Climate Progress |
| Posted: 21 Aug 2011 08:31 AM PDT Last week, Jon Huntsman began to call out Governor Rick "4 Pinocchios" Perry and others in his party for being anti-science. He started with the tweet above that went viral. On ABC's This Week, Huntsman went even further, explaining that being anti-science would harm his party — and America's future:
Whether it's bad for the Republican party remains to be seen — that would require President Obama and his team (and other progressive politicians) to push back in the general election the way Huntsman has in the GOP race. But there's no question that having one of the two major political parties in the most powerful country in the world being anti-science is a disaster for the nation and the world (see WashPost stunner: "The GOP's climate-change denial may be its most harmful delusion"). I'll be expanding on that position in the coming weeks, but what is interesting is that in the full online interview with ABC (video below), Huntsman himself starts to explain just how counterproductive and self-destructive it is for the party:
Will other leading Republicans stand up for science? Here's the full interview (the science part quoted above start around 5:30): As an aside, it would be nice if Tapper, rather than quoting the statistics about how many GOP voters have unscientific views, would actually take the time to point out that Huntsman indeed has the scientific view, as expressed by our leading scientific bodies. Also, Tapper should have asked him what the heck Huntsman proposes to do about global warming, given his recent flip-flop against cap-and-trade. More on that soon. |
| "The Lesson for Today" by Robert Frost Posted: 21 Aug 2011 06:15 AM PDT
Frost read the poem at Harvard's Phi Beta Kappa Society seven decades ago — June 20, 1941. Plus ça change. My thought for the day: Progressives are liberals who will take their own side! Like so many Frost poems, the poem has a great ending:
My favorite Frost poem is an epitaph for the planet:
Sadly, the planet need only perish once — and fire melts ice…. |
| Karl Rove Predicts Sarah Palin Will Run for President Posted: 20 Aug 2011 03:34 PM PDT Karl Rove aka Bush's Brain predicted this morning on Fox News that Sarah Palin "gets in" to the presidential race next month (h/t TP): One can never really figure out Rove's machinations since he helped ruin the country and his own party as President Bush's consigliere. He and the Bush mob don't like Rick "Four Pinocchios" Perry — even though Rove helped make Perry possible, as HuffPost has noted. Certainly Obama looks beatable with his plummeting popularity and lame messaging, which is no doubt why Perry got it. But if Palin were smart — yes, I know — why would she get in now, rather than a month ago, which might have forestalled Perry — or even earlier, to forestall Michele Bachmann? Her entry now means a three-way split for the tea party vote and would probably make Mitt Romney the happiest of all. As for Palin herself, she makes Perry seem like Lincoln (see Palin blames 'Gore-gate' for "this snake oil science stuff"). During the 2008 presidential campaign, the Washington Post itself gave her its highest (which is to say lowest) rating of "Four Pinocchios" for continuing to "to peddle bogus [energy] statistics three days after the original error was pointed out by independent fact-checkers." There aren't enough Pinocchios in a children's library for this crop of GOP presidential candidates. |
| Thanks for all the updates and News from ThinkProgress » Climate Progress | |
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"Dog Philosophy 101"
The reason a dog has so many friends is that he wags his tail instead of his tongue. -Anonymous Don't accept your dog's admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful. -Ann Landers If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. -Will Rogers There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face. -Ben Williams A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself. -Josh Billings The average dog is a nicer person than the average person. -Andy Rooney We give dogs time we can spare, space we can spare and love we can spare. And in return, dogs give us their all. It's the best deal man has ever made. -M. Acklam Dogs love their friends and bite their enemies, quite unlike people, who are incapable of pure love and always have to mix love and hate. - Sigmund Freud I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult. -Rita Rudner A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down. -Robert Benchley Anybody who doesn't know what soap tastes like never washed a dog. -Franklin P. Jones If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons. -James Thurber If your dog is fat, you aren't getting enough exercise. -Unknown My dog is worried about the economy because Alpo is up to $3.00 a can. That's almost $21.00 in dog money. -Joe Weinstein Ever consider what our dogs must think of us? I mean, here we come back from a grocery store with the most amazing haul -- chicken, pork, half a cow. They must think we're the greatest hunters on earth! -Anne Tyler Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea. -Robert A. Heinlein If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man. -Mark Twain You can say any foolish thing to a dog, and the dog will give you a look that says, 'Wow, you're right! I never would've thought of that!' - Dave Barry Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole. -Roger Caras If you think dogs can't count, try putting three dog biscuits in your pocket and then give him only two of them. -Phil Pastoret
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| "In Coverage of Extreme Weather, Media Downplay Climate Change" — Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting Posted: 14 Aug 2011 07:08 AM PDT By Neil deMause, Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, the independent national media watch group
On April 14, a massive storm swept down out of the Rocky Mountains into the Midwest and South, spawning more than 150 tornadoes that killed 43 people across 16 states (Capital Weather Gang, 4/18/11). It was one of the largest weather catastrophes in United States history—but was soon upstaged by an even larger storm, the 2011 Super Outbreak that spread more than 300 tornadoes across 14 states from April 25 to 28 (including an all-time one-day record of 188 twisters on April 27), killing 339 people, including 41 in Tuscaloosa, Alabama (CNN, 5/1/11). Ensuing weeks saw Texas wildfires that had been burning since December expand to consume more than 3 million acres (Texas Forest Service, 6/28/11; CNN, 4/25/11), plus record flooding along the Mississippi River, which couldn't contain the water from April's storms on top of the spring snowmelt. On May 22, a super-strong F5 tornado killed 153 people as it flattened a large part of Joplin, Missouri (National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office, 5/22/11) ; in the first two weeks of June, a heat wave broke temperature records in multiple states, and the Wallow fire became the largest in Arizona state history (Washington Post, 6/14/11). It was an unprecedented string of severe weather: By mid-June, more than 1,000 tornadoes had killed 536 people (NOAA, 6/13/11), nearly as many deaths as in the entire preceding decade. And it was only natural to ask: Were we seeing the effects of climate change? Most scientists would say yes, or at least "probably." The Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change, a global scientific body that has been a target of conservatives despite a record of soft-pedaling its findings to avoid controversy (Extra!, 7/8/07), warned on February 2, 2007, "It is very likely that hot extremes, heat waves and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent." (In science-speak, "very likely" refers to a certainty of greater than 90 percent, and is as near as you get to a definitive conclusion.) Other forecasts (e.g., Environment America, 9/8/10) have projected that wet regions will receive record rainfall thanks to increasing evaporation, while dry ones get record drought, as climate patterns shift to accommodate the new normal. Yet despite these dire predictions, U.S. media were hesitant to investigate the links between climate change and this spring's extreme weather. Much coverage settled for the cheap irony of contrasting extreme phenomena, as when NBC's Saturday Today show meteorologist Bill Karins (6/11/11) quipped:
Even news reports that probed deeper into the causes of the spring's extreme weather, though, often stopped short of looking at climate factors. A Chicago Tribune story (4/29/11) headlined, "Why April Record for Twisters? Experts Call It Random, Say Nature Varies," noted that "some meteorologists" blame the periodic weather pattern known as La Niña, but then cited other scientists as saying the tornado outbreak was just random variation, with University of Illinois meteorologist Bob Rauber saying, "Global warming is occurring, but this is not a manifestation of it." On the CBS Evening News (6/9/11), meanwhile, John Blackstone noted, "Perhaps the biggest weather troublemaker has been in the Gulf of Mexico, where sea surface temperatures have been almost 2 degrees [Fahrenheit] above average. That warm, moist Gulf air meeting the powerful jet stream created the string of tornadoes that killed 525 people." Yet, asked by anchor Scott Pelley why the Gulf of Mexico is hotter than usual, Blackstone replied only: "Well, it's related to the drought in the South—in the South-Southwest, with little clouds, lots of sunshine, the waters warming up and those warm waters could add energy to this hurricane season as well." But while La Niña is a natural cyclical variation, the warming Gulf is not—at the very least, it's exacerbated by the global warming trend, which has pumped at least four times the heat energy into the oceans that it has into the atmosphere (NPR, 3/19/08). As National Center for Atmos-pheric Research climatologist Kevin Tren-berth explained to Extra!, the air over oceans now averages 1 degree Fahrenheit warmer and 4 percent wetter than it was before 1970. "So there is more warm moist air from the Gulf flowing into all spring storms that travel across the U.S. That destabilizes the air, provides fuel for thunderstorms and converts some thunderstorms into supercell storms, which in turn provide the environment for tornadoes to form." The easiest connection for most reporters to make was with heat waves, probably because they match best with the popular image of "global warming." "Intense hot conditions will increase dramatically over the next 30 years," ABC News' Jim Avila (6/8/11) reported after June's record-setting heat wave. "Climatologists say it's clear: Global warming is beginning to show itself in plain sight." For other extreme weather events, though, climate change only merited occasional mention. The wildfires that raged out of control across the Southwest in May and June were mostly covered as an unexpected natural disaster, without much thought of causes; in one exception, the Arizona Republic (6/12/11) fixed the blame squarely on the state having too many trees—a charge also brought up by the New York Times (6/11/11), which reported that, among other things, "Some [residents and experts] complained that it was environmentalists who had caused the forests to become tinderboxes by preventing the thinning of trees as they sought to protect wildlife." This common conservative claim, Climate Progress blogger Joe Romm noted (6/12/11), was refuted in a 2006 paper (Science, 8/16/06) that found that fires were increasing the most at higher elevations, where forest restoration is less of an issue, but where warmer temperatures have a huge impact by melting winter snows earlier and increasing summer drought. In fact, scientists have long predicted that one result of climate change would be a dramatic increase in Western wildfires, as Pete Spotts of the Christian Science Monitor explained in a rare article making such connections (6/9/11). The National Academy of Sciences projected (7/16/10) that a 1-degree Celsius increase in global temperatures—just half the best-case scenario in most climate models—could more than triple the acreage burned by wildfires in the U.S. West. Washington Post blogger Jason Samenow (6/14/11) reported on this study, but it went unmentioned in the newspaper's wildfire coverage. Similarly, a NASA wildfire model released last year (10/27/10) projected that climate change would lead to an increase of fires in the U.S. West of between 30 and 60 percent by 2100. "I want you to think a little bit of fire as a metaphor for the many things that climate change holds for us," NASA earth sciences director Peter Hildebrand told a conference in Colorado in early April—though the only reporter to note this statement was environmental journalist Brendon Bosworth on his self-titled blog (4/8/11). As for tornadoes, news coverage was openly dismissive of their connection to climate change. A New York Times Q & A following the Joplin tornado (5/25/11) asked: "Can the intensity of this year's tornadoes be blamed on climate change?" and answered "Probably not. Over all, the number of violent tornadoes has been declining in the United States, even as temperatures have increased." Indeed, while the number of reported tornadoes has steadily risen in recent years, prior to this year the number of strong tornadoes (category F4 or F5) had not, leading most scientists to conclude that the rising totals for weak storms are merely a result of more thorough reporting, thanks to sprawling development in tornado-prone regions that has put more people within sighting distance. And because the mechanics of tornado generation are poorly understood—and they depend on vertical temperature differential, so a warming lower atmosphere would predict more tornadoes, but a warming upper atmosphere would tend to reduce them—most scientists say that stronger and more frequent tornadoes can't be definitively linked to climate. Still, Trenberth told the blog Think Progress (4/29/11) that it's "irresponsible" not to mention climate change in tornado coverage. "The basic driver of thunderstorms is the instability in the atmosphere: warm moist air at low levels with drier air aloft," he told the site. "With global warming, the low-level air is warm and moister and there is more energy available to fuel all of these storms." Most reporters, though, chose to stick to the narrower question of whether these particular tornadoes were caused by climate change—which, given all the factors involved to create any particular storm, is impossible to answer, except in the sense in which all weather today is the product of a warmed climate. "Contributing to the thrashing were the La Niña conditions in the Pacific Ocean, unusually warm ocean temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico and the increase of moisture in the atmosphere caused by the warming climate," wrote the Washington Post (6/15/11) on the spring's tornadoes, fires and floods. The piece cited National Oceanographic and Atmo-spheric Administration climate director Thomas Karl as "caution[ing] against focusing on any single cause for the unusual chain of events," quoting him as saying that "clearly these things interconnect." Karl also featured prominently in an article by the New York Times' John Broder (6/15/11) that reported, "Government scientists said Wednesday that the frequency of extreme weather has increased over the past two decades, in part as a result of global warming," but quickly added that scientists "were careful not to blame humans for this year's rash of deadly events." Broder's only evidence: Karl's statement that "since 1980, indeed, extreme climatological and meteorological events have increased. But in the early part of the 20th century, there was also a tendency for more extreme events followed by a quiet couple of decades." The story's headline: "Scientists See More Deadly Weather, but Dispute the Cause." (Broder later apologized to Romm—Climate Progress, 6/18/11—for what he called a "crappy headline.") In fact, though, Karl had previously made clear that climate change would result in