Tag Archives: Policy

Government & Business, Power

Low-Carbon Fuels in Your Future

After years of study and a day of marathon testimony in Sacramento, state regulators have adopted the world’s first low-carbon standard (LCFS) for transportation fuels. Only one member of the California Air Resources Board, John Telles, voted against adoption.

During nearly six hours of testimony by almost 100 speakers, businesses lined up both for and against the new rules. As Marjorie Sun reported for us this week, some claimed that calculations for the carbon footprints of different fuels–especially ethanol–were not even-handed. Speaker after speaker assailed the LCFS as being the product of “incomplete analysis” or just bad math (public testimony begins about an hour into the webcast).

But Daniel Sperling, a UC Davis professor and member of the Air Board, calls it “government at its best.”

“There’s been a huge amount of effort,” he said, ” in working with the oil companies, working with the electricity companies, working with the environmental community, working with the biofuels companies, to try to get this really done right.”

Though numerous speakers challenged the view that it was done right, both Sperling and Air Board head Mary Nichols seemed to leave the door open to additional tweakage of the regulations. “In the end, it’s a science-based policy,” said Sterling. “There are a lot of pieces of this that we’re not certain exactly the best way to do it but we’ve got the framework of a really outstanding policy and an important policy. And we’ve made the commitment to work with all the different stakeholders in refining it, to make sure that it really works best.”

Small-business and environmental justice groups locked arms to decry the cost of the new rules. Some cited a report from Sacramento-based Sierra Research estimating $3.8 billion in increased fuel costs by 2020, if the LCFS takes effect.

An “expert working group” is due to report back on January 1, with possible suggestions for fine-tuning the plan.

Board member Ron Roberts summed up the proposed regulation by paraphrasing Winston Churchill: “It may not be the end or even the beginning of the end, but it’s the end of the start,” said Roberts (falling somewhat short of Churchillian eloquence but point taken).

The new rules are designed to cut greenhouse gas emissions from transportation 10 percent by 20-20.  Sperling is now headed to Capitol Hill, to testify before Congress on national legislation. California’s process is being closely watched in Washington, where pending federal carbon legislation is widely seen to be modeled after California’s plan.

Government & Business, Power

The Battle Over Biomass

This week, the California Air Resources Board is expected to pass a controversial new standard that measures the carbon footprint of transportation fuels. Reporter Marjorie Sun filed a story for Climate Watch on the measure and why the ethanol industry is fighting it. She provides some additional insights here:

The proposed low carbon fuel standard is part of a broad effort by the California regulators to roll greenhouse gas emissions back to 1990 levels by 2020.

biofuel pumpSlashing carbon emissions from cars and trucks is a big part of the state’s game plan. That’s because transportation accounts for 40 percent of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions. A whopping 96 percent of the fuel sources that power our cars and trucks is petroleum-based. Right now, the bulk of ethanol sold in California–and the rest of the United States for that matter—is corn-based. (Brazil makes its ethanol fuel from sugar cane, which has a smaller carbon footprint.) U.S. producers argue that the proposed Low-Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) would make corn-based ethanol less competitive in the marketplace because of the way it calculates emissions. Pacific Ethanol was the biggest ethanol producer and marketer in California– until recently. With the drop in gasoline prices over the past year, demand for ethanol has plummeted. Over the past several months the company suspended operations at its two production plants in California and stopped construction of a third facility. In March, it filed for loan extensions with its creditors. So the new fuel standard could deliver yet another blow to the company. Hence, ethanol interests have been putting up a fight. But the Air Resources Board is counting on the proposed standard to spur innovation in the alternative fuels market, to reduce carbon emissions. The state says it’s hoping to “expand the size of the current renewable fuels market in California (already the largest in the nation) by three-to-five times. Instead of today’s corn, over half of the ethanol is likely to be made from extremely low-carbon, cellulosic feedstocks such as agricultural waste and switchgrass. There are numerous startups in California working on cellulosic ethanol. They’re experimenting with a wide range of plants, from switchgrass to algae, as potential sources of ethanol. Getting a new fuel to market, however, requires enormous capital costs. The state is projecting that by 2020, Californians will have bought more than 7 million alternative-fuel and hybrid vehicles. That’s about 20 times greater than today. But in these tight economic times, folks are hanging onto their old cars. So it’s not clear how fast Priuses and plug-ins will replace the carbon-spewing cars on the road today.

Sun’s radio story aired Wednesday on The California Report.

