiency gains as soon as possible.

The energy efficiency revolution that is now under way will transform everything from lighting to transportation. With lighting, for example, shifting from incandescent bulbs to the newer light-emitting diodes (LEDs), combined with motion sensors to turn lights off in unoccupied spaces, can cut electricity use by more than 90 percent. Los Angeles, for example, is replacing its 140,000 street lights with LEDs -- and cutting electricity and maintenance costs by $10 million per year.

The carbon-cutting movement is gaining momentum on many fronts. In July, the Sierra Club -- coordinator of the national anti-coal campaign -- announced the 100th cancellation of a proposed plant since 2001. This battle is leading to a de facto moratorium on new coal plants. Despite the coal industry's $45 million annual budget to promote "clean coal," utilities are giving up on coal and starting to close plants. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), with 11 coal plants (average age 47 years) and a court order to install over $1 billion worth of pollution controls, is considering closing its plant near Rogersville, Tennessee, along with the six oldest units out of eight in its Stevenson, Ala., plant.

TVA is not alone. Altogether, some 22 coal-fired power plants in 12 states are being replaced by wind farms, natural gas plants, wood chip plants, or efficiency gains. Many more are likely to close as public pressure to clean up the air and to cut carbon emissions intensifies. Shifting from coal to natural gas cuts carbon emissions by roughly half. Shifting to wind, solar, and geothermal energy drops them to zero.

State governments are getting behind renewables big time. Thirty-four states have adopted renewable portfolio standards to produce a larger share of their electricity from renewable sources over the next decade or so. Among the more populous states, the renewable standard is 24 percent in New York, 25 percent in Illinois, and 33 percent in California.

While coal plants are closing, wind farms are multiplying. In 2008, a total of 102 wind farms came online, providing more than 8,400 megawatts of generating capacity. Forty-nine wind farms were completed in the first half of 2009 and 57 more are under construction. More important, some 300,000 megawatts of wind projects (think 300 coal plants) are awaiting access to the grid.

U.S. solar cell installations are growing at 40 percent a year. With new incentives, this rapid growth in rooftop installations on homes, shopping malls, and factories should continue. In addition, some 15 large solar thermal power plants that use mirrors to concentrate sunlight and generate electricity are planned in California, Arizona, and Nevada. A new heat-storage technology that enables the plants to continue generating power for up to six hours past sundown helps explain this boom.

For many years, U.S. geothermal energy was confined largely to the huge Geysers project north of San Francisco, with 850 megawatts of generating capacity. Now the United States, with 132 geothermal power plants under development, is experiencing a geothermal renaissance.

After their century-long love-affair with the car, Americans are turning to mass transit. There is hardly a U.S. city that is not either building new light rail, subways, or express bus lines or upgrading and expanding existing ones.

As motorists turn to public transit, and also to bicycles, the U.S. car fleet is shrinking. The estimated scrappage of 14 million cars in 2009 will exceed new sales of 10 million by 4 million, shrinking the fleet 2 percent in one year. This shrinkage will likely continue for a few years.

Oil use and imports are both declining. This will continue as the new fuel economy standards raise the fuel efficiency of new cars 42 percent and light trucks 25 percent by 2016. And since 42 percent of the diesel fuel burned in the rail freight sector is used to haul coal, falling coal use means falling diesel fuel use.

But the big gains in fuel efficiency will come with the shift to plug-in hybrids and all-electric cars. Not only are electric motors three times more efficient than gasoline engines, but they also enable cars to run on wind power at a gasoline-equivalent cost of 75 cents a gallon. Almost every major car maker will soon be selling plug-in hybrids, electric cars, or both.

In this new energy era carbon emissions are declining and they will likely continue to do so because of policies already on the books. We are headed in the right direction. We do not yet know how much we can cut carbon emissions because we are just beginning to make a serious effort. Whether we can move fast enough to avoid catastrophic climate change remains to be seen.

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Friday factoids time: The U.S. biomedical and pharmaceutical industry invests between 10-20 percent of revenues in research and development (R&D) and new product development, spending $58.8 billion on R&D in 2007. The U.S. government adds an additional $30 billion per year investment in biomedical R&D through the National Institutes of Health.

In contrast, the U.S. energy sector invests well below $3 billion annually in R&D in an industry with well over a trillion dollars in annual revenue. The energy sector's R&D spending as a percent of revenues -- call that figure the industry's innovation intensity -- is just 0.23 percent. That compares to a national average innovation intensity across all industries of 2.6 percent, or 10-times greater than the energy-sector's innovation intensity. And it pales in comparison with the innovation intensity of leading technology and innovation-intensive sectors including biomedical technology (10-20 percent), information technology (10-15 percent), and semiconductors (16 percent).

This downright paltry private-sector energy innovation spending leaves a massive energy innovation gap that the U.S. government barely begins to fill, investing only about $5 billion annually in energy R&D. That's barely more than half the levels spent on public research to pursue clean and affordable energy alternatives during the late 1970s and early 1980s. The scale and urgency of our national energy challenges have clearly grown since then, yet the national commitment to energy innovation has moved in the wrong direction. Public R&D spending on health care ($30 billion) and defense ($80 billion) signal the scale of true national innovation priorities and begs the question: when will the U.S. get serious about investments in clean energy innovation?  When it does, a new National Institutes of Energy and a major increase in federal energy R&D investments are needed to fill the energy innovation gap and spur a clean energy revolution.

For more on a National Institutes of Energy, see our archives here or the following selected content:

(All factoids and figures from either the BTI, Third Way report, Jumpstarting a Clean Energy Revolution with a National Institutes of Energy, or Charles Weiss and William Bonvillian's excellent book, Structuring an Energy Technology Revolution) Originally at the Breakthrough Institute

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Today marked one of the final days of the Bangkok U.N. Climate Negotiations. With the end of this intersessional in sight, the International Youth Delegation (IYD) has officially declared “No Confidence” in the road to Copenhagen.

With youth delegates from over 30 countries engaging in the Bangkok process, the IYD cited pathetically weak targets from the North, alarm that a second commitment period in the Kyoto Protocol will not be secured, and a lack of guarantees for protection of indigenous peoples’ rights and interests in its declaration. The current text of the draft climate deal is so weak and so full of “false solutions” (measures like offsetting that actually make the problem worse) it is unacceptable.

Youth delegates representing each continent addressed the U.N. today, detailing the urgency of the crisis as it affects their communities currently, telling stories of their hope and organizing alongside their denunciation of the state of play in the U.N. Negotiations.

This week the Annex 1 (rich countries), attempted to kill the Kyoto Protocol (KP). We are nearing upon the end of the current KP term, and a lack of renewing it means that the world would lose the few legally binding international climate agreements it has (as insufficient as they are). The US in particular has deliberately undermined the KP by trying to merge it with the Convention Processes (the other track). Other Annex 1 countires are hiding behind the US to avoid their responsibility. The excuse is that the United States will not sign, and therefore the whole thing should be scrapped and an entirely new deal can be struck on its own. It is lunacy to think that this will yield a stronger outcome, and the G77 (the rest of the world) countries are furious.

We have always known the U.S. won't sign the KP; the world cannot continue to wait for the U.S. to get on board. In Bali, the U.S. already committed to setting comparable targets to other Annex 1 countries, so the world could deal with the U.S. in the AWG-LCA (Ad-Hoc Working Group on Long Term Cooperative Action). This all amounts to a shell game: more dirty delaying tactics from self-interested countries who are content to strip away basic attempts at an international agreement (for example "compliance" -- meaning that the U.S. would have international oversight of its targets, or "top-down target setting" -- meaning the international community sets carbon targets together based on science, rather than each countries independently setting their targets based on what their fossil fuel extraction industries dictate).

