Stacy Feldman's Climate Chronicles

U.S. Governors Ask Congress To Stop EPA Rules (Wall Street Journal)

Governors of 18 U.S. states on Wednesday urged Congress to stop "harmful" EPA regulation of greenhouse-gas emissions, saying the agency isn't equipped to deal with "the very real potential for economic harm."

Sen. Levin: Climate Bill Must Take Go-Slow Approach with Factories (The Hill)

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) has provided Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) a wish list of items for climate change legislation that includes a minimum 10-year delay before greenhouse gas limits are imposed on industrial facilities.

Virginia Passes Offshore Drilling Bills (Washington Business Journal)

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell signed legislation that would apportion any state revenue from offshore drilling toward transportation and energy research, but fiscal experts said it's highly uncertain when the state could realize any revenue from such activity.

Obama's Trade Goal Fights His Clean-Energy Plan at Export Bank (Bloomberg)

Pres. Obama's goals of boosting U.S. exports and combating climate change are colliding as the U.S. Export-Import Bank expands financing for oil, gas, mining and power-plant projects.

Senate Bill Expands Offshore Wind Incentives to 2020 (Sustainable Business)

U.S. Senators Susan Collins (R-Maine), Tom Carper (D-Del.), Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) introduced legislation that would extend production and investment tax credits for offshore wind power until 2020.

RI Business Group Opposes Wind Power Agreement (AP)

An organization that represents some of Rhode Island's largest electricity users has come out against a proposed power-purchase agreement between National Grid and the developer of a wind farm in state waters.

UN climate science chief Rajendra Pachauri welcomed today's announcement of an outside audit that could help scientists win back public and political support for the battered consensus on human-caused climate change.

"It is critically important that the science we bring into our reports — and that we disseminate on a wide scale — is accepted by communities across the globe, by governments, by businesses, by civil society," Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said at UN headquarters.

The remark followed UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's formal announcement that an independent review of the IPCC would be carried out by the Amsterdam-based InterAcademy Council (ICA), a multinational organization of the world's science and engineering academies.

The United States should act fast to build up the country's manufacturing industry for renewable energy systems or risk losing green jobs to China and other low-wage nations, according to a new report by advocacy organization Apollo Alliance and Good Jobs First, a labor-oriented research group.

The report's recommendations include fixing the nation's renewable energy stimulus funding so recipients who relocate operations overseas are forced to repay their hefty government handouts.

"We don't currently have the capacity to supply our own demand for clean energy products and systems," Sam Haswell, spokesperson for Apollo Alliance, told SolveClimate.

The U.S. is currently importing about 70 percent of its renewable energy parts from foreign countries, according to the report. If that continues, the report estimates, the U.S. will lose out on 100,000 clean energy manufacturing jobs and nearly 250,000 by 2030.

Arctic Melt to Cost Up to $24 Trillion by 2050 (Reuters)

Arctic ice melting could cost global agriculture, real estate and insurance anywhere from $2.4 trillion to $24 trillion by 2050 in damage from rising sea levels, floods and heat waves, according to a new report.

Climate Change Skepticism a Litmus Test for GOP (Chicago Tribune)

The shift by some prominent Republicans away from backing climate legislation reflects the rising power of climate skeptics in the GOP, where global warming is becoming a litmus test for conservatives.

Interior Department Chooses Alaska for Climate Center (Anchorage Daily News)

Interior Secretary Salazar announced last week that Alaska will be the site of the first of the department's eight planned regional climate science centers, calling the state the "ground zero" of climate change.

Global Climate Battle Plays Out in World Bank (Reuters)

The U.S. and Britain are threatening to withhold support for a $3.75 billion World Bank loan for a coal-fired plant in South Africa.

Gore-Backed Climate Groups Form Single Organization (The Hill)

Two climate change groups that Al Gore founded -- the Alliance for Climate Protection and the Climate Project -- are merging, creating "one of the largest" organizations focused singularly on climate protection in the world, the groups said Friday.

EDP May Cut US Renewables Investment If Energy Bill Falls (Dow Jones)

Portuguese energy company Energias de Portugal SA may reduce its investment in U.S. renewables if lawmakers don't pass legislation favoring its expansion, Chief Executive Antonio Mexia said.

U.S. and Canadian corporate giants will face a record number of resolutions demanding greater disclosure of climate risks at their annual meetings this spring.

Investors have filed 95 global warming resolutions with 82 firms in every industry — a 40 percent leap over last year's 68 climate resolutions — according to data from Ceres, a Boston-based coalition of investors and environmentalists.

Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres, said the boost signifies "a very clear knowledge" that climate risk is "not only an environmental or social or natural resource concern, but a major financial risk and opportunity."

Prominent British researchers at the heart of the hacked email scandal shot down accusations of illegally withholding scientific information charting the planet's temperature, telling a parliamentary hearing that certain governments had prohibited them from publishing all the raw data.

Phil Jones (photo), head scientist of the premier Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, acknowledged that he refused requests for the institute's raw climate data, but only because of confidentiality agreements with national weather stations supplying the figures.

"No breach of the law has been established," said Edward Acton, vice chancellor of university.

Read More

Bookmark/Search this post with:

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

• Add new comment

The UK government is getting ready to reclaim lost ground in wind manufacturing, as well as some lost clout for itself, after last year's embarrassing decision by Danish turbine maker Vestas to close Britain's only wind turbine factory.

Vestas shut down its Isle of Wight onshore blade-making plant in July in the face of public anger to new wind farms. The company said it would be focusing on the American market instead.

But months later, a revival of the UK sector is under way from other wind giants, one that may give the nation a big presence in the offshore wind power manufacturing industry.

The peer review process at the heart of the UN climate science panel is one of the most rigorous in the "history of science," climate scientists said as they attempted to shore up trust in an institution that has been battered in the media.

"It is hard to conceive of a more comprehensive and transparent process than that used by the IPCC," Neville Nicholls, a climate scientist and lead writer on parts of the most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told reporters Thursday.

An error in the 3,000-page IPCC report that exaggerated the rapid melting of the Himalayan glaciers has triggered claims of sloppiness in the panel’s peer-review procedures, and the UN said today it would appoint an independent panel to review the planet's top climate science body.

The world's climate change skeptics have gone a step farther, though, taking advantage of the gaffe to promote their point of view that global warming is not real.

Major Chinese solar panel manufacturers are targeting the fast-growing Japanese market for their panels in 2010 and beyond. The U.S. sector remains fragmented, due to a lack of a national climate change policy, but it looks promising in the longer term, they say.

Japan is aiming for 28 gigawatts of solar power in 10 years. In comparison, current solar capacity worldwide is under 17 gigawatts.

"Some countries, when they put out a national goal, you don’t know whether they will achieve it, but Japan seems to have a good track record," said Shawn Qu, CEO of Canadian Solar, a Chinese manufacturer of solar power modules.

"If the [Japanese] government puts out the target, then they have the mechanism to make sure it happens."

Read More

Bookmark/Search this post with:

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

• Add new comment

A report to be released in the first half of this year finds that Australia can use solar and wind power to produce 100 percent of its electricity in 10 years using technologies that are available now.

The study is being compiled by the Victoria–based advocacy group Beyond Zero Emissions and is based on the research of engineers and scientists.

"We have concluded that there are no technological impediments to transforming Australia’s stationary energy sector to zero emissions over the next 10 years," said Matthew Wright, executive director of Beyond Zero Emissions.

Read More

Bookmark/Search this post with:

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

• 14 comments