Government & Business

Green Response to EPA’s CO2 Finding: “Duh.”

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Reactions are coming in to The EPA’s long-awaited finding today that carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases pose a threat to “the public health and welfare.” One California environmental group actually used the word “Duh” in its official response.

After two years of study, prodded by a Supreme Court decision, the federal agency finds that CO2, methane, oxides of nitrogen and two other industrial gases should be regulated as pollutants under the Clean Air Act. A sampling of reactions:

Environment California:

“‘Duh’ may not be a scientific term, but it applies here.  Today, common sense prevailed over pressure from Big Oil and other big polluters to deny the obvious in order to maintain the status quo on energy.  EPA has embraced the basic facts on global warming that scientists around the world have acknowledged for years.”

Governor Schwarzenegger:

“While the federal government was asleep at the wheel for years, we in California have known greenhouse gases are a threat to our health and to our environment – that’s why we have taken such aggressive action to reduce harmful emissions and move toward a greener economy. Two years after the Supreme Court declared greenhouse gas emissions a pollutant, it’s promising to see the new administration in Washington showing signs that it will take an aggressive leadership role in fighting climate change that will lead to reduced emissions, thousands of new green jobs and a healthier future for our children and our planet.”

Senator James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma–boldface is his):

“Today’s action by the EPA is the beginning of a regulatory barrage that will destroy jobs, raise energy prices for consumers, and undermine America’s global competitiveness,” Senator Inhofe said. “It now appears EPA’s regulatory reach will find its way into schools, hospitals, assisted living facilities, and just about any activity that meets minimum thresholds in the Clean Air Act.  Rep. John Dingell was right: the endangerment finding will produce a ‘glorious mess.’

The Wilderness Society:

“This finding was expected, but long overdue because the previous administration respected neither the science nor the law. The consequence of this finding is that EPA will now begin the task of reducing these emissions through the permitting process provided by the Clean Air Act. One way or the other, the clear and present danger of endlessly dumping pollutants into the atmosphere must be confronted.  We will either find a way to build a future for our children based on clean energy and sustainable jobs, or we will face a very unsentimental foe unarmed – a climate that makes life unsustainable. The choice is clear, and the new Administration is following the wisest path forward.”

California moved to regulate carbon emissions three years ago, when state lawmakers passed the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, also known as AB 32. But many specific regulations required by that law have yet to take effect.

Government & Business

Climate Change and Public Health

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Photo by Genie Gratto
Photo by Genie Gratto

Many believe that climate change presents us with opportunities to tackle multiple problems with a single well-designed response. The authors of this guest post suggest that public health presents one of those opportunities.

Public Health and Climate Change: A Shared Agenda

by Marice Ashe and Richard Jackson

Climate change may be the greatest threat to human health in this century. More intense heat waves will make bad air even worse. More severe droughts and floods will further imperil the water supply California is already struggling to protect. The world is going to see a rise in the number of water-, food-, insect- and animal-borne diseases we have to fight.

Who will suffer most? The elderly, children and the poor—populations that are least able to and can least afford to adapt to such extreme conditions. Although public health leaders have a responsibility to protect and enhance the well-being of the entire population—and especially those most at risk—we have lagged behind in considering climate change as one of the threats that we must confront.

In March, we released An Action Plan for Public Health: Initial Recommendations for Involving Public Health in Climate Change Policy, assembled after talking to more than 150 experts in public health, climate science and environmental law. We hope it helps the public health community think in new terms about their mission.

We must work faster, because making communities healthier can prevent climate change. For example, we work with communities all around California to create safe walking paths and bike routes throughout cities. We encourage these changes to prevent obesity and increase community safety. But when people get out of their cars, they also put less carbon emissions in the air. We call this a “co-benefit:” by taking one action to improve physical health, we gain other benefits to improve planetary health.

Other co-benefits happen when we encourage the development of new housing and retail centers close to public transit. This increases exercise while keeping people out of their cars. But why stop there? Transit-oriented development also preserves agricultural lands for food production and protects our food security. With anticipated changes in rainfall, agricultural pest and disease patterns will shift, too.  Safeguarding a regionally based and resilient food system should be a primary public health goal in addressing climate change.

We are working with communities to make it easier to hold farmer’s markets, get more healthy foods in corner markets, and increase fresh fruits and vegetables in schools. This is particularly critical in poor and under-served areas where it’s harder to find healthy and affordable food. The public health goal is to lower rates of diabetes, heart disease, and obesity, which are epidemic in those communities. As a co-benefit, it expands opportunities for local and regional growers who bring the food a much shorter distance on the way to market, thus dropping transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions.