Allowing the U.S. to drag the world out of existing legal obligations is disgraceful. These negotiations are going backwards. Make no mistake: our future is being held hostage to interests that have consistently thumbed their noses at the international community and their obligations to the rest of the world. This process has been polluted by self-interested corporations and nations looking to profit off of our crisis. They have been pushing false solutions that exacerbate rather than fix the problem. Not only are the targets set by rich countries weak, but they are deceptive. Rather than representing actual emissions reductions, they contain unacceptable proportions of offsets, which do not reduce emissions, and displace the burden back onto the developing countries of the world.

In the meantime, the roadmap developed in Bali has been betrayed, as Annex 1 countries are putting forward the perverse idea that somehow developing countries should (or can) act first. Further language on indigenous rights is being removed and diluted from the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) text. "Rights" are being defined as "right to participate," as opposed to "rights over land and communities", and existing U.N. language (such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples or UNDRIP, and the principles of Free Prior and Informed Consent or FPIC) is far from being adopted. This has led to major protests all week and this morning youth supported the Indigenous Caucus in a large "No Rights?? No REDD!!" demonstration on the front steps of the U.N.

The youth will not accept a dirty deal.

Rights-based language in the text (including UNDRIP and FPIC), no offsets, limiting global temperatures to 1.5 degrees C and 350 ppm of c02, unconditional legally binding targets for Annex 1 countries of at least 40% reductions by 2020, and a LOT of money for adaptation and technology transfer are just some of the baseline components that must be in the text to even begin to sensibly move forward. Regardless of what governments decide, youth across the world are continuing to organize social movements to build meaningful solutions in their own communities, working on local, national, and international levels. Our hope for the future is in the power of civil society to reshape what is perceived as politically possible.

See the video of the press conference here:

Bangkok: International Youth Delegation declares "No Confidence" in road to Copenhagen from CYD To Copenhagen on Vimeo.

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We've taken a good long look at CEJAPA, the 801-page Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act that was introduced recently by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). Now, it's time to see how the Senate bill compares with ACES. the American Clean Energy and Security Act co-sponsored by House members Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.). 

Be forewarned that even CEJAPA's biggest supporters say that much about the Senate bill will change. The first markup on Boxer’s Environment and Public Works committee is tentatively scheduled for Oct. 15. Until then, here's how the two climate bills stack up against each other, and against some of the other climate and energy bills percolating in the Senate.

Emission cuts

•    Waxman-Markey: ACES would put a cap on greenhouse gases and require industries that emit high amounts of greenhouse gases to reduce their output. Using the 2005 emission levels as a baseline, ACES would cut emissions by 3 percent in 2012, 17 percent in 2020, 42 percent in 2030, and 83 percent by 2050.

•    Boxer-Kerry: CEJAPA would start by requiring a similar 3 percent cut in emissions by 2012, but it would require a sharper cut of 20 percent by 2020. Otherwise, the CEJAPA emission cuts are the same as those written up in ACES.

Emission permits
•    Waxman-Markey: ACES would require regulated industries to acquire permits (also called carbon credits or pollution allowances) for their emissions. At first, a large percentage of permits would be given out to affected industries and to other groups with a stake in the game. But eventually a fairly lively carbon-trading market is supposed to develop. This new carbon market would allow companies to purchase extra credits or bank and borrow credits. A company would also be allowed to sell their excess credits if they’re able to limit their emissions more than they’re required to. There would be a minimum price of $10 per unit for each carbon credit, starting in 2012. Government regulators would establish a maximum price of no more than 60 percent above a rolling average. If the concept sounds complicated and not terribly certain, many inside the industries that would be regulated tend to agree.

•    Boxer-Kerry: CEJAPA would try to create a similar system with the use of tradable credits. As with ACES the market for carbon credit trading would be fairly open -- to a point. A key difference between the two proposals is the Senate bill’s attempt to manage any carbon market volatility that could hurt emitters struggling to control costs. While the Waxman-Markey version doesn’t offer any real limits on the maximum cost for a credit, CEJAPA would set a ceiling price (what Boxer calls a “soft collar”) of $28, adjusted for inflation. Once that market price is hit, federal regulators would have reserves of permits they could release into the market to try and control the cost.

Who gets the permits and money
•    Waxman-Markey: Some permits will be given away to various affected industries and others to groups that can help manage the cost of these changes for consumers. ACES has a fairly detailed description of how the give-aways will be handed out. For example, 15 percent will go to energy-intensive industries and 30 percent to local electricity distribution companies to help them keep the cost to consumers low. Some industries, like the auto industry, would get a share of the credits to develop a specific clean technology. Other groups would get credits to help fund transmission and efficiency projects.
In the first years of the cap-and-trade program, the federal government would sell 15 percent of the permits, and ACES has a fairly well fleshed out explanation of who will benefit from the proceeds of those sales. A big chunk of the revenue would go to help soften the blow of increased energy costs to low and moderate income households. Smaller percentages would be distributed to combat international deforestation, research advanced-clean energy, and help our country and others adapt and transition to a less carbon-dependent world.

•    Boxer-Kerry: How CEJAPA would divvy up the giveaways and the proceeds from the sale of the remaining permits is still unknown -- it’s an area of the legislation with a lot of placeholders. In coming weeks the blanks will start to be filled in, but the hope is that by leaving the numbers blank for now, it gives lawmakers the flexibility to get industry backing by negotiating with major stakeholders. That said, one of the few firm numbers that is already written into CEJAPA is a provision to spend 25 percent of the revenues on federal deficit reduction -- a dramatic increase from the roughly 8 percent ear-marked in ACES. Boxer began to fill in the details in an interview that aired on Sunday, Oct. 4, where she announced that up to 70 percent of the giveaways will go to making it easier for consumers to pay.

Offsets
•    Waxman-Markey:  One way carbon emitters can deal with tough carbon caps is to buy into offsets. Basically, if you emit three tons of carbon too many, exceeding the limit, you’d be able to compensate by planting enough trees to absorb those three tons (or at least some of it.) Waxman-Markey had fairly well outlined explanations for the tradeoffs -- listing certain types of offsetting activities (at home and abroad) and naming the EPA as the adjudicator of what qualifies as a good offset and whether it’s being used.
•    Boxer-Kerry: Also includes an opportunity for carbon emitters to invest in offsets to help meet caps, but offers much less precise instructions as to what qualifies as an offset. What it does offer, in more precise terms, are the tools to scrutinize what will and won’t eventually qualify as an offset.

Renewable electricity standard
•    Waxman-Markey: ACES creates a renewable electricity standard (RES) that would require that an increasing percentage of the nation’s electricity come from renewable sources -- as much as 20 percent by the year 2020. One major caveat was that as much as 5 percent could actually be accounted for by improvements in energy efficiencies.

•    Boxer-Kerry: CEJAPA offers no federal renewable energy standard. There is, however, a provision to empower the EPA to give grants and other assistance in an effort to help various states meet their own renewable energy standard. The legislation also includes a separate grant program for bio-fuels and gives the EPA the power to set a national energy efficiency building code standard and assistance in retro-fitting older buildings to meet newer efficiency code standards. It is important to note that in most cases where CEJAPA omits key energy areas, the missing pieces can be found in the American Clean Energy Leadership Act (ACELA). This bill was written by the Senate’s Energy Committee in June, as the “energy” portion to CEJAPA’s “climate.” The ACELA draft proposes a 15 percent renewable energy standard, and allows 4 percent of that to come from energy efficiency savings.