more extreme weather. "How climate change will be felt by you and impact your neighbors is probably going to be through extreme weather and climate events," he told EarthSky (3/15/10). "We may be fine for many years, and all of a sudden, one particular season, one particular year, the extremes are far worse than we've ever seen before." In many ways, articles like Broder's parallel the decades-long public debate over carcinogens: It's just as difficult to say whether any one person's cancer was caused by pollutants as whether one weather event was caused by climate change. And in both cases, statistical studies have a literally fatal drawback: By the time you've gathered enough data, it's too late to prevent the consequences. Scientists, then, may conclude that it's "too soon to tell" exactly how climate change affects tornadoes and other severe weather, but that's not the same as saying it has no effect. As Trenberth tells Extra! of the spring's string of catastrophes: "Much of what goes on is natural variability and weather. But there is a component from human influences through global warming. While it may be modest, it is real and significant." As noted, the role of climate change in the spring's severe weather wasn't entirely ignored. The Christian Science Monitor (6/9/11), in its report on Arizona wildfires that had "blackened an area half the size of Rhode Island," called them "the latest poster child for what some scientists see as a long-term trend toward larger, longer-lived wildfires in the American West," noting that "climate change appears to be an important contributor." Urgency was left to op-ed pages: Climate activist Bill McKibben wrote a scathing op-ed in the Washington Post (5/23/11) that sarcastically suggested: "It's very important to stay calm. If you got upset about any of this, you might forget how important it is not to disrupt the record profits of our fossil fuel companies." Environmental writer Chip Ward wrote an opinion piece on CBS News.com (6/16/11): "Global warming, global weirding, climate change—whatever you prefer to call it—is not just happening in some distant, melting Arctic land out of a storybook. It is not just burning up far-away Russia. It's here now." (CBS News' television programs, meanwhile, never once mentioned climate change in their coverage of the spring's wildfires.) One example of how to cover the story differently came from the Edmonton Journal (5/17/11), where columnist Graham Thomson wrote:
What scientists can tell us is that as the climate warms we'll experience more extreme weather events leading to floods, droughts, forest fires and crop failures. In other words, it's what we're seeing now. Even Thomson, though, didn't try to suggest that we change our behavior to prevent extreme weather from becoming the norm. Similarly, when the New York Times editorial page weighed in on what can be done about climate change (6/1/11), it was to praise the city of Chicago for building more rooftop gardens and adding air conditioning to classrooms as part of "long-term preparations for a warmer, stormier climate." Never mind that the electricity needed to power air conditioners is a major contributor of carbon emissions, or that air conditioning in schools is unlikely to do much to stem the additional 166 to 2,217 annual deaths that researchers Roger Peng and Francesca Domenici estimate Chicago will suffer by the end of the century as the result of climate change (Environmental Health Perspectives, 5/11). And then there was the counsel given by Nightline anchor Bill Weir (4/26/11), who bent over backwards to avoid definitive conclusions on the causes of the deadly weather:
He informed viewers that a NASA scientist says blaming individual weather events on climate change is "a leap too far," then signed off with this advice: "In the near term, the best you can do is get a weather radio and try to stay dry."
– Neil deMause Related Post: |
| We are at a Moral Crossroads with Coal Exports Posted: 14 Aug 2011 06:03 AM PDT
In late March, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar traveled to Cheyenne, Wyo., to announce that his department would soon sell leases to 752 million tons of coal from public holdings in the Powder River Basin, and was proceeding on future sales of an additional 1.6 billion tons. Salazar called coal "a critical component of America's comprehensive energy portfolio, as well as Wyoming's economy" and said "it's important that we continue to encourage safe production of this important resource." Salazar made no mention of the potential for some of that coal being sold and shipped to Asia. He may have been the only person in Wyoming that day with an interest in energy who wasn't thinking about coal exports. Just before Salazar's visit to Wyoming, the two giant companies that mine about half of the state's annual coal production, Peabody Energy and Arch Coal, announced deals that could lead to a big jump in the now relatively small business of sending Western U.S. coal to hungry markets in China, Japan, India and other Asian nations. In mid-June, newspapers in the Pacific Northwest reported that two Oregon ports on the Columbia River are also being considered as sites for exporting coal to Asia. All of that has prompted an escalating battle in the Pacific Northwest over what could be the first U.S. coal export terminals on the West Coast. And, combined with Salazar's boosterism, it has raised questions about whether the United States is backsliding on the fight against global climate change. China may be a world leader in developing clean, renewable energy, but it still has a huge appetite for coal and is expected to build 773,000 megawatts of coal-fired electricity between 2007 and 2030. Even with the third largest coal reserves in the world, China is stepping up imports. That rising demand is whetting the appetite of Wyoming producers. "We're opening the door to a new era of U.S. exports from the nation's largest and most productive coal region to the world's best market for coal," Peabody Energy Chairman Gregory Boyce said in a statement as his company announced a deal to ship up to 24 million tons of Powder River Basin coal through a proposed terminal near Bellingham, Wash. Six weeks earlier, Arch Coal bought a 38 percent share of a company that has plans to build a second coal export facility in Longview, Wash. Environmental and landowner groups from Puget Sound to the plains of eastern Montana are mobilizing to fight the terminals. They cite a menu of potential ill effects: small-town disruptions from the jump in rail traffic involving coal trains more than a mile long moving from Wyoming and Montana to the west coast; health impacts from fugitive coal dust blowing from open rail cars (up to 3 percent of the loads, according to BNSF), threats of coal train spills into the Columbia River. Then there is the question of enabling China and other Asian nations to pump more carbon dixoide into the atmosphere. That, says KC Golden, policy director of the Seattle nonprofit Climate Solutions, is the "moral crossroads" faced by local and state officials in Washington State. It's also the moral crossroads that ought to be engaging officials in the other Washington. – Tom Kenworthy is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Kate Gordon is the center's vice president for energy policy. This piece was first published in the Denver Post. |
| Posted: 14 Aug 2011 05:54 AM PDT
– A CAP cross-post The Environmental Protection Agency took a critical step toward cleaner air on March 16, 2011, by proposing its air toxics standards for coal-fired power plants. The proposed rule would limit emissions of mercury, arsenic, and other air toxics from power plants for the first time. These protections were called for in the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments, but they haven't been implemented, and they are long overdue. Toxic mercury, arsenic, and other pollutants have been spewing uncontrolled from power plants even though we fully know how bad they are. Unfortunately, recent attempts by House Republicans to handcuff the EPA are threatening both decades of public health progress and the further action we need to clean up the air, which will lessen the burden of asthma and other health problems. The EPA's proposed air toxic standards and their other ongoing efforts should be defended both before Congress and in our public discourse. To this end CAP's sister organization, the Center for American Progress Action Fund, has helped lead a summer-long campaign urging Americans to submit their public comments to the EPA, calling for strong protection against harmful pollution. All told, over 800,000 Americans submitted comments to the EPA. CAP's official comment submission