Improving public health will mitigate climate change, and fighting global warming will make people healthier. By approaching this impending public health disaster from many directions, we stand a better chance of making a real difference.

Marice Ashe, JD, MPH directs Public Health Law & Policy, which partners with advocates, health departments, and policy-makers to create healthier communities. PHLP provides in-depth research and analysis on legal and policy questions, and translates complex information into practical tools and model policies for community action.

Richard Jackson, MD, MPH is the Chair of the Environmental Health Sciences division of the UCLA School of Public Health. He is the former director of CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health and California State Public Health officer.  Dr. Jackson is a member of the PHLP Board of Directors.

Government & Business

California’s Climate Partners Get Cold Feet

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On Wednesday’s edition of The California Report, correspondent Tom Banse takes the pulse of a vital organ in California’s climate strategy; the regional carbon trading market. The upshot: Reports of its well-being may be greatly exaggerated.

Are they with us?  It’s hard to tell looking at some of California’s supposed partners in the Western Climate Initiative.

WCI includes six states besides California and four Canadian provinces.  Last year the group agreed on a regional “cap-and-trade” plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (and not coincidentally to show the federal government how it’s done).  Governors and environmental agencies in the participating states continue to voice support for moving ahead with a regional initiative.  The rub is that the executive branch cannot just snap its fingers and will the plan into being.  A major policy change like this requires state legislatures to adopt the cap-and-trade rules.  And some of those lawmakers definitely have other ideas.

Utah offers the most dramatic example.  Before adjourning for the year, the state House of Representatives voted 52-19 in favor of a non-binding resolution directed at Utah Governor Jon Huntsman:

    “…WHEREAS, experts, including the Congressional Budget Office, warn against cap and trade policies, especially regional programs like the seven-member WCI;WHEREAS, experts also point out that the costs of such programming will be borne by consumers, placing a disproportionately high burden on poorer households; andWHEREAS, no state or nation has enhanced economic opportunities for its citizens or increased real GDP through cap and trade or other carbon reduction policies:NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the House of Representatives urges the Governor to withdraw Utah from the Western Climate Initiative.”

Huntsman, a Republican, is apparently ignoring the legislative shot across his bow.

Skepticism is also alive and well in the Arizona Legislature, where this preemptive strike skips the whereases and gets right to the job of handcuffing the executive branch.

    “The [Arizona Department of Environmental Quality] shall not participate in the Western climate initiative that is organized and operated by an affiliation of state governors and one or more provinces of Canada.”

The succinct bill has passed out of state House committee and awaits a floor vote.

Meanwhile in New Mexico, the legislature is done for the year.  Legislation to authorize a greenhouse gas emissions cap was not even broached.  Montana’s legislature is still in session, but all lawmakers in Helena have the stomach to tackle is preparatory measures.  They would set up the regulatory framework for underground carbon storage (aka, sequestration) and require large companies to track and report their carbon emissions.

At his glassmaking plant in southwestern Washington, Steve Smith worries that a regional cap on carbon emissions will render his business unable to compete with suppliers outside the region. Photo by Tom Banse.
At his glass making plant in southwestern Washington, Steve Smith worries that a regional cap on carbon emissions will render his business unable to compete with suppliers outside the region. Photo by Tom Banse.

The governors of Oregon and Washington State served up the full climate enchilada to their legislatures this January only to see it picked apart.

That leaves California as the sole state in the Western Climate Initiative that has so far adopted cap-and-trade as the law of the land.  California’s partners have consistently told us that a national program is the preferable way to regulate greenhouse gases.  Now the “preferable” way is starting to look like the only way.

Government & Business, Water

Fire and (Less) Ice: California’s Climate Future

firesign_blogThere was little “news” in this week’s report from California’s inter-agency Climate Action Team. The distillation of 37 academic studies mostly affirmed what we’ve been hearing from multiple sources lately; that “severe and costly impacts” likely lie ahead as the state’s climate changes.

The report’s findings are aligned with two of the scenarios modeled by the U.N.’s climate panel; the “B1” outlook for moderate emissions of CO2, and the higher-emissions “A2” scenario. While California has ambitious plans to curb carbon emissions, many recent reports agree that the world is presently on a path toward emissions even higher than the worst IPCC scenario.

