Solve Climate: Daily Climate News and Opinion

Today's Climate: March 19, 2010

SolveClimate Staff — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 07:13:02 -0700

Senate Climate Bill Tied to Health Issue, Graham Says (Bloomberg)

Senate climate-change legislation won't be introduced until at least next month and prospects for action depend on lawmakers' "mood" following the debate on health care, said Sen. Lindsey Graham.

Enviro Groups Hold 'Encouraging' Meeting with Kerry on Climate Bill (The Hill)

High-level officials from 10 or so green groups met with Sen. John Kerry for roughly 1.5 hours in his Senate office on Thursday to discuss climate legislation, in a meeting they described as "very encouraging" and "productive."

U.S. Wind Power Growing Fast But Still Lags (Reuters)

Wind-generated electricity is growing rapidly in the U.S. but the pace still lags far behind that in China, the organizer of an industry conference in North Carolina said.

Climate Change Cited as Mont. Leases Suspended (AP)

A federal judge has approved a first-of-its-kind settlement requiring the government to suspend 38,000 acres of oil and gas leases in Montana so it can gauge how oil field activities contribute to climate change.

U.S. Mustn't Discriminate Against Canadian Oil Sands (Reuters)

The U.S. should not discriminate against the Canadian oil sands industry, Canada's ambassador in Washington said on Thursday, warning that trade restrictions could cause the energy supplier to seek out other customers.

EPA to Study 'Fracking' Gas Drilling Method (AP)

The EPA said Thursday that it will study potential human health and water quality threats from an oil and natural gas drilling technique that injects massive amounts of water, sand and chemicals underground.

Wind, Solar Energy IPOs May Rise This Year, Morgan Stanley Says (Bloomberg)

Renewable energy companies may tap financial markets for more funds this year instead of looking to mergers with utilities as a way of funding expansion, said Morgan Stanley, manager of the most IPOs for the industry in 2009.

Wind Farm Plans Stir Up Storm Over Military Radar (AP)

The U.S. military is growing increasingly concerned that proposed wind farms can disrupt or block radar designed to detect threats and protect America's skies, a problem that is stalling the alternative energy projects around the country.

Czech Minister Quits Over Controversial Coal Plant (Reuters)

Czech Environment Minister Jan Dusik resigned Thursday from the cabinet, saying the prime minister had put pressure on him to decide hastily on plans to upgrade a controversial large coal-fired power plant.

Weyerhauser Joins Enviro-Industry Climate Coalition (Greenwire)

Global timber giant Weyerhaeuser Co. said today it has joined the U.S. Climate Action Partnership group that is lobbying for comprehensive climate and energy legislation on Capitol Hill.

North American Group Outlines Carbon Trade Rules (Reuters)

Members of the Western Climate Initiative have decided to stay with a plan laid out last year that would limit use of offset credits and allowances to no more than 49% of emission reductions.

EU Blocks Reuse of Offsets (Reuters)

The European Commission said it would prevent from August the re-entry into its emissions trading scheme of carbon permits, which companies had already used for compliance with their emissions caps.

Lights out on Incandescent Bulb Production at Toshiba (PC World)

Toshiba has ended production of mass-market incandescent light bulbs, putting to a close a 120-year manufacturing history in favor of more energy-efficient products, including LED lights.

Owners Threaten to Shut Down New Jersey Nuke Plant (AP)

Owners of the nation's oldest nuclear power plant are threatening to shut it down rather than build the $800 million cooling towers mandated by New Jersey environmental regulators.

Fuel Efficient Fleets Saving Corporations Money

Leslie Berliant — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 05:33:09 -0700

In an automotive sector strained by recession, lay-offs, bankruptcies, the credit crunch and recalls, one bright spot over the last year has been the move among corporations to more fuel efficient fleets.

Poland Springs Water, a brand of Nestle Waters, has been greening its fleet since 2007, and seeing big savings as a result. It all started when Chris McKenna moved from warehouse manager to fleet manager at Poland Springs. He had been using biodiesel in the warehouse yard trucks and thought it might be worth testing for the fleet.

That move saved $62,000 in fuel costs alone in 2009. Between the lower cost for biodiesel over ultra-low-sulfur diesel and the improvement in fuel efficiency from biodiesel, the company has saved over $200,000.

“At first, it was about reducing our environmental impact. The cost savings was really unexpected,” McKenna explains. But once they realized the financial opportunity for a fleet that travels more than 5 million miles a year, primarily on small, low-speed roads, they were motivated to do more.

“Our first step was biofuel. Then came idle reduction and now synthetic oils and fuels.”

Poland Springs idle reduction program is something that McKenna thinks all fleets should be implementing. “It’s been a pretty awesome story,” says McKenna. “It’s so simple. There are no other changes required than behavioral.”

The program began in 2007 when the company started using on-board recorders to track driver performance. One of the reports ranked drivers by idle time. The company posted that ranking in the break room and began educating and incentivizing drivers to reduce idle time by offering gift certificates for fuel to the 10 drivers with the lowest idle time.

“One hour of idle time equals one gallon of fuel,” explains McKenna. From 2007 to 2009, the drivers reduced idle time from 11,000 hours to 3,000 hours, a 60% reduction and a $20,000 saving over two years.

“It has been all behavioral,” says McKenna. “Anyone can do this. This is relevant for every carrier everywhere. The return on investment is so quick, and it’s the right thing to do. It really is a no-brainer. “

Poland Springs is testing some other cost saving and greenhouse gas cutting technologies including a cab heater that increases the heat delivered from 1 gallon of fuel from 1 hour to 20 hours. The company is also looking at a synthetic oil that can last for up to 100,000 miles. That will take trucks from more than 12 oil changes a year to around two, and an 82% reduction in oil use with $15,000 in cost savings. It all adds up to lower emissions and lower costs.

In December, The U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) released a report from a 12-month study of delivery company UPS’s diesel hybrid electric delivery van trial. It found a 28.9% improvement in on-road fuel economy and a 15% improvement in total cost per mile.

The DOE also helped to fund the development of the Eaton hybrid system used in the UPS delivery vans with a $7.5 million, 33-month contract. UPS found the program so successful that it added 200 more of the hybrid vehicles to its fleet in December.

Rival Fed Ex also made a move to increase fuel efficiency in its North American hybrid truck fleet by 50% in 2009. The U.S. Postal Service got in on the action, too, swapping 6,500 older models for more fuel efficient hybrids, flex-fuels and four-cylinder vehicles.

The 2010 State of Green Business Report has numerous examples of companies that are going green and saving green through more efficient fleets, including Coca-Cola, Frito-Lay and AT&T. Pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk is saving money and emissions through reduced idling and less aggressive driving.

Even smaller companies are making the move to more fuel efficient fleets. In the city of Santa Monica, Calif., cab company Euro Taxi is running 50% of its fleet on alternative fuels and hybrids.