Dear Administrator Jackson: The Center for American Progress writes in support of strong rules for reducing airborne toxic pollution from power plants. Such rules will protect us from mercury, arsenic, acid gases, and 34 other dangerous chemicals that power plants have been spewing uncontrolled for decades. These rules are long overdue: Countless American lives have been exposed to illness and premature death that could have been prevented. We cannot afford further delay. Clean air is vital for public health The public health protections from this new rule are significant. They will prevent approximately 17,000 premature deaths, 120,000 asthma attacks, and 12,000 hospitalizations and emergency room visits every year. Seventeen states have already taken steps to reduce these harmful pollutants, and over 800,000 Americans have sent comments to the EPA in support of stronger protections.[1] Coal-fired power plants emit 772 million pounds of airborne toxic chemicals into the sky every year—more than 2.5 pounds for every American man, woman, and child in this country.[2] Nationwide, particulate pollution from power plants is estimated to kill approximately 13,000 people a year.[3] Power plants also are the largest domestic source of airborne mercury in the United States, a particularly dangerous neurotoxin.[4] This toxic metal, which is expelled into the air as coal and burned for electricity, is especially dangerous for young and developing children because it impairs brain development. Mercury has been linked to birth defects, learning disabilities, delays in the development necessary for children to walk and talk, and in some cases even cerebral palsy. Recent studies suggest that at least 1 in 12—and as many as 1 in 6—American women of child-bearing age have enough mercury in their system to put their babies at risk in the womb or through nursing.[5] In addition to mercury and arsenic (used commercially as a rat poison), power plants also emit lead, other heavy metals, dioxin, and acid gases. Even small amounts of these extremely harmful air pollutants are linked to diseases including cancer, heart disease, brain damage, asthma attacks, and even premature death. People will continue to suffer without significant reductions in these pollutants. Expediency and strong reductions will save human lives and prevent costly illness. Clean air is good for the economy We've heard much conjecture by polluting industries and their allies in Congress that adoption of the new toxics rules will harm our economic growth and slow job creation. These special interests have used their deep pockets to convince lawmakers that they should be allowed to spew harmful pollution regardless of the human impact. They have time and time again used debate over budget deficits and unemployment as a point of leverage to ease restrictions and delay rulemaking. Many polluting industries have presented the American people with a false choice: clean air or economic growth. The EPA's thorough analysis disproves this false choice presented by polluters, and it asserts that stronger protections for public health will also net positive economic results. Smarter rules based on peer-reviewed EPA science will prevent illnesses such as asthma attacks and other health and environmental impacts from burning coal, which cost this country upwards of $500 billion each year.[6] Fewer asthma attacks mean fewer hospitalizations and costly visits to the emergency room—an expense that is especially burdensome on families who lack health insurance. This is of no small significance, as groups such as African Americans and Latinos, who have the highest rates of asthma in this country, are also the least likely to be insured compared to other ethnic groups in this country.[7] Additionally, data from the 40-year history of clean air protections in the United States proves that less pollution in the air means a more efficient workforce and economy. According to EPA analysis, Americans have already gained $21.4 trillion in health and environmental benefits from clean air programs.[8] These protections have also saved 4.1 million lost work days and 31 million days in which Americans would have had to restrict activity due to air-pollution-related illness.[9] These safeguards proposed by the new rules should also drive innovation and job creation by power companies as they devise new technologies and practices to reduce pollution in the most cost-effective manner possible. A recent report by the Economic Policy Institute finds that the new regulations on mercury, arsenic, and other toxic air pollution from power plants will not slow economic recovery and would in fact increase job growth in coming years, leading to the creation of 28,000 to 158,000 jobs between now and 2015.[10] Likewise, a University of Massachusetts study found that together with the Clean Air Transport rule, which would reduce ozone and fine particle pollution, the air toxics rule will create 1.4 million jobs over the next five years.[11] These studies are bolstered by real world experiences of power companies. Consider the case of Constellation Energy Group headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland. They recently completed the installation of a major air quality control system at one of their major coal facilities. Construction took 26 months, employing nearly 1,400 skilled workers. The new system is reducing harmful emissions in compliance with state and federal requirements, and it is already helping them achieve the other emission reductions that they anticipate will be required under the Toxics Rule. Further, power plants can be cleaned up in an efficient and cost-effective manner. The argument by polluting special interests that these improvements will cause higher electricity rates for consumers or disturbance in electricity reliability is simply wrong. Numerous testimonials by power company CEOs prove that reducing these toxic emissions does not affect the economic health of these industries. We know that prior to 1990 three industry sectors made up approximately two-thirds of total U.S. mercury emissions: medical waste incinerators, municipal waste combustors, and power plants. The first two of those sectors are now subject to stricter pollution standards and have reduced their mercury emissions by more than 95 percent. In addition, mercury standards for other industries, such as cement production and steel manufacturing, have reduced mercury emissions from a wide range of sources. According to a 2010 data collection survey completed by the EPA nearly 60 percent of responding coal-fired electricity units already comply with EPA's proposed mercury standard. A CAP analysis found that coal-fired power plants without pollution controls are more than 50 years old on average. Plants in 17 states are already required to address their mercury pollution regardless of federal requirements. These measures vary in stringency, with some of them imposing more protective mercury emissions limits on coal-fired power plants than the EPA has proposed. Many of the power plants in these states have already installed the equipment necessary to reduce mercury pollution, though most state safeguards have yet to take effect. A CAP analysis of the coal-fired power plants in these 17 states found that more than half of their total electricity-generation capacity has pollution controls that can reduce mercury. In a July 11 letter to congressional leaders, 36 energy companies from around the country noted that certainty of pollution reduction rules is critical for determining future investments. Delaying the air toxics rule will generate uncertainty among investors, as well as companies already preparing for compliance. This uncertainty will slow investments and economic recovery. A similar letter to the editors of the Wall Street Journal by seven leading power company CEOs asserts that leveraging technology to clean up emissions from power plants and economic growth go hand in hand:
Numerous case studies—including one from Calpine, the largest independent power producer in the country—prove that industry is already taking the lead on reducing these harmful emissions and that the transition is both possible and economically viable for the industry. Thaddeus Miller, executive vice president of Calpine, explains:
This message is echoed by Jim Rogers, the president and CEO of Duke Energy:
Yet some utilities are still unwilling to modernize. They use the threats of power plant closures and lost jobs as a tool to delay EPA's proposal to require mercury reductions from coal-fired power plants. These outdated arguments are countered by the chorus of power companies who understand that the new mercury standards are achievable and good for business. Finally, while cleaning up coal plants are an important first step in protecting public health, a real long-term solution must include policies to drastically reduce other pollutants—including particulates (soot) and carbon dioxide—from coal power plants. This can be achieved over time through investments in energy efficiency and expanded clean, renewable energy portfolio standards. In the meantime, we commend EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson for her leadership in proposing these rules that have been delayed for decades at the expense of human health and economic innovation. An overwhelming 69 percent of Americans polled by the American Lung Association believe that EPA scientists, rather than Congress, should set pollution standards. Likewise, 69 percent think the EPA should update Clean Air Act standards with stricter limits on air pollution.[16] We join over 800,000 Americans, along with numerous public health, faith-based, social justice organizations, and industry groups to urge the EPA to finalize its proposed airborne toxic pollution standards, which would achieve significant pollution reductions that protect our children, families, and communities from mercury and other toxic air pollution. Endnotes [1] Bob Perciasepe, Deputy Administrator U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Testimony before the Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs, Stimulus Oversight and Government Spending. July 26, 2011. [2] American Lung Association, "American Lung Association Report Highlights Toxic Health Threat of Coal-fired Power Plants, Calls for EPA to Reduce Emissions and Save Lives" (2011). [3] Ibid. [4] Natural Resources Defense Council, "Mercury Contamination in Fish: a guide to staying healthy and fighting back" (2011). [5] Sierra Club, "New Analysis Finds that Hispanics Face Disproportionate Health Threat from Coal Plant's Toxic Mercury Pollution" (2011). [6] Tim Tyler, "Full Cost of Coal $500 Billion/Year in U.S., Harvard Study Finds" (2011). [7] U.S. Census, "People Without Health Insurance Coverage by Selected Characteristics: 2008 and 2009" (2010). [8] U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, "Benefits and Costs of the Clean Air Act" (2011). [9] U.S. Environmental Protection Agency "Benefits and Costs of the Clean Air Act," Press release, November 16, 1999, available at http://www.epa.gov/air/sect812/r-140.html. [10] Economic Policy Institute, "News from EPI: Slow economic growth raising unemployment rate" (2011). [11] Jams Heintz, Heidi Garrett-Peltier, and Ben Zipperer, "New Jobs – Cleaner Air" (University of Massachusetts, 2011). [12] The Clean Energy Group, "The Electric Industry Can Comply with the Proposed Toxics Rule with Existing, Cost‐Effective Pollution Control Technologies and Compliance Will Not Compromise the Reliability of the Electric System," Press release, March 25, 2011, available at http://www.thecleanenergygroup.com/documents/Toxic-Rule-Statement-Final.pdf. [13] Letter from The Business Council for Sustainable Energy to The Honorable John Boehner, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, July 11, 2011. [14] "We're OK With the EPA's New Air-Quality Regulations," The Wall Street Journal, December 8, 2010. [15] Thaddeus Miller, Interview with Carol Browner (Washington: Center for American Progress, June 21, 2011). [16] American Lung Association, "American Lung Association Bipartisan Poll Shows Strong Public Support for Lifesaving Clean Air Act" (2011). See also: |
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We are at a Moral Crossroads with Coal Exports
Posted: 14 Aug 2011 06:03 AM PDT
In late March, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar traveled to Cheyenne, Wyo., to announce that his department would soon sell leases to 752 million tons of coal from public holdings in the Powder River Basin, and was proceeding on future sales of an additional 1.6 billion tons.
Salazar called coal "a critical component of America's comprehensive energy portfolio, as well as Wyoming's economy" and said "it's important that we continue to encourage safe production of this important resource." Salazar made no mention of the potential for some of that coal being sold and shipped to Asia. He may have been the only person in Wyoming that day with an interest in energy who wasn't thinking about coal exports.
Just before Salazar's visit to Wyoming, the two giant companies that mine about half of the state's annual coal production, Peabody Energy and Arch Coal, announced deals that could lead to a big jump in the now relatively small business of sending Western U.S. coal to hungry markets in China, Japan, India and other Asian nations. In mid-June, newspapers in the Pacific Northwest reported that two Oregon ports on the Columbia River are also being considered as sites for exporting coal to Asia.
All of that has prompted an escalating battle in the Pacific Northwest over what could be the first U.S. coal export terminals on the West Coast. And, combined with Salazar's boosterism, it has raised questions about whether the United States is backsliding on the fight against global climate change.
China may be a world leader in developing clean, renewable energy, but it still has a huge appetite for coal and is expected to build 773,000 megawatts of coal-fired electricity between 2007 and 2030. Even with the third largest coal reserves in the world, China is stepping up imports.
That rising demand is whetting the appetite of Wyoming producers. "We're opening the door to a new era of U.S. exports from the nation's largest and most productive coal region to the world's best market for coal," Peabody Energy Chairman Gregory Boyce said in a statement as his company announced a deal to ship up to 24 million tons of Powder River Basin coal through a proposed terminal near Bellingham, Wash.
Six weeks earlier, Arch Coal bought a 38 percent share of a company that has plans to build a second coal export facility in Longview, Wash.
Environmental and landowner groups from Puget Sound to the plains of eastern Montana are mobilizing to fight the terminals. They cite a menu of potential ill effects: small-town disruptions from the jump in rail traffic involving coal trains more than a mile long moving from Wyoming and Montana to the west coast; health impacts from fugitive coal dust blowing from open rail cars (up to 3 percent of the loads, according to BNSF), threats of coal train spills into the Columbia River.
Then there is the question of enabling China and other Asian nations to pump more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That, says KC Golden, policy director of the Seattle nonprofit Climate Solutions, is the "moral crossroads" faced by local and state officials in Washington State.
It's also the moral crossroads that ought to be engaging officials in the other Washington.
