Most Read Blog Entries This Week

California utilities can now purchase some of the benefits of renewable energy without actually purchasing the energy itself.

That’s the gist of a move yesterday by the California Public Utilities Commission to allow utilities to use tradable renewable energy credits (TRECs) to meet the state’s ambitious renewable portfolio standard.

The state’s utilities had previously been allowed to use renewable energy credits (RECs), but those RECs had to be bundled with renewable energy generation. Tradable RECs, on the other hand, can be unbundled from renewable energy generation.

It’s an important distinction.

On a recent visit to Yunnan Province in southwest China, I was pleasantly surprised to see solar water heaters on countless home and building rooftops, even in remote rural villages. These installations, featuring an array of tubes and a storage tank, use the sun’s rays to produce hot water.

Today, China is the world leader in solar water heater (SWH) production and installation, but SWH is now catching on in the U.S., too.

Aggressive federal energy efficiency policies, such as building codes and appliance standards, would put money in consumer wallets in every state.

That's the message of a new report that adds to evidence of the economic potential of curbing energy use. Analysts at the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) calculated that U.S. citizens would save $301 to $451 annually on average on their utility bills in 2030, if the nation slashes projected energy use by 20 to 30 percent, or 1 to 2 percent per year.

The report is one of the first to look at how strong federal efficiency policies would shrink home energy bills.

The climate bill being drafted by U.S. Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is widely viewed as a compromise between lawmakers bent on reducing fossil fuel emissions and those who fear such reductions will cripple the domestic energy industry.

But their approach of applying different types of carbon limits to different sectors of the industry doesn't just downplay the urgency of reducing emissions. Some economists say the sector-specific approach would be costlier to society and less efficient than an economy-wide approach that would limit emissions “upstream” from where fossil fuels enter the economy, such as at companies that supply raw energy.

When the front door won’t open, try the back. Try the side door and all the windows, too.

The Environmental Protection Agency last week settled a lawsuit brought by the Center for Biological Diversity with an agreement aimed at addressing the causes of ocean acidification in coastal states and potentially regulating those causes under the provisions of the Clean Water Act. With the EPA’s intent to regulate large stationary greenhouse gas sources under the Clean Air Act already considered a back door to climate regulation and under fire from some lawmakers, this new avenue represents yet another way into the problem.

Sebastian Foot hadn’t meant to create such a frustrating job for himself.

Last year, he founded a Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) project finance structuring firm called Frontier Advisors with the “intention to take equity” in the emerging green market space. Instead, he ended up in a constant tussle with an interminably slippery bureaucracy that is the UNFCCC CDM Executive Board.

Foot has watched the debate surrounding its reform, and, in his mind, it doesn’t go far enough.

China Alleges Diplomatic Snub at Copenhagen Summit (AP)

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said he was snubbed at last year's Copenhagen climate conference and fired back Sunday at critics who accuse China of arrogance.

Japan Faces Rocky Path to Emissions Trading System (Reuters)

Japan faces a rocky path to launching an emissions trading system after the government approved legislation on Friday that was vague on how the scheme would set limits on emissions.

U.S. to Abstain From Voting on Eskom World Bank Loan (Bloomberg)

The U.S. will abstain from voting on a $3.75 billion World Bank loan requested by South Africa’s state-owned power utility to help fund a new coal-fired plant.

Kerry: Energy Bill More About Jobs (AP)

Sen. John Kerry, hoping to win over wavering senators, said he is pushing environmental reforms to create jobs and spark energy independence, with climate benefits along "for the ride."

Chu: Schumer Effort to Alter Stimulus Energy Grants Would Kill Jobs
(The Hill)

Energy Secretary Chu warned against a Senate effort to impose "buy American" requirements on certain renewable power projects funded with grants authorized in the 2009 stimulus law, saying he is "a little afraid" it will "kill a lot of jobs."

NOAA Director Urges Better Explanations of Climate (AP)

Climate change is here and scientists need to do a better job of explaining it to the public, the director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told reporters in a briefing.

Ideas involving global-scale geoengineering projects aimed at sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere have already faced their share of criticism, but new research on one such idea, ocean iron fertilization, suggests yet another question: Do we want to geoengineer flocks of killer birds run amok -- the kind made famous by Alfred Hitchcock?

This is clearly taking things to extremes, but a study published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed that seeding the ocean with iron results in blooms of tiny organisms called phytoplankton that harbor high levels of a toxin known as domoic acid. Although harmless to the phytoplankton—and in fact, it helps them out-compete other species—domoic acid eventually finds its way into birds and mammals, where it accumulates in the brain and can cause dizziness, disorientation and eventually death.

It has long been speculated that the mass die-off of sea birds that Hitchcock witnessed along the California coast, inspiring his 1963 classic movie, could have been the result of just such a phytoplankton bloom and resultant domoic acid poisoning among the birds.

Lawmakers, scientists and advocates in the U.S. intensified calls Tuesday to immediately cut emissions from climate-warming soot — also known as black carbon — as deadlock continues in Congress over far more complicated regulation of carbon dioxide.

"Black carbon is an important, fast-action tool in mitigating long-term warming," said Veerabhadran Ramanathan, one of the world's leading climate scientists, in testimony before the House Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming.

Although not a greenhouse gas, soot has emerged as a leading contributor to rising temperatures worldwide, scientists say. Limiting these emissions is seen as a relatively cheap and quick way to reign in warming in the short term.

Reporting from London

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change would be far more effective if it relied more on smaller, representative groups of countries meeting year-round to hammer out the details of a future climate agreement, Britain’s climate change secretary, Ed Miliband, told Parliament.

He also suggested that the leadership of the UNFCCC’s annual Conference of Parties meetings needs an overhaul — instead of career politicians leading the way toward an international agreement, the COP needs diplomatic and climate change experts at the helm.