PG&E

Pacific Gas & Electric is stepping into high-risk energy experimenting with the government go-ahead to spend $50 million on the first phase of a compressed air energy storage demonstration project.

Compressed air energy storage is not exactly a new technology, but it has yet to be widely deployed because no one quite knows how it would work at a large scale.

The basic idea is this: Excess energy from a power plant or renewable energy source is used to run air compressors that pump air into either storage tanks or naturally occurring caverns underground, where it is stored under pressure. When electricity is needed, the air is expanded via gas turbines, generating energy.

It’s not a completely closed loop, however.

The climate accord announcement is legitimately catching some heat for being too little, too late. The enormity of the crisis cries out for strong binding pollution reduction targets by all countries and massive infusions of public and private capital to catalyze a fast-track transition to a low-carbon economy.

But expecting we’d get all this at COP15 was never realistic. That’s why leading U.S. businesses such as Nike, PG&E and North Face are encouraged by these first positive steps from Copenhagen.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is beginning to bleed members over its staunch opposition to climate legislation intended to reduce the nation's global warming emissions.

John Rowe, CEO of one of the nation’s largest electric utilities, announced the group's latest loss today: Exelon, a $19 billion company with 5.4 million electricity customers, will not renew its membership in the once-essential business group.

Exelon was the third utility in a week to announce it was leaving the Chamber, and one of a growing number of companies urging the business group's executives to change their tune on climate action. Another member, Nike, is under pressure from shareholders, who will be urging the company in a letter tomorrow to also dump the Chamber.

Rowe explained his support for climate legislation while announcing his company's intentions to leave the Chamber during the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy national conference this morning:

“The carbon-based free lunch is over," the Exelon CEO said. "But while we can’t fix our climate problems for free, the price signal sent through a cap-and-trade system will drive low-carbon investments in the most inexpensive and efficient way possible.”

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• Stacy Morford's blog
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"We choose to go...not because [it is] easy, but because [it is] hard, because that goal will serve to measure and organize the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win."
-John Kennedy in his bid for an American moon landing before the end of 1969

With Al Gore's soaring speech last month calling for an America powered with electricity from 100% renewable sources, a stirring vision comes to mind of a Can Do America, an America that looks at the seemingly impossible and says "why not?"

But as David McClellan wrote the other day in SolveClimate, We need a plan. If why not, then how?

In his post, David laid out in clear, nuts n' bolts terms the daunting task we face transforming America's energy economy. By contrast, the moon-shot of the sixties was easy. A few (thousand) rocket scientists, seven dare-devil pilots with the "right stuff" to ride those rockets, and some smart guys with slide rules to point the rockets in the right direction. Before you know it you're on the moon.

Not to make light of that incredible achievement of 40 years ago, but Gore's call to "repower America" requires not just the best and the brightest, but all Americans, to make it happen.

We'll first need to find a way to break through intractable political grid-lock (starting with a long-term extension of the renewable energy tax credit by Congress) and create a policy framework that addresses in minute detail the technical and economic aspects of Gore's Grand Vision.

Has anyone even proposed creating such a plan?

Take a deep breath.

"So goes San Francisco, so goes California and so goes the nation"

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• Tom Schueneman's blog
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