– Tom Kenworthy is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Kate Gordon is the center's vice president for energy policy. This piece was first published in the Denver Post.
| Posted: 12 Aug 2011 09:02 AM PDT Perry on why he split with Al Gore over climate (12/09): "I certainly got religion. I think he's gone to hell." Rick Perry, Obama's dream opponent, is a climate hawk's nightmare. First the dream. It is a mark of how weak the Republican field is that Perry, a candidate who is so ill-suited for beating Barack Obama, is viewed as a savior for the party. The key point about the 2012 election are that Obama is eminently beatable because he is dreadful at messaging, has a poor economy, and is in an unpopular war with meaningful casualties. The latter two factors are key in the "Bread and Peace" model by political scientist Douglas Hibbs (via Salon) I'm not saying this simplistic model is determinative, only that anyone who thinks Obama is a lock for reelection isn't paying attention. What Obama most needs is opponent who gives him an obvious storyline even his team of dreadful communicators can't screw up. Romney the job-killing flip-flopper certainly does. But what Obama most wants to do is run as the future versus the past (since the present ain't hot for him) and to tie his opponent to the increasingly unpopular Tea Party extremists whom independents correctly blame for the debt ceiling debacle. Perry is, ironically, the worst of both possible worlds for the GOP. He is easily cast as "George W. Bush The Sequel" because that is what he is: A Rigid, Anti-Science, Ideologue Governor From The Great State of Big Oil. And indeed he is a Tea Party darling for his extremist, wacky statements, such as his talk of Texas secession (for more, see TP's Top 10 Things Texas Gov. Rick Perry Doesn't Want You To Know About Him). Remember, to win (lose?) in 2000, Bush himself ran originally as a faux caring, moderate "compassionate" conservative, who advocated in public spending on education and regulating greenhouse gases. Sure he was religious, but he had a classic story to tell, the reformed or saved wastrel. But Perry has no such story, he is just the hardcore zealot Bush turned into — on steroids (see, for instance, Prayer as an adaptation strategy: Texas plans to cut budget of agency battling record wildfires). Indeed even moderate Republicans like Joe Scarborough mock him (see TP's Scarborough Mocks Perry: Jesus Said To 'Let People Take Images Of You Praying So They'll Think You're A Holy Man). If Obama wants to run a story line that his opponent represents the past, the policies that put us in this "mess from Texas," Perry is from central casting. Don't get me wrong. Obama could lose to Perry, much as he could lose to Romney — but I don't think they will unless the economy gets worse. For climate hawks, Perry is a nightmare.
Once Gore's presidential Texas campaign chair (in 1988), he now says global warming is "all one contrived phony mess that is falling apart under its own weight. He even "Prays for the EPA to Stop Environmental Regulations." As the Politico reports:
Obama has been lackluster in his EPA. Against Perry, he'd actually have to stand up for clean air, clean water, and a livable climate. Hmm. Maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing. While Perry says Gore has gone to hell because of climate change, the state with the hellish climate is, ironically, Texas. As Grist notes:
Yes, Texas has pushed wind. But if you want to know the energy future of the U.S. under Rick Perry, you need only look at the eight previous years before Obama took office. |
| Posted: 12 Aug 2011 08:10 AM PDT
Officially named Via Verde (Green Way) by the government, the proposed pipeline has been dubbed Via de la Muerte (Death Route) by its opponents, prompting protests and petitions to stop it. A recent poll conducted by El Nuevo Dia (one of Puerto Rico's largest news outlets) indicates that 70 percent of citizens oppose the construction of the pipeline, 61 percent are "very worried" about the safety of this project and its impacts, and 56 percent of people are not convinced that the pipeline will achieve its primary goal of reducing the cost of electricity, compared to 27 percent who believe that it will. Earlier this year, 30,000 Puerto Ricans took to the streets in protest, including a broad coalition of labor groups and community organizations. The opposition has spread across the Atlantic to Puerto Rican activist groups in New York, and highly popular Puerto Rican Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) has elevated this issue, calling on the Army Corps of Engineers to halt this "extremely unpopular" project. Despite the large public outcry, Puerto Rican governor Luis Fortuño continues to make a case for the project. "With Vía Verde we will enter a new energy era that strengthens the competitiveness of our economy and improves the quality of life of our people," Fortuño said, calling the high price of energy the main obstacle to the island's economic and social development. Just last month Daniel Pagán, an engineer from PREPA, claimed that Via Verde would cut electricity cost by 30 percent, reduce emissions by 60 percent, and generate 4,500 new jobs. The project is also expected to decrease the island's oil dependence to 12 percent of power generation by 2012, while boosting natural gas usage to 71 percent from its current 15 percent, according to PREPA projections. Currently, the island produces about 70 percent of its power from imported oil, with the rest split evenly between natural gas and coal. These claims by PREPA have been refuted by researchers from the University of Puerto Rico, however. Most notably, data released from a 2011 study that concludes the best case scenario for Vía Verde will provide savings of only one cent per kilowatt-hour. (In its own estimation, PREPA suggests that the savings are in the order of 12 cents per kilowatt-hour). Still, for an island with an unemployment rate of nearly 15 percent, where 48 percent of residents live in poverty, and the average family makes only $17,184 while paying double the U.S. rate for energy, the promise of new jobs and a reduction in energy costs is a welcome. But the story is much more complex.For one, many Puerto Ricans fear that poor communities, including large populations of senior citizens, will be pushed out of their homes; many are already feeling pressures to sell their properties well below market value to clear a way for the pipeline. Rep. Gutierrez recently criticized the project on the floor of the U.S. Congress calling it a "$500 million pipeline designed to benefit the richest people in Puerto Rico." Many Puerto Ricans are also highly concerned about the project's impact on the natural beauty and ecosystem of the island, whose tourism industry employs 60,000 people, attracts 3.9 million tourists yearly, and accounts for 7 percent of the island's total GNP. Critics of the project also fear potential leakage or explosion – both of which could occur in an area that is prone to flooding and extreme weather. A petition signed by over 7,000 people notes that the pipeline will cause more than 8 million cubic meters of earth to be displaced, affect multiple bodies of water, lakes, and the fishing industry, as well as permanently impact more than 1,500 acres of forests, and more than 369 acres of wetlands. It will also impact the habitat of 34 endangered species, along with 235 rivers and streams, including a critical conservation zone which produces 25 percent of the water consumed in Puerto Rico. Finally, and perhaps most profoundly, many Puerto Ricans do not want their economic development and energy future to be directly tied to the fossil fuel industry. A large and growing coalition of Puerto Ricans favor deployment of renewable energy, and many believe the funds can be better spent deploying renewable energy and efficiency projects. Others see natural gas as a cleaner alternative to burning oil and coal, but oppose the invasive and volatile nature of the pipeline, and its influence on the long-term energy portfolio of the island. Professor Dr. Massol-Deya from the University of Puerto Rico points out in a recent presentation to labor leaders, "there are short term values of natural gas, but this pipeline is permanent and sets up the island to burn natural gas for the next 30-40 years…it will produce 70 percent of the energy on the island…it will be one addiction for another." Julissa Corporan, a life-long resident of the island and operator of Atabey Ecotours, says that residents don't want to be stuck in the fossil fuel economy, "People are educating themselves, and we want renewable energy…we don't want to work in the past, in fossil fuel energy, they don't last forever and we know that." |
