Energy Literacy Advocates Newsroom

November 12, 2008

The International Energy Agency (IEA) released its 2008 World Energy Report. The Report stressed that world energy systems face a crossroads, and must combat patently unsustainable behaviors. Despite the recent economic downturns which have lessened demand on oil, the Report states that "Oil is the world’s vital source of energy and will remain so for many years to come, even under the most optimistic of assumptions about the pace of development
and deployment of alternative technology."

Given the world's reliance on oil, the IEA calls for radical and coordinated policy action from national and international authorities in order to both decarbonize energy sources while speeding up the transition to alternative energy forms. The IEA promoted increasing financial incentives and regulatory frameworks, and removing existing conventional energy subsidies, as viable policy paths. The Report stresses that any policy choice must support both energy-security andclimate-policy goals in an integrated way.

While the IEA holds that world oil has yet to reach a peak, the fact that oil field declines are accelerating should prompt government actors, despite the fall in oil prices, to continue aggressively investing in alternative energy paths.

To read the IEA World Energy Report, and access other IEA materials, click here.

Labels: energy policy, environment, oil price, oil supply

Is sheer market economics dictating the recent surge in hybrid and compact flourescent light bulb purchases? The U.S. is at a "tipping point," with people beginning to factor energy use into everyday decisions, says Lee Schipper in The Wall Street Journal. Schipper, who has studied energy consumption for decades, declares the driver isn't ecology, bur rather "Sadly, it's economics. No pain, no gain."

Columnist Jeffrey Ball attributes Europe's energy consumption patterns - where the average resident consumes less than half as much oil each year as the average American - to high energy taxes, rather than environmental awareness. These economic penalties make conservation rational and not just virtuous.

For the full text of this article, click here.

Labels: economy, energy sources, environment, oil price, oil supply/demand

In this New York Times article, a new trend in corporate branding is revealed - companies rushing to provide their names and funds to wind farms. Businesses from John Deere to Steelcase furniture are investing both in construction and energy credits from these farms, hoping to reap the profits both from alternative energy and a responsible corporate image.

For the full article on this green corporate trend, click here.

Labels: economy, energy sources, environment

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) revealed stronger than anticipated diesel emission standards today from Houston, Texas. Applicable to trains and shipping, the EPA's action matches those emission guidelines already applicable to large diesel trucks and buses, and for construction, mining and agricultural equipment.

This article further describes the EPA's new standards, which aim to aid communities in achieving better ozone standards.

Labels: energy policy, environment

The article below, from Time magazine, does a wonderful job of framing 1) how the mountain west region is more vulnerable to energy price spikes and climate change, 2) how the mountain west can play an integral (and profitable) role in a new energy future, and 3) how states might provide a "prototype" environment for new energy policies prior to their adoption by the federal government.

Read the article here.

Labels: energy policy, environment, oil prices, renewables

There has been a lot of talk lately about the environmental impact of biofuel production from a food and water supply standpoint, not to mention the impacts of changing over land use patterns to accommodate biofuel crops. All points are worthy of serious discussion, and while biofuels will likely play a role in our future energy mix it must be implemented carefully to ensure the environmental impact is positive. For the US a good example of this would be growing cellulosic crops on otherwise unused arid land in the great plains region. This could be done without irrigation and with little or no fertilizer used. The catch - how to transport either the biomass or the processed fuel to consumers.

Read the article here.

Labels: biofuels, environment

While not in the same fancy table format as in the magazine (subscribers see page 124 of the November 12th edition of Time Magazine), here is a roundup of the environmental positions of the presidential candidates as provided by Time (view the original article here):


Friday, Nov. 02, 2007
The Eco Vote
By Jeffrey Kluger
The most remarkable thing about the environmental debates taking place in this year's presidential campaign is that they're occurring at all. Once the stuff of a few hug-the-planet bromides in green states like Vermont and Oregon, the environment is one of the hot topics of the 2008 campaign. Yes, there are some candidates who haven't gotten the message (witness Fred Thompson's loopy joke that global warming is taking place on Mars and Jupiter too). But for voters shopping for a green Prez, it's all at once a buyer's market. Here's how the Big Six candidates shape up.