Trials and experiments that result in cost and emissions savings are not just good for a company’s bottom line and reputation, they can also be good for morale. “

It’s pretty fun,” McKenna says about trying new efficiency measures. “Even if we try 10 or 12 things and not everything is successful, we always will find something that works.”

U.S. Postal Service Could Deliver America the Electric Car

Bringing Sustainable Transportation to the World<

(Photo: intherough / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Airlines Could Be Flying on Biofuel Within 5 Years

Dave Levitan — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 12:16:00 -0700

Just a few years ago, the idea of replacing kerosene-based jet fuel with renewable fuel from plants seemed out of the question. The cost of producing such alternative fuels dwarfed that of traditional jet A-grade fuel, and moving a severely carbon-intensive industry toward cleaner fuels would only happen if the economics worked out.

A 2008 spike in oil prices and a global economic slowdown later, and suddenly bio-jet fuel isn’t just back on the table, it might be in your airplane’s engines in the next four or five years.

“Generally speaking, three years ago I think many people felt that it was something on paper and it was a bit of a pipe dream,” said Steve Lott, the head of corporate communications for the airline industry group International Air Transport Association, or IATA. “The tests we’ve seen in the past two years or so have definitely moved the ball forward and accelerated the process forward toward certification.”

The tests Lott mentioned are a series of flights by various airlines around the world demonstrating the capability of so-called “drop-in” biofuels. These fuels, derived from second-generation biomass sources like algae and the jatropha plant, can power a jet engine with no modification to the engine or plane, saving the industry from the economic impossibility of upgrading the worldwide airplane fleet.

Continental Airlines, for example, has already flown a demonstration flight using a 50-50 blend of kerosene and algae-based fuel in one engine of a Boeing 737, and Lott said there was even some indication that of the plane’s two engines the biofuel-powered one performed slightly better than the kerosene engine.

Bullish on Algae

Algae — yes, the green stuff you see on ponds — has emerged as the most promising biomass source that could eventually be scaled up to commercial production levels. It can grow in brackish water and in areas that don’t compete with food crops, and it has among the best energy-per-unit-area of growth of any biomass feedstock.

Although no large-scale production of algae-derived jet fuel has begun, there are indications that this will soon change. The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, or DARPA, has an algae-to-jet fuel project that will begin testing this year, and it hopes to begin mass production by 2013. The agency hopes to demonstrate that production of algae triglyceride — which can then be converted into jet fuel — can come down in cost toward $1 per gallon, making it commercially viable. Only a few years ago, the cost was upwards of $100 per gallon.

Several companies in the U.S. are also attempting to move this field forward, including Solazyme and Sapphire Energy, two California-based companies that shared in $100 million in DOE grants announced in December for innovators working on renewable jet fuel. Solazyme said it is delivering 1,500 gallons of algae-derived jet fuel to the U.S. Navy, which plans to test the fuel this year.

Jim Proulx, a spokesperson for Boeing Commercial Airplanes, said his company is involved in several biofuel-related projects as well, although for the moment they are largely aimed at testing the feasibility of new types of fuels than actually pushing for a scale-up of commercial production.

“What we hope to see is something in the area of 10 percent [biofuel] use by 2015,” he said. “It doesn’t sound like much, but it is much. It is a couple billion gallons.”

Algae may show the most promise for jet fuel production, but British Airways has taken a different approach. The company recently announced the opening of a plant that will convert about 500,000 tons of organic waste into 16 million gallons of jet fuel each year. The fuel will be put into use by 2014.

Scaling Up

The waste-to-fuel plant will use a process known as Fischer-Tropsch to produce jet fuel. According to an industry-Federal Aviation Administration partnership called CAAFI — Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuels Initiative — plants that use that method rather than algae- or jatropha-based fuels will most likely have much higher capital costs. Fluctuating costs of algae and jatropha feedstocks, though, will play a big role in determining the feasibility of commercial production as well. As CAAFI concludes, “a sustainable business model that improves yields and encourages the growth of energy crops is required to ensure competitive costs.”

Lott agreed that commercial-scale production will be a major obstacle to break through. Certification of some new fuels by various fuel standards groups is expected by early 2011, “and then after that, it’s a matter of working with the production companies and suppliers and distribution."

"To ramp up production of this, it takes investment," he said. "In fact, we think really to do a global production and distribution network would require an investment of about $100 billion in production and distribution facilities. That’s not a small drop in the bucket, it will require a huge investment.”

Lott’s group, the IATA, has stated a goal of at least 10 percent of jet fuel coming from renewable sources by 2017. Making that sort of progress would help take a huge bite out of global warming mitigation strategies: According to the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change, transportation in general accounted for about 23 percent of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions in 2004, and aviation used up about 11 percent of all transport energy. Estimates put air travel’s contribution to global warming at about 5 percent, and worst-case scenarios show it could climb to as much as 15 percent in coming decades.

“We have answered the questions and technically, it is feasible, it can be done with these drop-in fuels,” Lott said. “So it is not a question of ‘if,’ but a question of ‘when.’”

Fuel-Thirsty U.S. Navy Pledges 50% Cut in Oil Use by 2020, and More

HOV Lanes in the Sky: Routing Airlines Toward Fuel Efficiency

Today's Climate: March 18, 2010

SolveClimate Staff — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 07:36:54 -0700

Deal Nearing on Senate Climate Bill: Sen. Kerry (Reuters)

The Senate is close to wrapping up talks ahead of introducing a compromise climate bill, said Sen. Kerry, after meeting with a coalition that represents automakers, forestry and paper companies, Big Oil, steel, mining, electricity and others.

Gov. Christie Seeks CO2 Revenue to Close N.J. Budget Gap (Bloomberg)

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie wants to use funds from CO2 permit auctions in the U.S. Northeast's cap-and-trade program to help close the state's $10.7 billion deficit.

Auto Alliance Opposes Murkowski on EPA Greenhouse Gas Regs (The Hill)

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers is officially opposed to Sen. Lisa Murkowski's (R-Alaska) effort to block EPA from regulating greenhouse gases through a congressional resolution of disapproval.

UN Chief Wants UN in Charge of Climate Talks (AP)

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the UN will remain in charge of talks on a new global climate accord, dismissing a shift to negotiations with a streamlined group of countries suggested by UN climate envoy Gro Harlem Brundtland.

Cancun Climate Talks Get Dim Prognosis Nine Months Before Start (Bloomberg)

Government negotiators are already writing off chances for a global treaty to fight climate change, nine months before the annual talks begin in Cancun, Mexico.

Climate Debate Should be Reframed: Malidives President (AFP)

The climate debate should be reframed in economic and security terms ahead of a year-end UN summit in Mexico seeking a binding climate deal, the president of the Maldives said Wednesday.