Getting off carbon

•    Waxman-Markey: ACES is a true climate and energy bill, so it does include ample money for investment in renewable energy -- as much as $190 billion by 2025. This counts investments in energy efficiency, renewable energy, electric vehicles, and a number of technologies that do not make environmentalists happy, but do make coal state Dems smile, like, $60 billion in so-called “clean coal” research money.

•    Boxer-Kerry: At this point, CEJAPA is just the “climate” side of things, so it is thin on investments in new technology. That doesn’t mean it will stay that way. Its mate ACELA, the “energy” half of the equation, would create a clean energy investment fund, specifically for investing in new clean energies. That said, the provisions already penciled into CEJAPA that do deal with technology don’t particularly favor either clean/renewable energy, or coal -- they offer some helping hands to three other energy sources -- nuclear, natural gas, and biofuels -- that boosters all felt were left out of ACES. Natural gas in particular gets a boost from CEJAPA, which would establish an incentive to help convince big coal burners to switch to natural gas, which emits about half the CO2 of coal. It’s significant that there is a nuclear title at all in CEJAPA. ACES didn't bother with nuclear even though many conservatives like to think of nuclear as the ultimate clean energy. Obviously, this is a bone of contention, but it’s one that CEJAPA apparently is willing to deal with.

Cleaner rides

•    Waxman-Markey: Even before the Cash for Clunkers program struck such a chord this summer, the House passed a version of ACES that would provide one million vouchers to help consumers trade in older, less fuel efficient vehicles. The bill also had provisions to help support electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids -- and the improvements to our transmission grid needed to support an expanded use of electric cars.

•    Boxer-Kerry: The Boxer-Kerry draft includes provisions to push states and municipalities into looking at how to plan for mass-transit and more carbon-friendly transit -- think building trails and sidewalks to encourage bikers and pedestrians, and even plans for telecommuting. So does ACES, but with less emphatic language. CEJAPA requires using the money from credit auctions to support green transit planning, while ACES just allows it. CEJAPA also takes an interest in cleaning up taxis, a major source of carbon in metro areas that some more pro-active cities are already trying to tackle. CEJAPA wants stricter emissions standards for cabs than for other cars.

Related Links:

Approaching Copenhagen with a Portfolio of Domestic Commitments

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Someone just e-mailed me the latest example of a seemingly intelligent (albeit conservative) person who has joined the ranks of those successfully duped and confused by the deniers and the status quo media.  Our latest victim’s impressive bio:

Dr. Stephen Leeb is the editor of The Complete Investor newsletter. The Complete Investor newsletter has earned awards for Editorial Excellence for 2004 and 2005 by the Newsletter & Electronic Publishers Association [sic -- Leeb hasn't quite figured out the internets, either].  Dr. Leeb is the author of six books on investments and financial trends. His newest book is Game Over: How to Prosper In A Shattered Economy.

He even seems to know something about energy, “His best-selling book The Oil Factor: Protect Yourself – and Profit – from the Coming Energy Crisis accurately predicted the surge in oil prices.”  Who didn’t, though (other than Michael Lynch, who predicted back in 1996 “real oil prices FLAT for the next two decades)?

But based on the following nonsense he recently wrote and circulated, investors may ask themselves whether he bothers to do the most basic kind of research needed to justify following his advice:

COLD WINTERS FOR THE DOLLAR SPELL GOOD TIMES FOR ENERGY

… A declining dollar will also be positive for oil. But there is something else in the wings that could dramatically accelerate an already sure uptrend in energy prices. We are talking about global warming or the lack thereof.

Global warming has become a well entrenched ideology among scientists. Increasingly, however, the consensus view states that the next 10 to 20 years could actually be a cooler period within a long-term warming trend. We could see colder winters and lower average worldwide temperatures during this time. But according to the scientific community, a generation of colder temperatures is not reason to turn up the thermostats.

Sad, really.  In fact, the “consensus view,” a term I don’t much like — let’s say, rather, “the scientific understanding as reflected in the peer-reviewed literature” — is that the next 10 to 20 years will be the hottest on record collectively (see “Exclusive interview with Dr. Mojib Latif, the man who confused the NY Times and New Scientist, the man who moved George Will and math-challenged Morano to extreme disinformation“).

There is no certainly no imaginary consensus predicting “colder winters and lower average worldwide temperatures” over the next one to two decades.

We have always had trouble with zealots whether they be Scientologists or ivory tower ideologues. And global warming is no exception. A few experiences and recent articles make me especially skeptical.

Yes, the entire scientific community, including hundreds of climate scientists, all of the major scientific publications, all of the world’s national academies of sciences, and the major scientific associations, are all the equivalent Scientologists or idealogues who never even bother to go outside and study, say, virtually all of the world’s glaciers, which are melting far faster than predicted, Dr. Stephen Leeb.

In the summer of 2008 I attended a conference hosted by Accenture in Rio. Sitting next to me for a good part of this event was the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This man was a Naval Admiral and a Harvard Ph.D. in applied math. He struck me as a soft-spoken, level-headed, plain-speaking man – certainly not someone inclined towards hyperbole. In addition, as his assistant informed me, he was very thick-skinned.

Turns out he had testified before a Congressional committee on the subject of global warming. His frank answer to the Chairman was that there was not enough evidence to conclude global warming is taking place. The Admiral took a lot of verbal disrespect for expressing such an unpopular view, but his expertise in weather patterns cannot be denied. Nor could the lack of expertise by the Senator who lambasted him.

In light of the data suggesting we may experience a cooler period, I find myself more respectful of the Admiral’s view.

This would be Admiral Lautenbacher, a Bush administration stooge appointee, with no climate science credentials, who muzzled actual US climate scientists from speaking out, a climate denier of whom Sen. McCain said in 2005 (back when he was still a maverick),

“You know, you are really one of the more astonishing witnesses in the 19 years I’ve been a member of this commitee Admiral.  Because clearly you are in violation of the law….  And I again want to express my deep disappointment at your complete lack of concern about future generations of Americans that are affected by climate change which overwhelming scientific evidence…  Let me just, because I’m sure you probably didn’t  read it….. The National Academy of Sciences, along with National Academies of 10 other nations issued a joint statement on the global response to climate chage: The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action. It is vital that all nations identify cost-effective steps that they can take now, to contribute to substantial and long-term reduction in net global greenhouse gas emissions. And all we are asking from you is a report, and we can’t even get that.”

But I digress.

Leeb continues confusingly:

I was also struck by a recent article in the August 2009 issue of Science in which scientists found it nearly impossible to incorporate the effect of the sun into climate models. Variability and system feedbacks seem to have a bigger influence on temperatures than the sun’s radiation, even though we clearly get most of our heat from the sun.

Well, being unable to determine the sun’s role in a climate model is a bit like excluding the role of rainfall from agriculture.

Update:  He apparently means, “Amplifying the Pacific Climate System Response to a Small 11-Year Solar Cycle Forcing” (subs. req’d), an explanatory study that has little bearing on climate change, as its final sentence makes clear:  “This response also cannot be used to explain recent global warming because the 11-year solar cycle has not shown a measurable trend over the past 30 years.”

Our point is that we cannot assume the global warming theory is complete and proven. All we know is that we are likely to experience some colder winters in the years ahead, and they will in turn affect the demand for energy.

Colder weather will certainly up the demand for natural gas, oil, and coal, which will in turn drive up the prices of these commodities.