| Posted: 12 Aug 2011 07:45 AM PDT
Smaller Crops Forecast by U.S. After Planting Delays, Heat Wave
White House faces Senate, industry pressure on smog rule
Bachmann knocks Pawlenty on cap-and-trade at Iowa debate
EPA yanks tree-killing herbicide Imprelis off market
Conocophillips ups estimate of China oil spill
USDA announces $100 million for Florida wetland restoration
$29.1 million tab from Michigan oil spill
Poll: Majority of public opposes mountaintop-removal mining
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| At Fox News, Planet Earth Is Sponsored By ExxonMobil Posted: 12 Aug 2011 06:39 AM PDT — by Shauna Theel, in a Media Matters cross-post We noted in June that Fox News' iPad app was sponsored exclusively by ExxonMobil, a corporation known for paying think tanks to obfuscate the scientific consensus on climate change. Now FoxNews.com's "Planet Earth" section is also brought to you by the oil giant: In fact, FoxNews.com's entire Science & Technology section and their opinion page appear to be sponsored by ExxonMobil; the other sections of their website are not. Earlier this year, FoxNews.com sought to debunk the fact that Earth has warmed over the past 30 years, as well as the notion that human activity has contributed to the warming with a "Planet Earth" article, portions of which "are utter nonsense" and "do not make sense" according to climatologists consulted by Media Matters. Two recent stories that Fox News' Planet Earth section ran on climate change were based around claims pushed by the Heartland Institute's James Taylor and quoted Taylor's views. A post by Taylor, which baselessly claimed a research group "doctors sea level data" to exaggerate climate change, inspired a FoxNews.com article asking, "Is climate change raising sea levels, as Al Gore has argued — or are climate scientists doctoring the data?" And after a Forbes column by Taylor misinterpreted a climate study and declared that it blows a "gaping hole in global warming alarmism," Fox News' Planet Earth asked "Has a central tenant [sic] of global warming just collapsed?" The article falsely claimed the study showed the "planet isn't heating up" and featured this image and caption: The Heartland Institute is a libertarian think tank that hosts regular conferences disputing mainstream climate science and received $676,500 from ExxonMobil between 1998 and 2006, including $90,000 specifically for "General Operating Support — Climate Change." ExxonMobil pledged in 2008 to stop funding groups "whose positions on climate change could divert attention" from the need to develop secure, clean energy. But Exxon's continued funding of Fox News' ventures seems to contradict this pledge. Fox routinely pushes false claims about climate science, and it has even been the policy of Fox News to question the basic fact that the planet has warmed in recent decades. — Shuana Theel, Media Matters Related Climate Progress Post: |
| Wallace Broecker's Remarkable 1975 Global Warming Prediction Posted: 12 Aug 2011 04:45 AM PDT
– dana1981, in a Skeptical Science cross-post Wallace Broecker was among the first climate scientists to use simple climate models to predict future global temperature changes. His 1975 paper Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming? is widely credited with coining the term "global warming". In that paper, Broecker modeled the effects of the expected future increase of CO2 due to humans burning fossil fuels, combined with a natural climate cycle which he estimated based on Greeland ice core records, and tweaked to match the observed temperature record at the time — see figure below:
This was a very simple model, excluding the effects of the sun, volcanoes, other greenhouse gases, aerosols, and so forth, which Broecker acknowledged:
As it turns out, Broecker has been fortunate, because the cooling effects of human aerosol emissions have roughly cancelled out the warming effects of human non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions since 1975, and solar activity has been flat over that period. So the net effect of the factors which he did not take into account has been close to zero. However, Broecker was also smart; the dominant effect on temperature since 1975 has been from CO2, as he expected. It's better to be lucky than good, but it's best to be both. Broecker anticipated the actual increase in CO2 very closely, predicting 373 ppm in 2000 and 403 ppm in 2010 (actual values were 369 and 390 ppm, respectively). Broecker also used an equilibrium climate sensitivity of 3°C for doubled CO2; however, his model's transient climate sensitivity worked out to be 2.4°C for doubled CO2. Current climate models put equilibrium sensitivty at 1.5 times transient sensitivty, so Broecker effectively underestimated the thermal lag of the climate system, and the equilibrium sensitivity in his calculations was approximately equivalent to 3.6°C for doubled CO2 – a bit higher than today's best estimates of 2°C transient sensitivity, 3°C equilibrium sensitivity. We digitized Broecker's prediction from Figure 1, and compared it to the observed global temperature change since 1975 [see top figure]. We adjusted it slightly to reflect the current atmospheric CO2 concentration (390 ppm) as opposed to his predicted 403 ppm, because we're interested in the accuracy of Broecker's temperature predictions, not his CO2 predictions. As you can see, Broecker's prediction has matched the net global temperature change quite closely over the past 35 years. His 'natural cycle' estimate held his prediction below the actual global temperature increase for most of the period, but as illustrated in Figure 1, he predicted its effects would approach zero after 2000. Not coincidentally, this is when his prediction most closely matches the observed global temperature. Broecker overestimated the amount of global warming by 2010 slightly, by a bit less than 0.2°C. This is probably mainly due to his slight overestimate of climate sensitivity, and potentially due to the increased cooling effects over the past decade. It's quite remarkable that a prediction made in 1975 using such a simple model of the climate system could so accurately match the observed global temperature change. It's a testament to the dominant effect of CO2, and the fact that we have had a solid understanding of the fundamental workings of the Earth's climate for many decades. Nevertheless, those who are "skeptical" that humans are driving global warming, including the few climate scientists in this category, often emphasize and exaggerate what we don't know about how the Earth's climate functions. In his testimony before US Congress earlier this year, "skeptic" climate scientist John Christy compared the state of climate science research in the 1970s to that today, saying "our ignorance about the climate system is just enormous". While it's true that there remain some features of the climate system which we still don't fully understand, Broecker's success illustrates that climate scientists have long had a good grasp on the main drivers of the global climate. While the "skeptics" enjoy criticizing climate scientists, they rarely put their money where their mouths are in terms of making predictions of their own. We previously examined one of the exceptions – Don Easterbrook, who has been predicting imminent global cooling since approximately 2000. He stood by that prediction in December 2008, presenting his projections of future global temperature change at the American Geophysical Union annual conference. Easterbrook's model is even simpler than Broecker's, only taking into account his estimates of past natural climate cycles, assuming they will continue in the future, and effectively presuming that CO2 has no effect on global temperatures (throwing out the centuries-old physics of Tyndall and Arrhenius). Figure 3 compares Broecker's prediction and two of Easterbrook's to the observed global temperature.