Pembina Gives Low Grades to Deep Oilsands Projects (Edmonton Journal)

In its first report card on deep oilsands projects, the Pembina Institute said its study of nine projects reveals some in situ environmental impacts as serious as mining, and there is significant room for improvement in most.

Major California Solar Project Moves Forward (Green Inc.)

California regulators on Wednesday recommended that the state's first new big solar power plant in nearly two decades be approved after a two-and-half-year review of its environmental impact on the Mojave Desert.

Arctic Animals Doing Better, But Not Close to Pole (AP)

The overall number of animals in the Arctic has increased over the past 40 years ago, according to a new international study. But critters who live closest to the North Pole are disappearing, in line with what is predicted with climate change.

Australian Laws to Promote Building Efficiency (Reuters)

Owners of large commercial buildings in Australia will have to disclose energy efficiency information when putting buildings up for sale or lease, under laws introduced in parliament on Thursday.

Tokyo to Get CO2 Rules (Bloomberg)

Tokyo will start a city-wide cap-and-trade system next month, beating the central government to become the first jurisdiction in Japan to introduce mandatory pollution limits and trading in carbon credits.

Marine Energy Projects Approved for Scotland (The Independent)

The seabed off the coast of Scotland could be transformed into the "Saudi Arabia of marine energy" after 7 power firms were awarded contracts for a landmark project designed to harness the area's potential for tidal energy and power up to 750,000 homes by 2020.

Virginia Leaders Express Interest in Offshore Drilling (Washington Post)

Most Virginia leaders -- regardless of their political party -- have expressed interest in joining Alaska, Texas, Louisiana and other states in setting up offshore platforms to drill for oil and natural gas.

Honda Plans Lithium-Ion Civic to Narrow Toyota's Lead (Bloomberg)

Honda, Japan’s second-largest carmaker, plans to introduce lithium-ion battery-powered hybrid cars as it struggles to narrow Toyota's lead in sales of gasoline-electric cars.

From Nepal to the Maldives, Eye Witness Sees Impact of Warming & Melting Glaciers

Guest Writer — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 07:16:17 -0700

By Kunda Dixit, Himal

Namgye Chumbi was weeding his potato garden in the village of Phakding in Nepal’s Khumbu region below Mount Everest on the morning of Aug. 4, 1985. Because of the monsoon season, there were not too many trekkers hiking up the trail towards Namche Bazaar. It was a brilliantly clear day, unusual for the monsoon season, and he was working by the banks of the Dudh Kosi River.

True to its name, the river was milky white and frothing, as the water tumbled noisily over boulders. Yet around 2 in the afternoon, the river suddenly became strangely silent. The water level went down, and Namgye sensed danger.

Much in the same way as coastal dwellers saw the sea recede before the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the Dudh Kosi was about to reveal its terrifying avatar.

“I noticed that the white water had turned muddy brown, and in the distance I heard a thundering sound like an approaching helicopter,” Namgye recalls. “I looked upstream and saw this huge wall of dark brown water approaching very fast.”

There was no time to think. Namgye dropped everything and began to run up the mountain. His wife, Sherkima, had more presence of mind and picked up their two young children, Hira and Tsering, and followed her husband. They reached a ledge as the thunderous flood raced beneath them, lapping at their heels. The ground was shaking like an earthquake, and the sound was deafening.

Namgye and Sherkima lost their house and everything in it. If they had been just a few seconds slower, they would have lost their lives, as well. Their millet farm upstream was cut in half, as the river changed its course and started flowing through its terraces. Afterward, the family built a hut, and other families helped them with food.

“We only had the clothes we were wearing, but at least we were all alive,” he says.

Nearly 25 years later, Namgye has built a new house higher up the mountain, where his married children and four grandchildren today live together. The Dudh Kosi, meanwhile, is still frothing white as it flows past the farm. Namgye points out one boulder the size of his house that was brought down by that terrible flash flood.

No one died in the 1985 flood because there were no trekkers on the trails, and people were not asleep in their homes. But it did wash away a large section of the trail as well as all the bridges along this stretch of the river, and the Dudh Kosi deposited debris up to 15 metres high downstream. The water stayed muddy and high for two weeks until it finally started to recede.

Villagers in Jorsale and Phakding were puzzled that there was a flood when there had been no rain; they only found out later that a glacial lake called Dig Tso had burst upstream in the Bhote Kosi Valley. A few years later, there was another flood caused by another lake below Mount Ama Dablam that overflowed because of an avalanche; it caused damage upstream but was not as high when it reached Phakding.

Nepali glaciologists say there is a glacial-lake flash flood every two years or so on a river in the country, and many expect the floods to become more frequent and more serious as the lakes are gorged by glacial melt. Namgye has heard there are even bigger, more dangerous lakes upstream in the Imja Khola.

Is he worried? “I am,” he says. “But where can I go?”

Water World

From the air, one can quickly understand why the Himalaya are referred to as the Third Pole. A jumble of ice, rock and snow stretches as far as the eye can see. The frozen flanks rise to breathtaking heights, the cornices on their summits translucent blue against the sunlight. Blocks of ice as massive as large buildings teeter at the edge of icefalls, looking as if their motion has been caught in a snapshot. And like the polar ice cap, all this is defrosting fast.

Climatologists say that, like other mountain ranges in the warmer parts of the Earth, the Himalaya are warming three times faster than the rest of the planet. You do not have to be a geologist to spot the signs from up here.

The Khumbu glacier, which feeds off the southern side of Mt. Everest, looks as though a gigantic bulldozer has pushed debris right down the valley below and then retreated. The terminal moraine no longer has any ice — it is just a pile of boulders. On the north slope of Thamserku, down-valley, the snow has retreated to the knife-edged summit ridge, with just the tongue-shaped relic of a former glacier visible.

Up here in the mountains of Nepal, global warming is not an abstract scientific theory; it has become a fact of everyday life. Its effects are visible everywhere: in snow-capped mountains that are turning into stark, exposed rock, and in new lakes that have made traditional yak-herding routes impassable. There is also less direct impact that is more difficult to measure: droughts and cloudbursts, delayed monsoons and huge forest fires.

What many here still do not know is what is causing this warming, and what to do about it. Some blame the gods for erratic weather — not the emission of greenhouse gases by rich countries and the bulging middle classes of India and China.

Last year, this writer was in the Maldives, at the other end of South Asia, in a country that is likewise on the frontline of global climate change. And just like Namgye Chumbi, who lives below Everest, the 400,000 people of the Maldives have to face problems that they had no responsibility in creating. Indeed, they are even more vulnerable, as sea-level rise caused by climate change threatens the very existence of their country. No part of this archipelago of 1200 islands, grouped around 25 atolls, is more than 1.5 metres above sea level.