Energy prices are correcting at the moment, as they usually do between the driving season and the heating season. However, if we have a cold winter, we can expect gas and oil prices will be bid up substantially within the next 2-3 months. If people start to realize that cooler winters are a long-term scenario, energy prices may receive a long-term bid as well.

Note how Leeb leaped from what he thinks (incorrectly) the consensus says “could” happen, to knowing that the likely net impact of future climate change will be colder weather that drives up the demand for fossil fuels.

For the record, something Leeb apparently never checks, the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s, Short-Term Energy and Winter Fuels Outlook, says:

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) most recent projection of heating degree-days, the Lower-48 States are forecast to be 1 percent warmer this winter compared with last winter and 1 percent milder than the 30-year average (1971-2000).

Yes, that’s right, Leeb believes the former head of NOAA, an anti-scientific denier, but doesn’t actually bother checking NOAA’s near-term forecast.  And people pay money for his investment advice!

Once again, this bodes well for Brazil, a country which is a net energy exporter. It will impact other developing countries which will be consuming commodities hand over fist. And it will affect the U.S., where year-over-year energy prices show a positive gain despite the recent correction. By the start of next year, energy prices could easily be up 100% y-o-y. In the past, such a high rate of change has always signaled trouble for the stock market and the economy. If it happens this time, in the context of high unemployment, the impact could be worse.

Clearly, you should own energy stocks such as Schlumberger (SLB), the leading oil service company, Transocean (RIG), the leading deepwater driller, and others in our portfolio. The entire energy patch could see extraordinary gains in the years ahead – the result of a long-term trend that could force Al Gore to return his Nobel Prize.

Okay, Leeb is obviously your mainstream rightwinger — the Gore reference by itself makes for an almost ironclad diagnosis of anti-science syndrome (ASS).

I don’t generally give out investment advice, but in this case I will make a slight exception.  If you believe in disinformation and not science, if you think we are headed into a long-term cooling trend, then Dr. Stephen Leeb is obviously the guy to place all your money with.

Related Links:

Science historian Weart on global warming

Michael Mann updates the world on the latest climate science

“Many , including us,  find deniers’ claims irresponsible.”

Chances are, the average U.S. citizen has no idea that their demand for electricity might require that a Mexican village be flooded for a hydroelectric dam. The question is: if the environmental and human costs were known, would we consume just a little bit less?

As part of my own personal battle against under-estimating people, I’m betting that a little bit of knowledge would go a long way. That high environmental cost, which goes hand-in-hand with a slew of human rights abuses, is not likely to sit right, even if that average U.S. citizen is comfortably sipping a Coke in an air-conditioned movie theatre.

Come for a quick tour south of the border to hear how the Mexican countryside is being flooded to beef up our grid and what Mexican grassroots organizations are doing about it.

Food Sovereignty: Resistance and a Way Forward

Just outside of the city of Oaxaca, I spoke with Aldo Gonzalez from the Union of Organizations of the Sierra Juarez of Oaxaca (UNOSJO). He hikes through the Sierra Juarez mountains, lending a hand to Zapotec communities seeking food sovereignty. On the one hand, UNOSJO keeps an eye out for companies preying on community resources -- whether water, timber, minerals, or seed stock. On the other hand, UNOSJO promotes agroecological techniques so that families can grow adequate food for themselves and, in good years, sell surplus in local markets -- core principles of food soverignty. This work, supported by organizations like Grassroots International includes educating children and adults in simple terms about globalization’s threats, the policy environment that has eroded public support to small farmers and Zapotec techniques and traditions of caring for shared water and land.

Aldo was one of the first indigenous leaders in Mexico to detect genetically modified corn strains in Oaxacan fields and has seen firsthand that dams, mining, and maize don’t mix. “For the indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica, corn is our blood, our bones, our flesh,” Aldo told me. “Without corn, we’re nothing. For that reason, we’re not going to let anyone disfigure corn, rob it of its essence, kill it or kill us.” UNOSJO shares a vision of autonomy and sovereignty with other indigenous and peasant allies across Mesoamerica with which they work.

Increasing Pressures on Land and Territory

Judging by statistics of foreign direct investment, Mexico is “enjoying” a development boom. But who’s really enjoying it? The country’s economic upsurge is powered largely by transnational industries scouring indigenous lands for mineral-rich veins, windy plains and floodable canyons.

At a recent water and energy strategy forum, Professor Octavio Rosas Landa from the Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), presented a global energy matrix to farmers seeking to learn about how worldwide energy consumption threatens their natural resources.

Among the 400 farmers in attendance was Carlos Beas, director of UCIZONI, a Grassroots International partner working on food sovereignty in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. “What do we get in exchange for our resources?” asked Beas, before he then answered his own question. “We get divisions in our community. Some people agree to rent their land. Other people are dead set against it. The government and the companies divide up our communities and where we used to live well together, now we fight.”

Raising questions about the costs of green energy, UCIZONI’s members are particularly concerned about the environmental impacts of a giant wind farm on Oaxaca’s isthmus that has ruined thousands of acres of agricultural land and provides meager revenue. As poor farmers that lead low-consumption lives, UCIZONI’s members have no need for increased energy supply.

Recent Mexican governments have chosen to put their increasingly imported eggs in the megaproject basket. Megaprojects are grand infrastructure works that tie Mexico into the global economy, offering a way for Mexico to sell its abundant natural resources and cheap labor around the world.

What broke Mexico’s farming economy and opened the floodgates to megaprojects?

Dammed if they Do…

Professor Landa described policies of the 80s and 90s, when Mexico was instructed by foreign creditors to abide by neo-liberalism and structural adjustment principles. The formula, replicated throughout the developing world, demanded that Mexico shrink its public spending by -- among other budget cuts -- removing public support for small farmers. Mexican farming families split apart when fathers and sisters had to leave for Mexican cities and the U.S. to seek work. In the 1990s, when constitutional reform broke up collective lands and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) inundated Mexican markets with cheap U.S. corn, even more farmers went broke.

The water and energy forum was held outdoors in a rural schoolyard in Aguacaliente, Guerrero, a community slated to disappear under the rising waters of the proposed La Parota dam. In the eyes of the visitors that had come from afar to the forum to sleep on the hard ground under tarps in a schoolyard, Aguacaliente’s community organization, the Council of Communities Opposed to the Parota Dam (CECOP) is an inspiration that has thus far held back construction of the dam.

What’s behind the interest in Mexico’s land and minerals? You can probably imagine that it has a lot to do with Mexico’s insatiable neighbor to the north. In the U.S., economics and the environmental movement have prevailed to tear dams down rather than construct new ones. “In the U.S., if they propose a dam, there’s nearly a riot,” Professor Landa explained. “Energy companies look elsewhere to fulfill U.S. energy demand. Free Trade agreements like NAFTA make that a lot easier.” Poor and marginalized indigenous communities with little political power are easy targets for the world’s energy and mineral companies.

Participants at the forum learned that Mexico exports 40 percent of the energy that it produces. Through megaprojects like the Plan Puebla Panama, the U.S. seeks to fulfill its energy appetite through a regionalized electrical grid, stretching from Mexico to Colombia,. Sarah Gonzales, a leader of a growing resistance to high electrical rates, traveled 25 hours from Campeche to participate in the form. She said, “I came here upset about my high energy rates. Now that I see that we’re giving up our lands and minerals to produce energy for the U.S., I’m more convinced than ever that our fight is right. We’re proposing a fair “social” price for electricity.” Increasingly, communities are withholding electrical payments to the Federal Electrical Commission and using the funds to maintain their local energy infrastructure.