[Energy Literacy note - Each candidate provides their views on each of the following categories, in this order: 1)Carbon Caps, 2)Energy Efficiency, 3)Mileage, 4)Nuclear Energy, 5)Drilling]

HILLARY CLINTON
1) Supports cap-and-trade, allowing businesses to swap carbon credits. Seeks an 80% carbon cut by 2050
2) Seeks a 10% reduction in national energy use by 2020. Wants new federal buildings to be “zero emission” by 2030
3) Calls for raising gas-mileage (CAFE) standards to 35 m.p.g. within 10 years. Will use administrative power if Congress declines to act
4) Has not taken a strong position on nuclear power; calls herself “agnostic” on the topic
5) Has opposed drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and in the Atlantic

JOHN EDWARDS
1) Supports cap-and-trade beginning in 2010 and 80% reduction in carbon output by 2050
2) Wants 15% cut in energy use by 2018. Seeks efficiency standards for federal buildings and vehicles
3) Wants 40-m.p.g. national average to be achieved by 2016. Proposes $1 billion per year fund to stimulate innovations in fuel efficiency
4) Opposes expanded use of nuclear power. Worries about safety
5) Opposes drilling in ANWR and offshore. Voted against both while in the Senate

RUDY GIULIANI
1) Acknowledges global warming but rejects cap-and-trade. Has not proposed any specific carbon-reduction targets
2) Broadly approves of alternative-energy sources and improved efficiency, but has no specific proposals
3) Hasn’t called for specific changes in auto-mileage requirements. Not seen as likely to do so
4) Supports increased use of nuclear energy. His private firm has conducted security work for the nuclear industry
5) Supports drilling in the Gulf of Mexico as well as in ANWR. Has received heavy campaign contributions from oil and gas industries

JOHN MCCAIN
1) Co-sponsor of Senate cap-and-trade bill; seen as a bipartisan leader on the issue. Wants 65% reduction in carbon by 2050
2) Generally supports increased energy efficiency but has not announced specific targets
3) Calls generally for raising CAFE standards. In past has advocated 35 m.p.g.
4) Supports expanded use of nuclear energy. Advocates including it as part of a broad mix of nonpetroleum power sources
5) Opposes drilling in ANWR. Has consistently voted against it despite party pressure favoring expanded exploration

MITT ROMNEY
1) Would consider cap-and-trade only if part of a larger global plan
2) Generally supports improved efficiency but does not address the issue regularly and offers no targets
3) Would not support mileage goals as a stand-alone measure. Would consider them only if they were part of a comprehensive energy plan
4) Supports more use of nuclear power as part of energy mix
5) Supports drilling in ANWR and offshore and stresses the point in video on his campaign website

BARACK OBAMA
1) Supports cap-and-trade legislation and calls for an 80% carbon reduction by 2050
2) Stresses innovation as a means to improve efficiency. Calls for a 50% improvement by 2030
3) Has alternately called for 50 m.p.g. within 18 years or 1-m.p.g.-improvement per year rule. To ease transition, wants tax credits for automakers
4) Is willing to explore expanded use of nuclear power. Not an enthusiast
5) Opposes ANWR drilling. Missed 2007 Senate vote on drilling off the coast of Virginia

Conclusion
So who's the greenest in this red-blue scrum? For the GOP, it's McCain. For the Dems, a toss-up. But beyond the Big Six, there's a surprise seventh: Bill Richardson. The New Mexico Guv sets higher targets than the rest: a 90% cut in carbon by 2050; 50 m.p.g. by 2020. He would also slash oil imports 85% by 2025. Being a second-tier candidate may free him to take chances. Among green voters, that's a way to make it to the top tier.

Labels: election 2008, environment

While climate change facts and figures are much harder to nail down due to their subjective nature, hundreds of the world's best scientists have joined together to draw reasonable conclusions on the subject. The results are clear - climate change is occuring and human activity is most certainly the cause.

"Climate change is 'severe and so sweeping that only urgent, global action' can head it off, a United Nations scientific panel said in a report on global warming issued Saturday. The report produced by the Nobel prize-winning panel warns of the devastating impact for developing countries and the threat of species extinction posed by the climate crisis."