Under that more severe tableau, says report co-author Dan Cayan of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, the number of wildfires in the state could double by 2085. Cayan said that “by every model,” the state is warming and in some areas, drying. One regional model sees precipitation in Southern California tailing off by 10% in years to come.

There’s more coverage of the report in Jane Kay’s article for the San Francisco Chronicle and Bettina Boxall’s story in the L.A. Times.

The Times article points to some relatively “good” news in the report; a UCLA study that the strength of fire-fanning Santa Ana winds may be subsiding. But there is also research out of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory that points to a longer Santa Ana season, so it’s unclear what the net effect might be in the long run.

In a media conference call attended by report authors and state officials, I asked about murmurings that the Western Climate Initiative may be unraveling. Eileen Tutt of Cal-EPA denied that the planned regional cap & trade program for cutting carbon emissions is in trouble. She said that in working with people from California’s six potential partner states, it’s her view that they “aren’t backing off at all.” She admitted that “rumors abound,” however.

Climate Watch has dispatched freelance correspondent Tom Banse to look further into those rumors. He’ll be reporting in from Washington and Oregon in the weeks to come.

Government & Business

A Billion People in the Dark?

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Where will you be when the hour arrives? Wherever it is, you might want to take a flashlight–LED, of course. In it’s third year, the organizers of Earth Hour are shooting for one billion people to turn out the lights in this global demonstration in support of decarbonization.

It’s being promoted as a kind of switchplate referendum. Begun in Sydney, Australia, in 2007, it’s a simple concept, which may be part of its appeal: Wherever you are, at 8:30 local time tomorrow (Saturday) evening, turn off the lights for one hour.

Last year organizers estimated that 50 million people complied. California icons like the Golden Gate Bridge went dark. This year, about two dozen California cities and counties have signed up to participate, as well as the State of California.

They’re not telling you to turn off your computer or iPhone, however. Electrons we save at the light switch might be made up for on the Internet, which will likely be abuzz with a worldwide conversation documenting the event on blogs and social networks like Twitter (tag your updates with #earthour and #location). Photo sites will be bombarded with picture uploads.

Personally, I’ll be in the high desert of New Mexico, beyond the sight of any town or even neighbors, so the event won’t make for much of a snaphot.

It might also be a bit anticlimactic for the folks who run California’s power grid. I asked Gregg Fishman at the California ISO (Independent System Operator) if they’d be able to see a dip in the load at 8:30 p.m. tomorrow. He’s not counting on it: “It will probably have some impact but it’s really hard to measure,” he told me.

This time of year, the state is usually pulling about 27-28,000 megawatts at that hour on a Saturday evening. In fact, if you look at the ISO’s grid status graph, you can see a little spike around 8 p.m., as people normally start turning lights on. But Fishman says that even though “most of the load is lighting” at that hour, it may be hard, even for grid technicians, to measure the actual effect of Earth Hour.

But of course, that’s kind of beside the point. The event isn’t designed to achieve palpable energy savings for one hour. It’s supposed to be a visual show of support for policies designed to reduce energy consumption and the global carbon footprint. Recent surveys have shown that economic woes have pushed concerns about global warming and the environment to their predictable recessionary lows, at least in this country. Tomorrow night we’ll find out how the rest of the world feels about it.

Government & Business

Letter from Paris: Confessions of a Generalist

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eb_blog21Eleanor Beardsley, whose  South Carolina drawl is often heard emanating from Paris on NPR, agreed to take on her first climate policy symposium for us. She’s covered presidential elections, civil riots and the Tour de France. But climate policy wonks–whoa. Now that’s scary. From her notebook:

When I walked into the rather run-down conference room at Paris’ Universite Dauphine at the edge of the city, about 20 people were sitting around a huge circular table discussing climate issues. I have to say that I almost gave up the idea of doing a report at first, because I couldn’t get my head around what they were talking about. They were discussing the minute points of such things as paying for carbon emission reduction schemes, and the fairness of the CMD, or clean development mechanism! It seemed like a lot of blah, blah techno-speak. I jotted down several beyond-me phrases in my notebook, like “sectoral baselines without additionality.”

But I decided to stick it out. I had schlepped out there early in the morning, making two changes on the Paris metro. I might as well stay a while. That’s often the hardest part about being a reporter. You’re not really an expert at anything, and sometimes you have to find a way to quickly understand a complex story. But you just have to keep focused on what you think your general audience would want to hear about. They always tell you, “pretend as if you’re explaining it to your grandmother.”