Sarah’s grassroots organizing doesn’t come without high costs. For her activism work, she went into hiding shortly after the forum and at the time of this writing is under arrest. Similarly, in the state of Oaxaca, Father Martin Octavio Garcia Ortiz, a priest whose parish sits close to the San Jose El Progreso mine has been slandered in the press of subversively applying liberation theology to his pastoral work. That is, he has encouraged parishioners to ask hard questions of a Canadian mining company, La Fortuna, whose mining operation threatens parishioners’ clean water. Dozens of farmers were recently beaten and arrested for peacefully blocking the entrance to the mine.

Insult to injury to the indigenous communities pillaged for their resources is that they are often criminalized for what might be considered upstanding citizen watchdog work. There was a strong feeling at the forum that the flow of U.S. weapons to Mexico’s police and military forces for its war on drugs contributes to the repression and violence.

A Hopeful Alliance Emerges

Given the necessity to work together towards food sovereignty, Oaxacan organizations like UNOSJO and Ser Mixe, a powerful land rights organization serving Oaxaca’s Mixe peoples, have recently joined hands to form a “Collective for Defense of Territorial Rights.”  There was a hopeful tenor to their inaugural forum entitled, “Weaving Resistance”. People saw silver linings in the negative economic trends, which they feel acutely as family members working in the U.S. send home less help. What will happen to these megaprojects if worldwide consumer demand drops? People expressed interest in working closely with United States’ organizations like Grassroots International to pressure the Obama administration to put international human rights ahead of “the American way of life.”

A participant in the “Weaving Resistance” forum shared, “When we take on a transnational mining company, they call us crazy. But what else are we going to do? It’s a big sacrifice; we have less time for our kids and work. So we can’t leave here without beginning to construct our own government, without proposing laws that protect us and our natural resources, and without working together to grow food for our families.”

It’s a long process of resistance and proposal to create a global economic system in which a hot summer day in New York doesn’t mean that another nameless Mexican village is targeted for inundation. Bless the Mexican activists in their resource rights struggles that place tortillas above air conditioners.

Related Links:

Never-give-up fighting spirit: lessons from a grandchild

The U.S.-India climate ‘partnership’

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and leading DC-based think tank Third Way are the latest political figures to issue a call for significantly increased public investment to catalyze clean energy innovation. The Ohio Senator and the moderate progressive think tank joined the Breakthrough Institute today to unveil a new report calling for both the creation of a "National Institutes of Energy" and a dramatic increase in federal funding for energy research and development. The report, titled Jumpstarting a Clean Energy Revolution with a National Institutes of Energy, argues that these two measures are necessary to make clean energy cheap and get America running on clean energy.

"Clean energy is the future of our nation, but it can also create jobs now - in Ohio and across the Midwest," Senator Sherrod Brown said. "Done right, increased research and development of new clean energy technologies will drive innovation and reduce our dependence on foreign energy. Already in Ohio entrepreneurs and workers are leading the way."

"Our nation has a history of rising to meet pressing challenges by investing the resources necessary to overcome them," said Jesse Jenkins, Director of Energy and Climate Policy at the Breakthrough Institute and one of the report's authors. "Now, America must dramatically increase our investment in clean energy research and development and employ new and effective models to put that money to work. Clean, cheap energy technologies are needed to revitalize our economy, secure the nation's energy independence, and avert the risks of climate change," Jenkins added.

Modeled after the National Institutes of Health, a New National Institutes of Energy (NIE) would be designed to most effectively channel R&D funding toward the development of new, low-cost commercial clean energy technologies. The NIE would function as a nationwide network of regionally based, commercially focused, and coordinated innovation institutes. Alongside other effective research institutions, the new NIE would critically strengthen the nation's energy innovation capacity.

The report also calls for a sustained increase of $15 billion in annual federal energy R&D funding, consistent with President Barack Obama's proposals. This would result in a total annual R&D budget of roughly $20 billion per year. The purpose of both the R&D increase and the establishment of a new NIE is to close what the authors call "the clean energy price gap" - the difference between the current low price of carbon-intensive energy production like coal and the comparatively higher price of today's non- or low- carbon emitting technologies.

"Getting America running on clean energy is the defining challenge - and opportunity - of our time," said Josh Freed, a co-author of the paper who runs Third Way's Clean Energy Initiative. "Establishing a National Institutes of Energy and fully funding R&D will drive the research that will lead to the next generation of clean technologies. These not only will fight global warming, they will allow the United States to be the energy leader in a carbon-constrained world."

The authors also point to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who has said that it is a "myth [that] we have all the technologies we need to solve the energy challenge... We need new technologies to transform the [energy] landscape." The authors argue that their proposal would create the structure and provide the funding the United States needs to transition from an aging, insecure energy infrastructure to clean, cheap energy. Neither the private sector nor the federal government is currently meeting these needs at a time when other nations around the world, including China, South Korea and Japan, are dramatically increasing their clean energy funding.

Both groups also lauded the involvement of Senator Brown, who keynoted an event on Capitol Hill today to release the new report. "Sherrod Brown has been a leading voice in the Senate calling for energy reforms that helps to transform and save the American manufacturing sector. He understands that the best way to do that is for America to develop the technologies that will close the price gap and make clean energy cheap. This will help create the kind of jobs and industries we need to have a thriving economy in the 21st century," said Michael Shellenberger, President of the Breakthrough Institute. Freed added that Third Way "looks forward to continuing the work with Senator Brown that we have kicked off here today."

U.S. Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ) also joined the event to make brief remarks in support of the Breakthrough Institute and Third Way's efforts to advance critical clean energy research investments. The carbon prices established by the American Clean Energy and Security Act recently passed by the House "will not be enough," the Congressman explained, to spur clean energy research and ensure we have the technologies we need to achieve deep emissions reductions. Congressman Holt, who holds a PhD in Physics, warned that if the U.S. does not invest significantly more in clean energy research, "We may find ourselves five years from now, after we've deployed the technologies we have ready today and picked that low hanging fruit, and we're going to look around and say, 'Who was in charge of inventing the next generation of technologies we need?' ... The Market is not just going to do that for us."

Despite differences in their views on the energy bills currently before Congress, Third Way and the Breakthrough Institute said that the two groups had joined together to highlight the critical importance and urgency of energy R&D to the nation's economic future and the fight against global warming.

Third Way can be found on the web at www.ThirdWay.org. The Breakthrough Institute is at www.theBreakthrough.org.

A copy of the full report, Jumpstarting a Clean Energy Revolution, can be downloaded here.

Any questions about the report can be referred to Jesse Jenkins at jesse@theBreakthrough.org.

Click here for a press release from the Office of U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown

Press Coverage:

Images from event (via ThirdWay):

1. Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio

2. Senator Sherrod Brown and Matt Bennett of Third Way

3. Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ), Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus of Breakthrough Institute, and Josh Freed of Third Way

4. Congressman Rush Holt and Josh Freed

Related Links:

Approaching Copenhagen with a Portfolio of Domestic Commitments

Climate Denial Crock of the Week: The big mist take

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

We must save all the energy we can!At the broadest level, everything we can do to address climate change/national security/energy balance of trade and just about any other meaningful social question associated with our energy use falls into one of three categories:

1. Use less downstream energy.  Turn down the thermostat, ride your bike to work, move to a smaller home, etc.

2. Switch upstream fuels.  Favor coal in the name of national security.  Favor nuclear in the name of CO2.  Favor wind in the name of green jobs.  Etc.