– dana1981, in a Skeptical Science cross-post |
| Arctic Ice Thinning 4 Times Faster Than Predicted by IPCC Models, Semi-Stunning M.I.T. Study Finds Posted: 11 Aug 2011 07:45 PM PDT
I'm technically on vacation, so I don't have time to respond to every misleading claim or inadequate study. But it's very safe to say that two-dimensional analyses of sea ice trends — ones that don't model ice thickness and hence ice volume — are going to miss crucial feedbacks and dynamic changes. That is the central point of this new MIT study, which will be stunning only to those who don't follow either this blog or the recent scientific literature. Recent statements that we are seeing an "Arctic Death Spiral" focused on volume. In the words of National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) director Mark Serreze, who is most associated with that phrase:
This new study, "IPCC climate models do not capture Arctic sea ice drift acceleration: Consequences in terms of projected sea ice thinning and decline," (subs. req'd) adds to our understanding of how the two-dimensional models go astray. Here's an extended excerpt from the news release:
Hear! Hear! |
| Posted: 11 Aug 2011 02:53 PM PDT GOP Presidential front runner Mitt Romney offered his view of why corporations should not pay higher taxes at a damaging campaign stop in Iowa. His remarks open a window into his corporatist, pollutocrat worldview. As Think Progress Justice noted:
Given the rapidly growing disparity between the wages of CEOs and those of workers, and the rapidly growing wealth of the richest 1% versus the rest of us, the fact is that an increasing share of what corporations earn goes to a small number of very rich people. It is also true that corporations spend money lobbying and spreading disinformation on climate science and the EPA, to preserve their ability to poison the planet and destroy a livable climate. And that goes to the heart of the fatal flaw in Romney's worldview. Yes, conservative politicians, conservative pundits, and conservative Supreme Court justices believe corporations deserve to have the same rights as people, including virtually no limits on campaign donations. The problem is that corporations don't require clean air, clean water, and a livable climate. Indeed, in the short run, they can profit by destroying those things – if the real people let them. Treating corporations as the same as people is the road to ruin for any modern society, as America is witnessing. |
| Small Hydro Has Strong Bipartisan Support. So Why Can't We Get Our Act Together? Posted: 11 Aug 2011 12:06 PM PDT
Amidst all the talk about increasing offshore drilling in the arctic, permitting massive renewable energy projects in remote areas, and building out expensive transmission lines around the country, we often forget about the simple things. A few years back, I wrote an article asking if the U.S. was on the verge of a small hydropower boom. I'm sad to say that despite the myriad compelling reasons for developing small hydro projects around this country, we're still in the same place we were when I wrote that story. Why? Because we have a terrible regulatory framework in place. A 2006 study put together by the Idaho National Laboratory found that we could feasibly develop up to 30,000 MW of small and "low-power" hydro projects (between 10 kilowatts and 30 megawatts) around the country. All of those projects could be run-of-river — meaning they don't require any damming — or could be built on existing dams. There are over 81,000 dams around the U.S. and only 2,400 of them have any electrical generating capacity. Many of the power-less 78,600 dams are close to existing infrastructure, making it easier to build and maintain a project compared with a centralized wind or solar farm located far away from where the electricity is used. So while the government has focused heavily on streamlined permitting for centralized, large-scale renewable energy projects, almost nothing has been done for small hydro. Due to regulatory morass, the U.S. is not a good place for small hydro companies to do business. In order to build even the smallest facilities, a developer must go through the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Army Corps of Engineers, State Environmental Departments, State Historic Preservation Departments, and many more. Each of these agencies is just doing their job — but the cumulative impact weighs down small hydro and makes projects prohibitively expensive. "The regulatory environment is not friendly at all. It's incredibly difficult and expensive to build these facilities," explains Lori Barg, CEO of Community Hydro, a developer based in Vermont. "It's absurd, really." Barg says that federal and state permitting can add up to $2,000 per kilowatt for projects under 1 MW. To put that in perspective: solar PV projects around 1 MW are being built today for about $3,000 a kW, including permitting, labor and equipment. That needs to change. It's an embarrassment that we still haven't fixed this problem. A bill introduced by Republican Congressman Adrian Smith is a great start. The Small-Scale Hydropower Enhancement Act, which passed quietly out of the House Natural Resources Committee at the beginning of this month, will exempt all projects smaller than 1.5 MW on non-federally owned conduits from FERC licensing requirements. "This is a great targeted solution for a particular set of hydropower projects that could spark a tremendous increase in facilities under 1 MW," explains Jeff Leahey, director of government affairs for the National Hydropower Association. "If you can take those out of the FERC process and put those at the states, it will significantly reduce costs." Consistent with the slow-moving process for small hydro, the bill now needs pass through two more committees — the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. On the Senate side, Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski recently re-introduced the Hydropower Improvement Act that would streamline permitting of hydro projects on existing dams and create a competitive grant program for developers. It also expands R&D for new hydro technologies. NHA hopes to find a way to combine both bills and pass something with bi-partisan support this year. "We keep telling lawmakers that there's tremendous growth potential in the industry. We are far from tapped out. We can access existing infrastructure today and build tens of thousands of megawatts in communities around the country. We consider that low-hanging fruit," explains Leahey. Harnessing the full potential of small-scale, local hydropower could actually be pretty easy – all possible without having to deploy massive clean-up efforts, making environmental major trade-offs, or facing stiff local opposition. But we have to get our act together on permitting. Considering all the other major problems Congress is dealing with, this should be a very easy fix. |
| Courtesy of: ThinkProgress » Climate Progress | |
NY Times columnist Maureen Dowd ends 
Most people don't realize that we have a lot of hydropower potential left in this country — particularly small hydro.