Storm surges have already brought sea water up to knee level in many of the Maldives islands, including in Male. The latest projections show that sea-level rise is likely to be even more dire than was predicted in the 2007 report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, with sea levels worldwide likely rising one meter by the end of the century — even if countries start to drastically cut back on carbon emissions.

More than any other country in South Asia, it is in the Maldives that one detects a sense of urgency and the political will at the highest level to deal with the effects of climate change.

The Maldivians are not given to speeches and moaning about the West’s high per capita carbon footprint. Soon after he was elected to power last year, President Mohamed Nasheed announced that his country would be carbon neutral by 2020. Setting an example, President Nasheed receives guests in the courtyard of his modest presidential house in Male, preferring the outdoors to his air-conditioned office. (All electricity in the Maldives is currently generated by thermal plants.) He has already decided not to live in the lavish, energy-intensive presidential palace built by his predecessor, which has instead been handed over to the Supreme Court.

“Climate change isn’t a vague and abstract danger but a real threat to our survival,” says the president. “If the world can’t save the Maldives today, it might be too late to save London, New York or Hong Kong tomorrow.”

All the same, President Nasheed’s zero-carbon plan is not going to come cheap. It will cost more than US$1 billion to switch to wind, solar and wave energy. Part of this money will come from a new green tax of US$3 per day for every tourist, as well as from grants from the governments of rich countries with guilty consciences. The money will be spent on more than 150 large wind turbines, undersea transmission lines and 500 square metres of rooftop photovoltaic cells throughout the country, outfitted with batteries for night-time use. But even so, it may be impossible in the short term to replace carbon entirely, including the fuel that is burnt by Maldivian fishing vessels, ferries and aircraft that remain the mainstay of transportation in these atolls.

Other plans are also afoot to deal with the inevitable effects of climate change. As has been widely covered, the Maldivians are even looking into buying a new "homeland" in India, Sri Lanka or Australia. For the time being, they are busy building dykes and raising the level of a new island that is being built near Male to accommodate its growth.

From far away, one sees smoke rising from the Thilafushi garbage island, a 45-minute boat ride from Male. Coupled with tourism, the increasing affluence of the Maldivian capital has inevitably generated large amounts of trash; the government has decided that, instead of destroying coral islands, it will use the rubbish to create a whole new island, where there once was a lagoon. Today, there are nearly 200 Bangladeshi migrant workers toiling here, burning combustible garbage, compacting plastic, removing metal, disinfecting contaminated rubbish, and raising the level of the industrial island so that it is higher than the rising ocean. Manufacturing units and factories have already moved to parts of this newly formed territory.

Still, there is very little money available to adapt to climate change. The Maldives used to receive some 800,000 tourists a year, but last year that figure dropped by nearly half due to the global recession. The Maldivian economy was hit hard. Ecologically minded Europeans are becoming even more reluctant about burning all that fuel to fly the long distances required to get to the Maldives. For a country so dependent on tourism, this could be devastating. As such, President Nasheed has an argument ready to convince tourists to keep coming to the Maldives: Spending two weeks in a carbon-neutral resort in the Maldives, he says, will mean that Europeans will not just offset the carbon they burn to fly there, but will also be less of a burden on the planet than if they were to spend those two weeks back home during the winter, burning lots of fossil fuels.

Yet this seems to be a hard sell. At the Male airport, European charter flights have indeed started arriving at the start of the tourist season. Parallel to the runway is Male’s lagoon airport for sea planes, where Canadian-built Twin Otter aircraft with pontoons fly in and out every five minutes, ferrying tourists to outlying resorts. It is hard to see how the Maldivians will achieve carbon neutrality.

Himilayan Meltdown

Up in the mountains of Nepal, it is the morning rush hour at Lukla Airport, the access point to the Everest region. Here, too, Twin Otters bringing trekkers from Kathmandu are landing every few minutes.

It looks like a Formula One pit stop: There are only four parking slots on an apron carved out of a mountainside, so the planes leave one of their propellers turning as passengers line up to board even as others disembark. Within minutes of landing, the planes are taxiing out for the return flight to Kathmandu. In the peak trekking season, in October, there are up to 40 flights every morning in this busy little airstrip.

Boarding a six-seater Pilatus Porter plane, we roll down Lukla’s inclined runway and begin to fly up the Dudh Kosi. Far below, Namgye Chumbi’s house is a tiny speck next to the shining white ribbon of the river. Incredibly high on the northern horizon is Mt. Everest (Sagarmatha), which the river drains. The scars of the 1985 Dig Tso flood on either banks of the narrow river valley are still visible.

As we fly past the monastery of Tengboche, there are signs of global warming all around. The mountains look like melting ice-cream cones, and the water flowing out of the shrinking icefall makes the rounded rock slopes below them glisten in the sun. One can easily see how far down the valleys the glaciers once extended, by the remnants of their moraine walls. The seracs now cling precariously to the edge of cliffs, and piles of rock and debris indicate where the glaciers once were.

Then we see it: the dirty green water of Imja Tso, the lake that has emerged out of nowhere in the past 40 years.

Maps of the Everest region from the 1960s show no lake here, but today Imja Tso has grown dramatically to a body of water 2 kilometers long, 500 meters across and about 100 meters deep. The Imja glacier is blocked by another that comes down steeply from the Lhotse face, and this has dammed the lake. It is fed by falling rain, melting snow, as well as the permafrost that is thawing due to global warming. The Himalaya are warming three times faster than the rest of the world, and scientists say Imja Tso could grow another kilometer in the next five years.

Flying at 20,000 feet with oxygen masks in the un-pressurised plane, we are still below the summits of these colossal peaks. And looking around at evidence of the great Himalayan meltdown, it is easy to see why all the focus in the climate-change debate is on the cryosphere.

This icebound landscape is the most dramatic visible proof of global warming, as well as the dangers caused by the Third Pole’s depleting "water tower" and subsequent glacial lakes. The correlation is also easier to grasp when one flies past peaks sculpted over millions of years by ice and wind.

Water in its vapour form is pushed up these mountains during the monsoon, and it falls as liquid water along the lower reaches of the mountains. Higher up, it falls as snow and is stored in its solid form as ice. Below the snowline, the snow melts in the summer and feeds water into rivers in the dry season. This water is vital for irrigation and drinking downstream, but global warming is pushing the snowline higher and increasingly melting the permanent ice, too. Accelerating the process is the pollution caused by the burning of coal and diesel in the Indo-Gangetic plain. The fine particles of soot are carried by prevailing winds and are deposited on snowfields and glaciers. The dirty snow is less reflective, absorbs more sunlight and melts faster.

Government spokespersons of South Asia, in a reiteration of anti-colonial rhetoric, tend to blame only the rich countries and defend their right to burn fossil fuel for economic growth. Given the low per-capita carbon production of countries such as Nepal (one tonne per person per year, compared to 30 tonnes per capita in European countries), it does look unjust and hypocritical not to allow South Asians to burn more carbon in order to develop. And no matter what Nepal does, it will not make that much of a dent in saving the world from climate change. But countries such as Nepal need to switch to renewables not just to do their part to save the planet, but also to save their economies.