3. Use less upstream energy.  Insulate your home, build CHP plants, recycle your plastic and aluminum waste, etc.

All three have a critical role to play, but note that only the third creates social benefits and can be guaranteed to increase our overall standard of living.  In the famous Amory Lovins-ism, no one gives a damn about how much coal, oil or gas they use - they care about how hot their shower is and how cold their beer. 

Ergo, we ought to make maximal use of anything that fits into that third bucket as a matter of public policy.  Which raises the question: how big is that third bucket?  Or, framed another way: how much energy does the U.S. currently waste?  Any increase in our efficiency of energy conversion (from upstream fuel to downstream energy) is implicitly a reduction in our energy waste.  Tell me how much we waste and you will tell me the maximum size of that third bucket.

How Much do we Consume?

As it turns out, there's very little good data on how much energy we waste.  DOE estimates that we use about 100 quadrillion btus ("quads") of primary energy per year.  But they too often present that data in charts like this one that seem to assume a perfectly efficient economy.  As that great philosopher Homer Simpson said, "In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!"  And I'm pretty sure thermo says that you can't get 100 percent of the energy you put in out in a useful form. DOE charts to the contrary notwithstanding...

Nonetheless, this does bound our analysis.  If we put 100 quads of primary energy in, we must get 100 quads out somewhere. At the very least, it implies that there can't be more than 100 quads of wasted energy presently available in the system.

Solid Waste

EPA estimates that the average American produces 1,130 lbs of trash per year.  At 4,500 btu/lb and just over 307 million people, that's 1.6 quads of energy in our trash.  Add in 6.5 million metric tons of solid waste in our sewage per year at 10,000 btu/dry ton and that's another 0.1 quads.  So in total, all our solid waste is about 1.7 quads of total energy waste, or 1.7 percent of all our primary energy use. 

Industrial Waste

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab has estimated that the US could produce 96 GW of electric power from energy that is currently wasted by the US industrial sector.  (This waste includes a host of different materials, from paper sludge to waste heat.)  RED's internal analysis suggests that this may be conservative, but let's use the LBNL data.  Assuming 25 percent fuel-to-power generation efficiency (and assuming further that this represents 100 percent of all energy wasted by the US industrial sector, and not simply the economically recoverable/LBNL-identifiable fraction) that works out to an additional 11.4 quads. 

Power Generation Waste

In 2008, we generated 3,806,611 GWh from fossil-fired thermal power plants.  Those plants, on average, operate at 33 percent fuel efficiency, meaning that for every 1 unit of electric power generated, 2 units of waste heat were thrown away in cooling towers, rivers and streams.  That's 2 x 3,806,611 GWh of wasted heat, or 26.4 quads up in smoke.

Transportation Waste

The total US transportation sector uses some 28.6 quads of fuel per year.  For rather obvious reasons, there's not a lot of good data on how much of that goes out the tailpipe vs. a more productive use.  But conservatively, let's assume that we get 30 percent of the useful energy out of that fuel (this is considerably higher than a passenger car over normal driving cycles, but probably low for rail, shipping and long-haul trucking on an efficiency per ton-mile basis.)  Clearly, this is the least accurate of the numbers, but even at 30 percent, that implies an additional waste of 0.7 x 28.6 or 20 quads of waste, going into tail pipe exhaust, hot brakes, burnt tires, etc.

Total Identifiable Waste

Add those all up and we've got 100 quads of primary energy and 60 quads of waste energy.  For all the reasons noted above, the waste energy is probably much higher, but even at this level, it is a massive opportunity.  Recovering just half of this total would reduce every issue associated with fossil fuel use by one third with no detriment to our standard of living.  Getting this waste out of the system ought to be a priority of our national energy and environmental policy.

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Ask Umbra’s video advice on composting

Climate change is a major threat to U.S. Security.  The clean air, clean water, clean energy jobs bill would enhance our security by reducing oil dependence and environmental harm.  That’s why the conservative Virgina Republican, John Warner, is pushing hard to pass the bill — because he is a former Navy secretary and former Senate Armed Services Committee chair, and because he is a former Forest Service firefighter now “just absolutely heartbroken” because “the old forest, the white pine forest in which I worked, was absolutely gone, devastated, standing there dead from the bark beetle,” thanks in large part to global warming (see interview below).

So it’s no surprise the deniers and delayers spread disinformation to try to undercut this core message.  As Brad Johnson reports at Think Progress:

Congressional investigators have discovered that the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity’s (ACCCE) astroturfing effort has impersonated American military veterans in a forged letter sent to Congress. Thirteen other forgeries purporting to be from organizations representing blacks, Hispanics, women and senior citizens. This latest letter, sent in June to influence a swing Democratic legislator on his vote on the American Clean Energy and Security Act, impersonates a local American Legion official in Rocky Mount, VA.

As the Washington Post reported:

The letter, sent to the office of Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA), asks Perriello to “make sure the Waxman-Markey bill includes provisions to promote American energy independence, while protecting already cash-strapped constituents from increases in electricity prices.” It concludes, “Thank you for listening to concerns of vets in your district.”

Download the forged letter.

Also yesterday, we saw Alstom quit the scandal-ridden coal industry front group, ACCCE, joining Duke and Alcoa.

Real veterans of the Iraq War explain their support for the American Clean Energy and Security Act in this new advertisement from VoteVets.org:

Yesterday, more than 150 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars — real ones — visited the White House and the Congress to argue that “climate change legislation is absolutely critical.”   E&E Daily (subs. req’d) has the full story:

President Obama welcomed to the White House yesterday some 150 veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars who are lobbying members of Congress for passage of a comprehensive energy and global warming bill.

The former soldiers and officers met with top Obama administration aides in the Old Executive Office Building as part of a broader messaging campaign aimed at taking the climate debate beyond its traditional audience.

“What you bring is what is vitally needed,” former Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) told the group. “I don’t mean to disparage environmentalists who’ve carried the torch on this for so many years.”

But Warner, a former secretary of the Navy, said the war veterans add a human face to the global warming debate as military leaders take into account the increased risks of famine, human migration and water shortages that come with climate change.

Robert Diamond, a Navy lieutenant, urged his fellow former soldiers to write op-eds for their local newspapers and to get on the radio for interviews about energy issues.

“People listen to you,” Diamond said. “People instantly give you credibility. You are the most powerful messenger out there.”

Several veterans now serving in the Obama administration also spoke at the event, including Thomas Paul D’Agostino, the administrator for the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration, Joe Riojas of the Department of Veterans Affairs and Mike Parker from the Labor Department.

Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.) also sought to link climate change with national security threats during a speech yesterday at George Washington University.

The former Democratic presidential nominee said there is a connection between the scientific alarms raised about global warming and the intelligence that U.S. officials had warning them in the days leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that killed more than 3,000 people.

“The real lesson of the day before, ladies and gentlemen, is that when we see a threat on the horizon, we can’t afford to wait until it arrives,” Kerry said. “Unless we take dramatic action now to restrain global climate change, we risk unleashing an aggressive new challenge to global stability, to the livelihoods of hundreds of millions, and yes, to America’s national security.”

Warner’s is a remarkable story — a hard-core conservative Republican aggressively supporting the climate and clean energy bill.  He is “trying to build grass-roots support for congressional action to limit global warming,” as Politics Daily reports.  “He is traveling the country to discuss military research that shows climate change is a threat to U.S. national security, and this fall he’ll testify to Congress on the issue for the fourth time.”  PD has a long interview with him, which I excerpt below:

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Prologue to Copenhagen

Vinod Khosla Nonesense

Approaching Copenhagen with a Portfolio of Domestic Commitments

Via Applachian Voices

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today announced the preliminary fate of 79 valley fill permit applications associated with mountaintop removal coal mining. In a move that pleased environmentalists and coalfield residents in central and southern Appalachia, the EPA recommended that none of the 79 permits be streamlined for approval. iLoveMountains has an interactive map and action page, as well as a little helpful background on what these permits are and why they are being announced today.