Read the full article here.

Labels: energy policy, environment

For those confused about the scientific facts behind climate change this article offers a good primer. It also touches on possible solutions...

________________________________________________________
The CO2 from fossil fuels lingers in the atmosphere, so global warming can't be undone. But catastrophe can still be averted.
By Bill McKibben
National Geographic Magazine, October 2007
http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/2007-10/carbon-crisis/carbon-crisis.html


Here's how it works. Before the industrial revolution, the Earth's atmosphere contained about 280 parts per million of carbon dioxide. That was a good amount–"good" defined as "what we were used to." Since the molecular structure of carbon dioxide traps heat near the planet's surface that would otherwise radiate back out to space, civilization grew up in a world whose thermostat was set by that number. It equated to a global average temperature of about 57 degrees Fahrenheit (about 14 degrees Celsius), which in turn equated to all the places we built our cities, all the crops we learned to grow and eat, all the water supplies we learned to depend on, even the passage of the seasons that, at higher latitudes, set our psychological calendars.

Once we started burning coal and gas and oil to power our lives, that 280 number started to rise. When we began measuring in the late 1950s, it had already reached the 315 level. Now it's at 380, and increasing by roughly two parts per million annually. That doesn't sound like very much, but it turns out that the extra heat that CO2 traps, a couple of watts per square meter of the Earth's surface, is enough to warm the planet considerably. We've raised the temperature more than a degree Fahrenheit (0.56 degrees Celsius) already. It's impossible to precisely predict the consequences of any further increase in CO2 in the atmosphere. But the warming we've seen so far has started almost everything frozen on Earth to melting; it has changed seasons and rainfall patterns; it's set the sea to rising.

No matter what we do now, that warming will increase some–there's a lag time before the heat fully plays out in the atmosphere. That is, we can't stop global warming. Our task is less inspiring: to contain the damage, to keep things from getting out of control. And even that is not easy. For one thing, until recently there's been no clear data suggesting the point where catastrophe looms. Now we're getting a better picture–the past couple of years have seen a series of reports indicating that 450 parts per million CO2 is a threshold we'd be wise to respect. Beyond that point, scientists believe future centuries will likely face the melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets and a subsequent rise in sea level of giant proportion. Four hundred fifty parts per million is still a best guess (and it doesn't include the witches' brew of other, lesser, greenhouse gases like methane and nitrous oxide). But it will serve as a target of sorts for the world to aim at. A target that's moving, fast. If concentrations keep increasing by two parts per million per year, we're only three and a half decades away.




So the math isn't complicated–but that doesn't mean it isn't intimidating. So far only the Europeans and Japanese have even begun to trim their carbon emissions, and they may not meet their own modest targets. Meanwhile, U.S. carbon emissions, a quarter of the world's total, continue to rise steadily–earlier this year we told the United Nations we'd be producing 20 percent more carbon in 2020 than we had in 2000. China and India are suddenly starting to produce huge quantities of CO2 as well. On a per capita basis (which is really the only sensible way to think about the morality of the situation), they aren't anywhere close to American figures, but their populations are so huge, and their economic growth so rapid, that they make the prospect of a worldwide decline in emissions seem much more daunting. The Chinese are currently building a coal-fired power plant every week or so. That's a lot of carbon.

Everyone involved knows what the basic outlines of a deal that could avert catastrophe would look like: rapid, sustained, and dramatic cuts in emissions by the technologically advanced countries, coupled with large-scale technology transfer to China, India, and the rest of the developing world so that they can power up their emerging economies without burning up their coal. Everyone knows the big questions, too: Are such rapid cuts even possible? Do we have the political will to make them and to extend them overseas?

The first question–is it even possible?–is usually addressed by fixating on some single new technology (hydrogen! ethanol!) and imagining it will solve our troubles. But the scale of the problem means we'll need many strategies. Three years ago a Princeton team made one of the best assessments of the possibilities. Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow published a paper in Science detailing 15 stabilization wedges"–changes big enough to really matter, and for which the technology was already available or clearly on the horizon. Most people have heard of some of them: more fuel-efficient cars, better-built homes, wind turbines, biofuels like ethanol. Others are newer and less sure: plans for building coal-fired power plants that can separate carbon from the exhaust so it can be "sequestered" underground. (See Illustration "How to Cut Emissions.")