Today, Nepal imports all of its petroleum products from refineries in India. The economic reliance on India is going to deepen as the world’s oil reserves peak, and crude becomes more expensive and hard to get — thus increasing the country’s political dependence. For Nepal, it is also a political imperative to switch to a hydro economy. And if that helps reduce the melting of its glaciers, even in a small way, that is a bonus.

Drying Sponge

Nepalis and other South Asians also have a moral duty to do more. The Himalaya, along with the Tibetan plateau, constitute a gigantic storage system that feeds into rivers that provide water to nearly 1.2 billion people in China, Southeast Asia and the Indus-Gangetic basin — the Yangtze, Mekong, Irrawaddy, Brahmaputra, Ganga, Indus and most of their tributaries.

Simulations show that the melting of Himalayan ice will significantly impact the flow of these rivers, causing them to flood during the springtime, drying up in the pre-monsoon when the water is needed the most. And all this will be happening as populations expand and the rising middle class in downstream Asian countries increases its water consumption.

Dramatic as all this is, scientists estimate that only 9 percent of the annual water flow in the overall Ganga, for instance, comes from melting snow and ice in the Himalaya. Of this, 7 percent is from snow and only 2 percent from glacial melt. So, even if global warming reduces the amount of ice in the mountains, it will not make a big difference on the flow in the Ganga. The important thing would be to develop the capacity to store monsoon runoff such that water flow is spread more evenly throughout the year. The proportion of snow melt in the dry season in rivers such as the Indus is much higher (40 percent), which makes it much more important to prepare for the impact of climate change in the Himalaya on dry-season irrigation downstream in Pakistan.

The focus on snow and ice has diverted attention from the real reason that the Himalaya should be considered a water tower: because of the gigantic storage system for ground water. Even below the snowline, monsoon rains recharge the aquifers so that the 4,000-km-long mountain range acts as a gigantic sponge, storing water and releasing it year-round. Due to climate change, these rains have already become erratic.

Climate variability, recurring droughts and extreme rainfall events have always existed, but there are signs they are getting both more frequent and more severe.

Over the past two years, Nepal, North India and the western Himalaya have suffered two years of winter drought, as well as a delayed monsoon this year, devastating rice planting and rain-fed agriculture. Perennial springs went dry for the first time in living memory across Nepal’s midhills, and snow-fed rivers had very little water in the spring because there was no snow to melt. In the past decade, monsoons have been consistently late, while the rains have then persisted till October.

As winter rains have failed repeatedly across the Himalaya, some of the worst wildfires in living memory have broken out in India and Nepal. Glacial-lake floods and the impact of melting Himalayan permafrost are important, but many more people are being affected by erratic monsoons, weather variability and extremes of drought and floods.

For farmers across the mountains of Nepal and India, for plains dwellers in the Indus-Ganga plain and coastal villagers in the Bangladesh delta or the Maldives, climate change is just another hardship they have to face. It is a crisis that exacerbates all the others that such communities already face on a daily basis.

While international delegations and government officials speak about "adaptation," villagers are already adapting. They are switching from rice to potato, to drought-resistant crops, moving higher up the coastline or building houses on stilts.

But weather science is uncertain, and it is difficult to find the correlation with climate change in a way that can be helpful. The evidence is anecdotal. But by the time we convince ourselves to satisfaction as to why the monsoons are erratic and the cloudbursts are more frequent, it will be too late to do anything about them. It will be much more prudent to treat increased climate variability as an effect of climate change, and start strengthening local capacity to adapt — at the level of potato farmers such as Namgye Chumbi in Nepal, as at the level of national leaders such as President Mohamed Nasheed in the Maldives.

(Kunda Dixit is publisher of the Nepali Times and co-publisher at Himalmedia. He
is the author of several books, among them a trilogy on the conflict in Nepal - A People War, Never Again, and People After War - which highlight the challenges facing media in post-war reconciliation. This story is republished with permission from the author. Originally published at Himal.)

Understanding Glacier Changes: Risks Posed by Glacial Lakes, Debris Flows

Video: Everest's Melting Glaciers

(Photos: Himalayas by mckaysavage/CC BY 2.0; Male and glacial lake by Kunda Dixit)

Nuclear Waste Disposal: Exit Yucca Mountain, Enter Illinois?

Dave Levitan — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 05:37:44 -0700

Abandoning Nevada’s Yucca Mountain as a potential long-term repository for nuclear waste was an Obama campaign promise, and it garnered public support in the state and from opponents of nuclear power everywhere.

Now that the Department of Energy has officially begun the process to withdraw its application, though, it is clear that not everyone shares the same desire to shutter the decades-old project.

The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, or NARUC, filed a brief with the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board earlier this week arguing that proper processes were not followed to withdraw the application. They also argue that billions of dollars of the public’s money has been spent on the project at Yucca Mountain, and abandoning it now is a step in the wrong direction.

“If we don’t go to Yucca Mountain, what do we do?” asked Brian O’Connell, the director of the nuclear waste program office at NARUC. “The answer is, we have the status quo for an indefinite period until something else comes along.”

The decision to shutter the nation’s only suggested long-term geologic repository for nuclear waste comes at an interesting time. The first government loan guarantees are out the door to help build the first new nuclear reactors in more than a decade, and general talk of a nuclear revival has forced the oft-maligned power source back into the energy conversation. O’Connell’s question, then, is all the more relevant—if we aim to produce more nuclear waste, where are we going to put it?

Regional storage?

There are no other geologic repositories up for discussion, but the DOE has recently formed a commission that will study the question for two years.

“President Obama is fully committed to ensuring that the Nation meets our long-term storage obligations for nuclear waste,” the DOE’s general counsel, Scott Blake Harris, said in a statement.

For the moment, there aren’t a lot of ideas for meeting those obligations. According to the DOE's Energy Information Administration's most recent data set (2002), there are more than 47,000 metric tons of spent uranium in the country, with about another 2,000 metric tons
produced each year. That means there are more than 100 million pounds of nuclear waste needing a permanent storage solution.

Currently, nuclear waste is first stored in cooling pools and then in metal and concrete casks at the nuclear power plants themselves; these casks have a good safety history, and will apparently suffice for at least a few more decades. And given the pace of long-term storage research and development to-date, they are much needed decades.

There have been discussions, meanwhile, of temporary regional storage options for radioactive waste. According to Dave Kraft, director of the Illinois-based nuclear watchdog group Nuclear Energy Information Service, dealings in the Illinois state legislature could position the state as a “de facto radioactive waste dump.”