In the end, all of the officials — both French and Californian — were more than happy to explain the main issues to me and what the stakes were.

I got the feeling these climate experts from the US and Europe have been working together and learning from each other for years, despite America’s seeming non-interest in the topic under the second Bush administration. Everyone seemed to know each other and be familiar with each other’s work. Someone described the advances that had been made over the years as “leap-frog progress.”

Now here was a concept I could grasp. You can see an example with the cap-and-trade policy on emissions the Obama administration wants to put in place. Apparently they are studying the already-existent European scheme to limit carbon emissions. But that European system, in turn, is based on the US’s successful reduction of sulfur dioxide, or acid rain, in the 1990s.

So even though everyone said global warming was already well under way, I came away from the conference with a comforting sense that at least there are some very smart people working passionately on the issue. I think they will find a way for the world to work together on this, rich and poor nations alike. There was also a lot of talk about fairness; making sure the richer, industrialized nations helped the developing countries get their act together.

They might even achieve those sectoral baselines without additionality…whatever that is.

Government & Business, Power

Possible Detour on the “Electron Superhighway”

electwr_blog

It appears that almost 200,000 acres of Mojave Desert will be under federal wilderness protection now that Congress passed the Omnibus Land Management Act of 2009.

Much more was set aside throughout California, as I report in my radio story for The California Report.

Now, Senator Dianne Feinstein is eyeing almost a million additional acres in the Mojave off of old Route 66 between Ludlow and Needles.

There are currently 163 proposed renewable energy projects for federal lands in the Mojave Desert region. Nineteen of them are slated for the land Senator Feinstein wants to set aside. If energy companies can’t build on that land, it follows that they’ll try to build it in the land that’s left.

And that’s got a lot of people who live in the unprotected areas of the Mojave worried. Not only are most of the state’s large-scale renewable energy projects planned for this region, but as I explored in a recent two-part series for Climate Watch, there’s also a transmission corridor in the works to carry that power to Los Angeles.

Use the player below to listen to my conversation with Jim Harvey, who heads the Alliance for Responsible Energy Policy, about what all of this new land protection means for environmentalists like him.

[audio:http://ww2.kqed.org/climatewatch/wp-content/uploads/sites/54/2009/03/jimharvey-blog2.mp3]
Government & Business, Power

Oh, No–Another “Superhighway”

Just when we could exhale, assured that the term “Information Superhighway” had faded mercifully into the rear-view mirror–at the signpost up ahead: Your next stop: the “Electron Superhighway.”

That’s the term that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is using to describe the transmission web that will facilitate the nation’s transformation to clean energy. Some random notes from his (and others’) appearance today before the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee:

Salazar:

– 6,000 miles initially identified on BLM lands for new transmission lines on the “Electron Superhighway,” 1,000 on US Forest Service lands.

– Access to land for transmission will be the “Achilles heel” of the plans for a new  clean-power grid.

– Oil & gas need to be part of a “comprehensive energy plan,” along with renewables. The US now imports 70% of its oil.

– Seven major onshore leases already approved, auctioning off another 34 million acres along the Gulf Coast this week.

Ron Wyden (D-OR):

– Let’s use the “backlog of deadly fuels” on the floor of federal forests to generate bio-fuels and reduce fire danger at the same time (Energy Act of 2000 apparently excluded forest slash from its definition of “biomass.”)

– Hydrokinetic (wave & tidal) power should be higher on the priority list for energy development.

John McCain (R-AZ):

– The Obama administration “has effectively killed nuclear power in the foreseeable future, for this country” (by its actions regarding Yucca Mountain and reprocessing of fuel).

Phil Moeller, FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission):

– Wave & tidal power could potentially fill 10% of the nation’s energy portfolio.

Joanna Prukop, NM Secretary of Energy, Minerals & Natural Resources:

– Wind energy is now price-competitive with natural gas (about 5 cents/KW-Hour currently) and could thrive without federal subsidy. Solar, not so much.

Dan Arvizu, Director, Nat’l Renewable Energy Lab:

– Used the term “smart grid” one hour and 38 minutes into the hearing, the first and only time it was mentioned.

You can view the entire webcast at the DOI archive.

By the way,  Salazar will hold a public hearing on energy policy in San Francisco on April 16th. It’ll start at 9 a.m. at UCSF’s Mission Bay Conference Center.