These approaches have one thing in common: They're more difficult than simply burning fossil fuel. They force us to realize that we've already had our magic fuel and that what comes next will be more expensive and more difficult. The price tag for the global transition will be in the trillions of dollars. Of course, along the way it will create myriad new jobs, and when it's complete, it may be a much more elegant system. (Once you've built the windmill, the wind is free; you don't need to guard it against terrorists or build a massive army to control the countries from which it blows.) And since we're wasting so much energy now, some of the first tasks would be relatively easy. If we replaced every incandescent bulb that burned out in the next decade anyplace in the world with a compact fluorescent, we'd make an impressive start on one of the 15 wedges. But in that same decade we'd need to build 400,000 large wind turbines–clearly possible, but only with real commitment. We'd need to follow the lead of Germany and Japan and seriously subsidize rooftop solar panels; we'd need to get most of the world's farmers plowing their fields less, to build back the carbon their soils have lost. We'd need to do everything all at once.

As precedents for such collective effort, people sometimes point to the Manhattan Project to build a nuclear weapon or the Apollo Program to put a man on the moon. But those analogies don't really work. They demanded the intense concentration of money and intelligence on a single small niche in our technosphere. Now we need almost the opposite: a commitment to take what we already know how to do and somehow spread it into every corner of our economies, and indeed our most basic activities. It's as if NASA's goal had been to put all of us on the moon.

Not all the answers are technological, of course–maybe not even most of them. Many of the paths to stabilization run straight through our daily lives, and in every case they will demand difficult changes. Air travel is one of the fastest growing sources of carbon emissions around the world, for instance, but even many of us who are noble about changing lightbulbs and happy to drive hybrid cars chafe at the thought of not jetting around the country or the world. By now we're used to ordering take-out food from every corner of the world every night of our lives–according to one study, the average bite of food has traveled nearly 1,500 miles (2,414 kilometers) before it reaches an American's lips, which means it's been marinated in (crude) oil. We drive alone, because it's more convenient than adjusting our schedules for public transit. We build ever bigger homes even as our family sizes shrink, and we watch ever bigger TVs, and–well, enough said. We need to figure out how to change those habits.

Probably the only way that will happen is if fossil fuel costs us considerably more. All the schemes to cut carbon emissions–the so-called cap-and-trade systems, for instance, that would let businesses bid for permission to emit–are ways to make coal and gas and oil progressively more expensive, and thus to change the direction in which economic gravity pulls when it applies to energy. If what we paid for a gallon of gas reflected even a portion of its huge environmental cost, we'd be driving small cars to the train station, just like the Europeans. And we'd be riding bikes when the sun shone.

The most straightforward way to raise the price would be a tax on carbon. But that's not easy. Since everyone needs to use fuel, it would be regressive–you'd have to figure out how to keep from hurting poor people unduly. And we'd need to be grown-up enough to have a real conversation about taxes–say, about switching away from taxes on things we like (employment) to taxes on things we hate (global warming). That may be too much to ask for–but if it is, then what chance is there we'll be able to take on the even more difficult task of persuading the Chinese, the Indians, and all who are lined up behind them to forgo a coal-powered future in favor of something more manageable? We know it's possible–earlier this year a UN panel estimated that the total cost for the energy transition, once all the pluses and minuses were netted out, would be just over 0.1 percent of the world's economy each year for the next quarter century. A small price to pay.

In the end, global warming presents the greatest test we humans have yet faced. Are we ready to change, in dramatic and prolonged ways, in order to offer a workable future to subsequent generations and diverse forms of life? If we are, new technologies and new habits offer some promise. But only if we move quickly and decisively–and with a maturity we've rarely shown as a society or a species. It's our coming-of-age moment, and there are no certainties or guarantees. Only a window of possibility, closing fast but still ajar enough to let in some hope.

Labels: environment, oil supply/demand