This decision is not final, but is part of a coordination procedure outlined in a June “memorandum of understanding” between the Environmental Protection Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the Department of Interior to deal with a backlog of permits held up by litigation over the past few years. The EPA has promised a more stringent and transparent review of all mountaintop removal valley fill permit applications.

Willa Mays, executive director for Appalachian Voices, a regional environmental group, was delighted about the EPA’s preliminary list. “By recommending these permits not be approved, the EPA and the Army Corps has demonstrated their intention to fulfill a promise to provide science-based oversight which will limit the devastating environmental impacts of mountaintop removal mining,” Mays said. “EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, Army Corps Assistant Secretary Jo-Ellen Darcy and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Terrence “Rock” Salt have shown exceptional leadership. This is indeed good news especially paired with the fact that 156 members of the House of Representatives are now cosponsors of the Clean Water Protection Act.”

The reaction from coalfield residents was mostly optimistic. Chuck Nelson, retired union coal miner from Glen Daniel, W.Va., and board member of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition said, “By recommending these permits be further reviewed, the EPA is allowing at least a temporary reprieve for the people of Appalachia. It appears the EPA is starting to take the concerns of coalfield residents into account when considering these permits.”

Vernon Haltom, co-director of Coal River Mountain Watch in Raleigh County, W.Va., was excited about the announcement. “We who live with the nightmare of mountaintop removal are glad that the EPA is beginning to do its job to protect our communities,” he said. “Our life-giving water resources are priceless, and it’s refreshing to see the EPA finally prioritizing them over coal companies’ short-term profits.”

As outlined in the memorandum, EPA regional offices will be given 14 days to review and comment on the EPA headquarters’ recommendations, after which EPA headquarters can finalize the list.

If the EPA regional offices agree with the EPA headquarters’ assessment that these permits have “substantial environmental concerns,” an “enhanced coordination” process will begin, where the EPA and the Army Corps will study each permit on a case-by-case basis. The beginning of each coordination process sets off a 60-day period during which the two agencies must resolve any permit applications. The EPA reserves the right to exercise their veto authority over any of the unresolved permits.

In the past, the EPA was primarily absent from the approval of mountaintop removal permits, allowing the Army Corps to essentially “rubber-stamp” them. “The whole permitting process had become a bit toothless,” EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson admitted in a recent interview with the Tampa Bay Press. “The Corps of Engineers understands [that] when the EPA has concerns, it’s going to raise them. We’re going to do our jobs.”

In 2002, the Bush Administration expedited the permitting process by classifying mining waste as acceptable “fill material” as defined by the Clean Water Act. Valley fills are created when toxic debris from mountaintop removal mining is dumped into valleys adjacent to the mine sites, burying headwater streams and permanently damaging the hydrology of the watershed system.

“I’m glad the EPA has admitted they have some responsibility for protecting people and nature from mountaintop removal,” said Cathie Bird of Save Our Cumberland Mountains in Tennessee. “But I worry they still don’t get it. This brutal practice kills whole communities and watersheds, and it should be banned, not one permit at a time but once and forever.”

To view the permits in map form, visit the Permit Shortlist Google Map created by Appalachian Voices at http://www.ilovemountains.org/epa-permit-list.

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Prologue to Copenhagen

Vinod Khosla Nonesense

Approaching Copenhagen with a Portfolio of Domestic Commitments

By Yael Borofsky and Jesse Jenkins, originally posted at the Breakthrough Institute

That's what Ethan Zindler, head of New Energy Finance Ltd., proclaimed to the Wall Street Journal in response to emerging evidence that the government's $3 billion dollar cash grant renewable energy stimulus program is successfully incentivizing private investment in the wind sector.

After falling into the doldrums for the past six-months, the wind industry is roaring back to life thanks to direct public investments enacted in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), also known as the stimulus bill. A DOE and Treasury-funded cash grant incentive program is helping to grease the pipeline for private investors looking to finance renewable projects, particularly wind farms, slated to begin construction in 2009 or 2010. According to the WSJ, just four weeks into the program $800 million in grants have already been submitted and Wall Street bankers predict that figure to reach $10 billion by the end of 2010.

The cash grant program was created to rescue the clean energy industry, a critical American growth sector, from the malaise of the credit crisis. The tax credits (PTC and ITC) that usually incite clean energy development are worthless in an economic climate where the big financial firms that typically absorb them, on behalf of project developers, are in crisis.

The solution: Congress tucked a two-year cash grant into ARRA worth 30 percent of qualifying wind, solar, and geothermal project costs, replacing the normal production and investment tax credits. With the money from the program officially flowing since August, the grants are breathing new vigor into clean energy investment, speeding America's economic recovery.

With big players like Morgan Stanley and Citigroup investing $120 million each to finance new wind farms, the wind sector is generating more than clean energy -- it's producing clear evidence that public investment really does drive private investment. By covering 30 percent of a new project's cost, the cash grant program will spur more than two dollars in private investment for every public dollar, successfully leveraging taxpayer money to drive significant private investment in cleaner energy, greater energy security, and accelerated economic recovery.

The projected success of the cash grants, which bankers calculate will lead to 9-15 percent annual returns per deal, suggests that perhaps, public investment is even more effective at driving private investment than setting an economy-wide carbon price, an oft-suggested strategy to motivate private financing in renewable RD&D.

While this ARRA-funded program has already positively impacted the wind sector (and should have a similar but smaller impact on solar and geothermal), it is important to temper the excitement with prudent acknowledgement that this is a short-term stimulus. Just take a look at a graphic representation of the recent history of wind financing in the U.S. to see that as successful as the program is shaping up to be, it could prove a fickle friend in the long-term.

Even though the stimulus program appears incredibly effective at coaxing Wall Street to loosen its grip on the capital coffer in the short-term, a long-term deployment strategy, focused on supporting the maturation and development of a suite of clean energy technologies, is essential to sustaining high levels of private investment in the clean energy sector.

In the context of a struggling economy relieved by even the smallest signal that the market is on the upswing, it is difficult to envision the structure of a long-term deployment plan. But it is important to keep in mind three vital factors of any long-term clean energy deployment strategy.

First, the strategy must set forth incentives targeted to individual technologies since all clean energy technologies are not created equal. Incentive levels must buy down the above-market cost of each individual technology so that maximum investment in each technology is possible. Clean energy sources are still more expensive than their entrenched fossil energy competitors -- sometimes significantly more so -- and private investment in these critical, emerging technologies and industries will always be limited without public investments to help level the playing field.

The objective, however, should not be to create permanently subsidized industries, forever dependent on taxpayer dollars. Instead, clean energy deployment incentives should spur the continual improvement and development of a suite of emerging clean energy sources, driving down cost through economies of scale, learning and experience, and targeted R&D. If a technology fails to come down in price over time -- in short, if it will never become cost competitive without permanent subsidy -- incentives for that technology should cease.

The goal: clean, cheap energy sources that can competitively and affordably power America's economy -- and the world.

Second, a long-term strategy must be consistent. The danger of short-term investments is that their inherent uncertainty has the potential to push renewable energy markets into scarcity mode. Because private investors are motivated to capitalize on what they perceive to be a short-term market, the subsequent rise in commissioned projects leads to high demand for parts. This demand spurt often cannot be met by manufacturers who are not experiencing corresponding capacity expansion. Component scarcity can lead to price increases for key parts, eventually negating the value of both government and private investments by making clean energy more expensive, not cheap, and discouraging additional investment.