The state senate voted this week to overturn a 23-year-old moratorium on the construction of new nuclear reactors in Illinois. Interestingly, the moratorium was put in place with the expressed purpose of waiting for a suitable permanent waste repository; Yucca Mountain was already under investigation at the time. Now that Yucca is off the table, that ban seems to make even more sense.

“If you use any kind of logic to the issue of regional temporary storage, you would want to minimize the amount of waste you move,” Kraft said. “Because we have the most they’re not likely to move ours out, they’re more likely to move other states’ in. So we see this as a backdoor threat to make Illinois some sort of a regional high level radioactive waste holding state.”

Illinois and reprocessing

Illinois is the darling state of the nuclear industry, ranking first in both nuclear capacity and generation and getting 48 percent of its electricity from nuclear power; the national share is 20 percent. It also ranks first in, as Kraft mentioned, the amount of waste it produces. The moratorium, Kraft said, made sense at the time and makes even more sense with Yucca Mountain’s dismissal from consideration.

“The legislature wouldn’t allow skyscrapers to be built in Chicago if they didn’t have bathrooms,” he said. “Well why should the industry be allowed to continue to operate if it doesn’t have a place to dispose of some of the most hazardous substances humanity has ever created?”

Another option with spent fuel is reprocessing, where the fuel’s components are separated and can be reused, or, as is the major point of contention with this technology, used in nuclear weapons. Several attempts have been made with reprocessing technologies in the US in the past without success. In Europe, several sites are operating, but sites in France and the United Kingdom have been plagued by problems including radioactive discharges that carried as far away as Norway.

“Reprocessing is a filthy technology, despite what anybody says,” Kraft said. He also hypothesized that the Illinois Senate vote could be a “backdoor attempt” to let General Electric build an experimental type of reprocessing reactor called a pyroprocessing plant. Under the 1987 moratorium, construction of such a plant would not be allowed.

“Illinois has got enough nuclear plants and enough nuclear waste, and we don’t need any more,” Kraft said.

If the Yucca Mountain shutdown goes as planned, nuclear waste will stay on-site for the foreseeable future. And at least for the moment, Kraft doesn’t think any push to use Illinois as a dumping ground will gain traction. He said the bill that passed 40-1 in the state Senate will likely stall in the House, or at worst with the Governor.

O’Connell stressed that there was no good reason given to shutter Yucca Mountain. “In the request to withdraw there was very skimpy reference to why,” he said. “It was only that the Secretary of Energy has decided that a geologic repository at Yucca Mountain is not a workable option.” Instead of closing it for good, he said, continuing to evaluate the 8,000-plus-page application submitted regarding Yucca Mountain in 2008 provides the best road forward.

“We want that process to continue, we think it is worth doing,” he said. Kraft, along with nuclear opponents around the country, thinks otherwise: the best solution to dealing with nuclear waste is to not produce any.

UK Geeks vs. US Suits: Who Wins in a Cleantech Showdown?

Amy Westervelt — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 13:17:42 -0700

The term “cleantech” is often dismissed as being far too general to encapsulate all the sectors that fall within it—water, energy, smart grid, electric vehicles, green building materials, the list goes on—but there are nonetheless cross-cutting similarities among the start-ups.

There’s typically the charismatic leader who’s got venture capital connections in Silicon Valley, the brilliant head of engineering who stays behind the scenes (not always willingly), and in most cases plenty of money and buzz before the company even has so much as a prototype. At least that’s how it usually goes in the United States.

In the United Kingdom, it’s almost exactly the opposite.

“In the UK, and in the European Union in general, companies need to have a business model and products before they really speak to anyone,” Richard Miller, Innovation Platform Leader for the UK's Technology Strategy Board told SolveClimate recently.

Miller was in California last month leading a group of 19 UK cleantech companies around to meet with potential US partners and investors. By all accounts it was a successful trip. “There has been a lot of interest from people here, especially when they see how far along our people typically are in their business,” Miller said.

In addition to their business plans and products, the UK companies are often led by the people who have come up with the products, typically engineers or product designers. Those people included product designer Richard Woods, co-founder of DIY Kyoto, a company that is producing a slickly designed home energy monitoring system called the Wattson. Unlike many home energy monitoring systems, Wattson is a consumer-facing product. It sells for about 100 pounds in the United Kingdom and Woods hopes to sell it for about $199 in the United States.

Because Wattson is a consumer-facing product, Woods doesn’t need to convince a US utility to buy a UK product for a smart-grid trial. And unlike US companies with home-energy monitoring systems (Energy Hub, Tendril, and Agilewaves, for example), Wattson is readily available, can be installed by any Joe Homeowner, is relatively affordable and is aesthetically appealing enough for the average Brookstone or Sharper Image customer to throw down a couple of Benjamins for it.

The gadget includes a well-designed web interface that allows customers to see how their energy use changes depending on the time of day or season, and compare their usage with others in their area.

“I think we’ve realized from this trip the need to bring on someone who has that business and marketing background,” Woods told SolveClimate. “This trip helped us see how necessary that is if you want to do business in the United States.”

Dr. Shaun Fitzgerald, co-founder of Breathing Buildings, was another member of Miller’s group (officially The Clean and Cool Mission), and provides another example of the difference between the average US startup and the average UK startup. Fitzgerald and co-founder Andy Woods grew their company out of research the two conducted at Cambridge. The result is a brilliantly simple approach to natural ventilation that provides an additional 50 percent in energy savings above and beyond the savings generally afforded by opting for natural ventilation over a mechanical HVAC system (40 to 50 percent, on average).

The company’s equipment essentially mixes heat generated by occupants and building equipment (computers, lights, and so on) with cold air coming in from a rooftop window, warming up the outside air and pushing it through the building to heat it. Breathing Buildings has its product installed in about 20 schools in the UK already, and its equipment is being tested by grocery giant Tesco. Fitzgerald came to the United States looking for manufacturing and distributing partners, as well as potential customers, but not funding.

After speaking with representatives from many of the mission’s companies and at length with Miller about how cleantech works in the United Kingdom, it became clear that while the UK seems to be focusing more on engineering and innovation, the United States is where business is happening in the cleantech sphere.

“Our companies wanted to come here because there is more money going to cleantech here than there is in the UK,” Miller said. “In the UK there is an interest in cleantech, but there’s still a real financial crisis. There are fewer funds that are likely to invest and those funds are more selective. It’s still a tough conversation in the UK, even though we have great policy drivers there.”

The ideal is obviously a team that combines US business savvy with a British dedication to producing real products that have a market. Perhaps we’ll see more partnerships between the two as the sector continues to mature.

'Black Carbon' Crackdown Offers Fast-Action Solution to Slow Warming

Stacy Feldman — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 10:35:26 -0700

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.

Black carbon causes up to 600 times the warming of CO2 and lasts just a few weeks in the atmosphere, whereas CO2 lingers for a century or more. Because of black carbon's short lifespan, the impact of efforts to knock out the potent, heat-absorbing particle would be near immediate.

"Reducing black carbon emissions by 50 percent today will lead to a 50 percent reduction in the heat trapped by them within a few months," said Ramanathan, a professor at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography.

"Policymakers will witness the success of their actions during their tenure," he told the panel yesterday.

Climate experts estimate that black carbon pollution is responsible for roughly 20 percent of global warming, while CO2 accounts for half. Much of that soot comes from Asia and Africa, where cooking with primitive stoves and burning down forests and grasslands spews tons of the pollutant into the atmosphere.

The U.S. contributes 5.5 percent to that global total, estimates say, mainly from diesel engines. Advocates argue the nation could easily shrink that number down to almost nothing, starting now. The filters to trap up to 90 percent of diesel pollution, for instance, are ready to go.

Fixes in developing countries are just as available, and at relatively little cost. They include replacing polluting cook stoves with solar-powered efficient ones at around $20 a pop, and reducing agricultural fires in the spring when Arctic ice is most affected by black carbon.

The solutions are "pretty simple" and "could be implemented without delay," said Conrad Schneider, advocacy director of the Boston-based Clean Air Task Force, during the hearing. Still, "relatively little is being done in the U.S. or globally to attack this problem," he said.

Missing: 'Mandates and Money'

In the U.S., Schneider leveled the blame at the federal government's lack of "mandates and money."

Last June, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), also known as the Waxman-Markey bill, which incorporated a number of provisions to cut black carbon in America and seek opportunities to curb soot emissions abroad.

Specifically, the bill directs the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to propose regulations for black carbon within two years.

"Waxman-Markey made an excellent start in dealing with this issue," said Schneider. It is "a promising approach that deserves immediate attention."

But that bill — or any piece of comprehensive climate change legislation for that matter — appears all but dead in the U.S. Senate this year.

As Congress dawdles, the EPA has at least some authority to move. Under the Clean Air Act, the agency can retrofit filters on 1 million out of the 11 million old diesel engines in the United States. Citing an analysis by M.J. Bradley & Associates, Schneider said that adding a million traps would achieve the climate benefits of removing 21 million cars from the road.

"Yet, EPA has failed to act," said Schneider.

Adding to the delays, the Diesel Engine Reduction Act (DERA) of 2005, which authorized $1 billion dollars over five years to clean up diesel engines, has "been chronically underfunded," Schneider said, though last year's Recovery Act delivered a much-needed, first-time jolt.

The stimulus package unleashed $300 million for DERA. Schneider called it "the biggest breakthrough" in diesel retrofit money since the law was passed.

Clearly, demand for more funds is high. In response to the stimulus money, the EPA — overseer of the DERA program — received $2 billion worth of applications. The agency is now sitting on $1.7 billon worth of requests for diesel retrofits that could be carried out immediately, said Schneider.

Down Payment on Black Carbon

If more funds flow to black carbon programs soon, it "may constitute our best hedge against near-term climate impacts," Schneider added, but it should not come at the expense of cutting carbon dioxide.

Carbon dioxide is the No. 1 greenhouse gas linked to global warming.

"Addressing black carbon and the other short-lived climate-forcing agents, such as methane and ozone, is not a substitute for enacting comprehensive climate change legislation," Schneider told the panel. "We're going to need both—and then some."

Similarly, Rep. Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts), chair of the House global warming panel, urged his fellow lawmakers to think of beating black carbon as a down payment on America's long-term climate action plan.

"If we want to keep the planet a viable residence, a down payment in the form of black carbon reductions won't replace the need to make sustained investments in clean energy," Markey said.

The senior Republican on the committee, James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin), however, sharply disagreed. Sensenbrenner suggested it be an either-or proposition, with black carbon winning out.

Both Democrats and Republicans should support a plan to curtail black carbon because it would have a "positive effect on the environment without breaking the bank," Sensenbrenner said. In contrast, he added, "draconian" CO2 regulation would "stifle the economy."

"It would be a lot cheaper to buy clean stoves for developing nations," Sensenbrenner said.

For scientists, however, reducing black carbon emissions cannot be a stand-alone effort if the U.S. is serious about tackling the global warming problem.

Tami Bond, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Illinois, called black carbon "a quick solution" but said "we need both, and everything else that we can think of."

"We have a portfolio of solutions that can address climate change in the long term and the short term. So don't think about either-or," Bond told the committee. "Think about how we will manage the atmospheric trajectory during our lifetimes."

Drew Shindell, a senior scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, agreed that the U.S. must restrict both black carbon and greenhouse gases at once. "Addressing black carbon can help, but it really has to be side-by-side with already immediate action on CO2," Shindell said.

Ice Core Samples Reveal Black Soot Threatening Tibetan Glaciers

U.S. and Foreign Wind Energy Companies Creating Local American Jobs

Guest Writer — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 06:31:20 -0700

by Lutz Weischer, WRI

Recently there have been some questions in the media (see Green Inc. and Washington Post articles) and in the U.S. Senate about stimulus grants for wind energy projects going to foreign countries. On March 3rd, a group of Senators called for the suspension of the renewables grant program until “Buy American” rules had been passed that made sure projects used American components and labor.

But there is more to that story than meets the eye.

Empirical evidence demonstrates that predictable support for wind power improves local manufacturing capacity and creates local jobs. Consistent support in the form of the stimulus and long term programs such as a Renewable Energy Standard will give investors the certainty they need to plan and create jobs in the United States.

In the United States, wind energy has received policy support in the form of federal tax credits and a number of state-level programs. As the state-level programs have grown more numerous and ambitious and the federal support has stabilized (the production tax credit has not been allowed to expire since 2005), the wind industry has experienced a period of rapid growth. In 2008 alone, 55 new facilities producing wind turbines and components opened and there are now a total of 85,000 jobs in the American wind industry, up from 50,000 in 2007, according to the American Wind Energy Association.

Of the 15 leading global wind turbine manufacturers, 11 operate production facilities in the US or plan to begin operating this year, as my colleagues and I have found in a working paper recently published by the World Resources Institute and the Peterson Institute for International Economics. As part of the Recovery Act, wind park developers can now apply for a cash grant instead of the tax credit. This grant program has funneled more than $2.2 billion
and has attracted $10billion in foreign investment as well.

The growth of the US wind industry confirms a global trend analyzed in our paper: every country that has put in place sufficiently large and predictable mechanisms to create demand for wind power has seen the increase of its domestic manufacturing capacity – and thus domestic jobs. That is mainly because regional production hubs close to installations sites are the most efficient way for the wind industry to organize its supply chain.

One of the reasons why the wind industry tends to produce locally is that towers and blades are very heavy and expensive to transport. Of course, given supply constraints and tight deadlines, companies will occasionally import any component if they cannot source it locally. But the larger industry trend is a different one; my colleagues and I calculated that the domestic content of turbines installed in the U.S. has risen from an average of less than 20 percent in the period 2001-06 to over 50 percent in 2008.