Scarcity mode, caused by short-term government investment strategies, has been symptomatic of the wind industry's frustrating boom-and-bust history. This new stimulus program, somewhat like a bad diet, is at risk for perpetuating the cycle because although it drives industry growth initially, it is not designed to make wind energy cheap through the kind of consistent, long-term deployment strategy described above, and thus risks making it more expensive in the short- and long-term.

Finally, any long-term clean energy deployment strategy cannot focus on deployment alone. Unlike short-term stimulus objectives, which tend to revolve around immediate job creation and economic growth, a truly comprehensive strategy should be specifically designed to make a suite of low-carbon technologies cheap and abundant through continued innovation. Investments should be channeled to motivate innovation through sustained, robust R&D, consistently lower prices, and continued improvements in the product.

Additionally, making clean energy cheap, depends upon feeding knowledge and experience gained through deployment, or "learning-by-doing," back into R&D efforts to continually improve the technology and drive down cost. This creates a far more productive cycle than the alternative (boom and bust), enabling further deployment, more learning and experience, and continued innovation. The learning-by-doing cycle is supported by government investments in R&D and targeted, long-term deployment incentives, both necessary catalysts for this process.

The final output of this process: clean, cheap energy.

Denmark's deployment of offshore wind is a perfect example of how learning feedback loops encourage both technology and deployment practice improvements, thus making clean energy cheaper. By capturing the experiential gains of "learning-by-doing" Denmark's coupled deployment and applied research programs are credited with driving significant advancements in wind turbine technology. No amount of time in the lab could replace the knowledge Denmark gained throughout the actual deployment process.

Deployment of clean energy technology is certainly a smart avenue for short-term economic stimulus. But in order to keep high levels of private investment flowing into the wind and other renewable energy sectors, it is more realistic to view deployment as an evolving process instead of as an event. Building viable industries and new technologies capable of export around the world requires a more focused and sustained vision for clean energy technology policy. Long-term deployment policies to drive strong domestic markets, continued innovation, and ever-more-affordable clean energy technologies will be central to the nation's longer-term economic strategy, helping drive a robust clean energy growth sector.

Thus, the current boom in private wind financing will only result in another eventual bust without any consideration for the long-term. While the ARRA cash grant program merits the enthusiastic response it has received from Wall Street and the wind sector, without a subsequent or concurrent long-term deployment strategy, today's gust of growth and profit is fated to turn disappointingly stale.

For more on how to make clean energy cheap, view the Breakthrough Institute's policy recommendations here.

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Why buying cheap energy certificates worsens climate change

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

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The cermonial urban-turbine installation.indigo12west.comTwo weeks ago in Portland, Oregon, a new 23-story building added something you don't usually see in an urban setting: a series of four Skystream wind turbines, with a total capacity of 9.6kW.

There are several reasons why wind turbines are a rarity atop highrises -- beyond the obvious one: our power infrastructure makes changing from traditional sources of electricity difficult, expensive, and seemingly unnecessary. (As long as you can convince yourself that the planet isn't really warming and that 15,000 Americans don't die prematurely each year from breathing in filthy air from coal-fired power plants, and that the price of energy is going to stay stable and ... you get the idea.)

Wind power in an urban setting comes with its own set of challenges.

A natural lack of regular winds forceful enough to generate meaningful amounts of electricity.

Most "wind farms" are located in areas with high, steady winds and use giant turbines. In fact, the trend has been to build larger windmills capable of generating ever more electricity.

In 2006, Technology Review ran an interesting piece about plans for a new turbine with a rotor with a 140 meter diameter.

Sometimes, however, smaller still is beautiful -- and more appropriate.

So some manufactures, like the Flagstaff, Ariz.-based Skystream, have been building scaled down wind turbines like the ones on top of Twelve|West.

One advantage of the Skystream 3.7 is its lower wind speed requirement. With its 12-foot diameter, the rotor can begin generating electricity with winds blowing at just 8 miles per hour. It reaches peak production (2.4kW) at 29 mph and will continue to operate at winds up to 60 mph. (The Skystream 3.7 is built to withstand gusts of up to 140 mph.)

Wind flow in urban areas is disrupted by other buildings.

Placing the turbines on top of a 23-story building, and then mounting them on 45-foot poles puts the blades at an elevation of 82 meters (270 feet), high enough to escape the distortions of the surrounding built environment.

Still, critics of the project have said that the expense of putting the four turbines into operation outweighs the financial payback delivered in energy savings.

The building's other eco-features include graywater in the toilets -- leading to this helpful warning.But Robert Packard, a managing partner of the architectural firm ZGF, which occupies the lower four floors of Twelve|West and also designed the building, thinks those critics are missing the point. Packard told the Oregonian newspaper, "[We're] trying something new. It's not a gimmick. Not only are we learning, but we can share it with the world, add to the body of knowledge that's out there."

Kind of like when solar photovoltaic panels were just getting popular. Not every idea that worked well in the lab made it in the real (rooftop) world.

I'm hoping the information they get from the four turbines helps the shift from a fossil-fuel to a renewable energy economy. But I have to admit, just the sight of windmills spinning on urban rooftops -- 20 or more stories up -- has an appeal all its own.

Osha Gray Davidson blogs regularly for Grist and edits The Phoenix Sun, where this post first appeared in a different form.

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Why buying cheap energy certificates worsens climate change

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

More NYC farmers markets accept food stamps and sales soar

Every time Sierra Magazine comes out with its top green colleges list I get pissed off that my alma mater, Bowdoin College, doesn't make the cut.  And the reason I'm pissed is that it seems to me that even if you didn't care one little tiny bit about climate or environment--if all you cared about was endowment, physical plant, and US News ranking--as an undergraduate institution you'd create a killer Enviornmental Studies program with a climate focus simply to recruit students and make money as a business.

Why? Because people are banging down the doors, almost literally, to study the interface between climate, politics and business so they can be part of the great challenge of our lives.  And schools that train people well in that field will not only do well as both businesses and schools, they will also meet the needs of their students.

Perhaps more importantly, it's the job of an institution of higher learning to prepare its students for the world in which they live; it's also important to be in tune with the issues of our time. And if you're Bowdoin and other schools, part of your mission is also to improve the world. To its credit, Bowdoin is moving in the right direction. But it's getting crushed by archrivals like Bates (WTF!) and Middlebury. The hottness of the subject of climate, energy and business is so great that I get a call a week from Middlebury grads (!) who are well-trained and understand the key issues. It's a huge testament to Middlebury's success that right now we've got one Midd grad working for us [at Aspen Skiing Company] on sustainability and another interning. It's no accident.

Schools that want to remain viable and relevant would be well advised to take a lesson from Middlebury and the other great schools on the top 20 list. The lesson could be a moral one: this is the work of our society, so it's your job to eduate to it. But it could also be a financial lesson: when my kids look at colleges, 15 years from now, you can bet your hat they're going to be scrutinizing the Environmental Studies program, and partly basing their decision to spend hundreds of thousands of my hard-earned cash to go there (brief pause while I have a momentary breakdown/panic attack over this thought). They will pick the school with the very best program because 20 years from now, if you're not climate-focused, you're not going to be anything. (In the same way, architecture programs without a green focus are dead and worthless programs today, if then even exist at all.)

Hopefully, my kids will have a wide range of easy choices, since the schools lacking such programs will be out of business.

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What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

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