However, it takes time to develop local manufacturing. The United States does not yet have the capacity to produce every part for every wind project, but it can develop this in the coming years if the government continues its support policies. In West Texas, for example, American and Chinese companies are jointly developing a 600 megawatt wind farm with some parts supplied by a Chinese company. But 70 percent of the turbines used in the Texas project, including the blades and towers, will be manufactured in the U.S. Furthermore, they plan to build a new turbine plant in the U.S., creating 1,000 American manufacturing jobs. While their long term objective is a 100 percent American turbine, it will take time to ramp up manufacturing. Suspending the Renewable Grant Program could pull the rug out from under projects like this.

The Texas project follows the trends for the industry in general. While some components are sourced globally, companies have an interest in building local supply chains and the share of local content will increase over time. What is unique about the Texas project is the origin of the foreign components. It is the only project announced so far that sources turbines from a Chinese company. Contrary to the concerns voiced in the recent controversy, China is not an important exporter of wind turbines. In 2008, Denmark, Spain, Japan and Germany accounted for almost 85 percent of U.S. wind turbine imports. The Chinese share was 0.5 percent.

Global Market, Local Jobs

In considering the future of the grant program, policy makers should not assume that a foreign-owned company does not create jobs in the United States. First of all, grants go to domestic project developers, not turbine manufacturers. The developer will use part of that money—our working paper estimates around three quarters of it—to buy the equipment, including the turbine. But the rest of it is spent on other up-front costs: paying the project developer’s own staff, construction workers and engineers. In other words, at least 25 percent of a typical grant goes to directly creating American jobs. The other 75 percent may support some manufacturing abroad, but very likely will support U.S. manufacturing as well, especially as domestic capacity increases.

Two examples illustrate that foreign ownership cannot simply be equated with production and jobs abroad. A wind turbine manufacturer in Pennsylvania has been able to rehire workers because of stimulus funding after it had to lay off some of them last year. This Pennsylvania plant produces in the U.S., but is actually owned by the Spanish company Gamesa. On the flip side, the controversial wind project in Texas sources its gearboxes from a Chinese manufacturer that is majority-owned by American wind giant GE.

What's Next

A closer look reveals how the recent development of the U.S. wind market has been good for local job creation. The single most important factor in creating a domestic wind industry and the related jobs is ambitious and predictable support for wind power projects. Compared to the countries like Germany that have been most successful in developing a wind industry, support programs in the U.S., such as tax credits, have been more intermittent, inhibiting the development of the domestic manufacturing base. For example, in 1998 a federal production tax credit (PTC) had helped spur new investments in large scale U.S. wind energy. But new wind investments collapsed collapsed following 1999, 2001 and 2003, when Congress allowed the PTC to expire. Fits and starts do not make for a strong industry, but predictable, sustainable support will.

With the new grant program, the U.S. is beginning to catch up, attracting foreign investment and building domestic manufacturing capacity. To continue on this path, long-term programs, such as a Renewable Energy Standard, would provide investors the certainty they need to plan. However, because it takes time to build local manufacturing capacity, companies will continue to source components globally to overcome local supply constraints and meet deadlines. That’s why the American Wind Energy Association and leading executives from the industry have come out with strong statements against Buy American provisions, saying they could slow down wind power deployment and job creation in the U.S.—which of course is the goal of the stimulus.

(Republished with permission from WRI. Lutz Weischer is a Research Analyst with the World Resources Institute’s Climate and Energy Program.)

Today's Climate: March 17, 2010

SolveClimate Staff — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 03:16:28 -0700

Renewable Energy Investment May Reach $200 Billion in 2010 (Bloomberg)

Renewable energy investment may rise by 23% this year to between $175 billion and $200 billion, as government stimulus funds mainly in the U.S. and Europe are spent, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

First Solar Joins Desertec Solar Project (Reuters)

U.S. solar power company First Solar has joined the Desertec solar power project, which hopes to supply 15% of Europe's power by 2050 via a network of renewable energy sources.

House Republicans Hit SEC on Climate Disclosure (The Hill)

Twenty-one House Republicans led by Bill Posey (R-Florida) are alleging that an SEC initiative that presses companies to disclose information about climate risks will hurt corporations and investors alike.

UN Climate Envoy Expects Dual-Track Negotiations (AP)

Talks on a new global climate accord, bogged down for years in negotiations among nearly 200 countries, will increasingly move outside the sluggish UN framework and focus on a streamlined group of countries, special UN envoy Gro Harlem Brundtland said.

U.S. Calls 17-Country Green Meet in April (Times of India)

Even though the U.S. climate bill is in the doldrums, the Obama administration is going to organize the 17-country Major Economies Forum meeting in April to spur debate with the key players, such as India and China.

Copenhagen Climate Summit Undone by 'Arrogance' (BBC News)

The "disappointing" outcome of December's climate summit was largely down to "arrogance" on the part of rich countries, according to economist Lord Stern.

Bolivia Summit to Seek Global Climate Change Referendum (AFP)

An alternative "people's conference" on climate change in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba in April will seek to advance an international global warming referendum, organizers said.

Government to Continue Climate Ads Despite Criticism from Watchdog (Guardian)

The UK government has pledged to continue its campaigns on climate change, despite the advertising watchdog banning two of its press ads.

Brown's Government Says Carbon Plants Will Add 100,000 Jobs (Bloomberg)

Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government said carbon capture and storage projects may add $10 billion a year to the UK economy and create 100,000 jobs by 2030.

Pacific Smelt Listed as Threatened Due to Warming (AP)

The Pacific smelt, a small silvery fish that was a staple of Northwest American Indian tribes, is getting federal protection because it's been declining toward extinction due to global warming and other factors.

Offshore Wind a Boon to the Shipping Industry (Green Inc.)

With ocean-going trade slackening amid the global recession, shipping companies and shipyard operators in Europe are finding the offshore wind industry to be a welcome ally in weathering the bad times.

Utility Regulators Want Yucca Open (Wall Street Journal)

An organization of state utility regulators on Tuesday joined a number of states in challenging the DOE's plan to drop a site at Yucca Mountain, Nev., from consideration as a repository for high-level radioactive waste.

Taiwan Says to Cut CO2 Emissions 30% by 2020 (Reuters)

CO2 emissions from all sources in Taiwan should drop by at least 30% below the 2020 business-as-usual emissions, the Environmental Protection Administration said, making it "the most stringent goal in Asia."

BYD Scales Back Its Electric-Car Plans (Bloomberg)

BYD Co., the Chinese carmaker backed by Warren Buffett, has given up a plan to mass produce electric cars in China by the middle of this year, the South China Morning Post said.