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As we move toward climate talks in Copenhagen, and energy policy is being debated and formulated within the Senate and House, I thought it was a good time to take a look at my own clean-energy policy wish list.
In a recent Clean Edge/Green America report, we highlighted five financing models that could serve the U.S. on the capital investment side of the equation. But to remain competitive on the global clean-energy playing field, and to ensure our status as the world’s preeminent innovation nation, the U.S. must implement aggressive federal policy and regulatory actions.
Here are six federal policy actions that I believe would go a long way in moving the clean-energy needle forward – and ensuring America’s status as a clean-tech leader, rather than laggard.
1) Enact a Federal Renewable Energy Standard (RES). For the past decade, states have been in a leadership role when it comes to renewable energy standards (RES) and renewable portfolio standards (RPS). California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently issued an executive order to increase the state’s RPS to 33 percent by 2020. While I want to guarantee that states continue to have the right to manage and implement their own standards, a federal RES would go a long way in providing guidance and guaranteeing that more states join the movement. We believe that a minimum federal RES of 20-25 percent by 2020 or 2025, designed with enforcement mechanisms -- real incentives for succeeding and penalties for failing -- is doable and desirable. And renewables must be clearly defined. There’s a reason why 26 states out of 29 with RPS, like California and Illinois, don’t include nuclear power and “clean coal” in their standards toolkit. I advise the U.S. federal government do the same.
2) Ensure Government Procurement of Clean Energy, Green Buildings and Energy Efficiency. The federal government has often been a leader in moving markets via its procurement decisions. It has happened with aerospace, transistors and other technologies in the past. As one of the largest single purchasing entities in the world, its purchasing decisions can have a significant impact on success vs. failure for an industry. Recently, the federal government has made some significant strides in aligning its purchasing with sustainable practices, like Obama’s recent energy efficiency, resource conservation and sustainability directive for federal agencies. But now government agencies must not only create their own plans, but meet targets, offer transparent information, and influence suppliers. They would do well to take a page out of Wal-Mart’s current sustainability initiatives, in which vendors need to supply to certain standards or get out of the way.
3) Overhaul energy subsidies to shift from imported fossil fuels to domestic clean energy. Historically, the U.S. has supported energy industries that are already relatively mature. The U.S. still provides hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies to oil and gas industries that are controlled by some of the wealthiest companies on the planet. I believe that the federal government should reassess this focus on supporting profitable fossil fuel industries, and shift these subsidies to the industries of the future: solar, wind, geothermal, energy efficiency and the like.
4) Improve Energy Efficiency Standards Across the Board. Energy efficiency, often called the “fifth fuel,” is usually the least expensive option for reducing energy demand. The federal government can go a long way in reducing energy use, greenhouse gas emissions and U.S. reliance on foreign fossil fuel supplies by setting aggressive efficiency standards for vehicles, buildings, appliances, HVAC, industrial motors and more. Many of the energy efficiency provisions in the Waxman-Markey (ACES) bill have been hailed for their job-creating, energy-reducing impacts – and I agree that this is one of the best areas to focus efforts.
5) Put a Price on Carbon. For a number of reasons, this remains the most contentious policy recommendation. But I see three major options that would begin to bring the U.S. into alignment with other nations that are supporting climate policies and working to cap emissions. The following ideas are not mutually exclusive – indeed a combination of the following could go a long way in putting a price on carbon and setting an enforceable cap:
6) Support the Build Out of New, Reliable Electric Grids. The electric grids in the U.S. are outdated and deteriorating. By making the build out of new electric transmission lines and smart grids a national priority, the U.S. would be investing in our collective future. Policies would need to streamline and speed the process of building new lines to renewable generation sources – and the federal government could play a supportive role in setting open standards for smart-grid devices and networks that make the grid more intelligent, efficient and reliable. Industry and government groups played a central role in setting the open standards that enabled the build out of the Internet, and they can do the same thing for the smart grid.
I firmly believe that we can meet our future energy needs with conservation and efficiency; the build out of a smarter more reliable 21st century grid (including electrified transportation); and the deployment and integration of renewables such as solar, wind, and geothermal along with advanced energy-storage technologies. This is not some far flung pipe dream, but an achievable reality being pursued by smart, technologically savvy global stakeholders. But shifts in policy, like those highlighted above, will be required to meet these ambitious and critical national clean-tech goals. If the U.S. wishes to lead and innovate, the Federal government must act now.
Ron Pernick is cofounder and managing director of Clean Edge, Inc. and coauthor of The Clean Tech Revolution.
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If anything, I was restrained in my criticism. This is an unprioritized laundry list of possible market adjustments. For instance, the author calls for a large RES, a carbon tax, and a cap and trade program. Why should we need all three? About the only thing the author didn't call for was increased R&D, yet this is probably the best way to expedite the point at which renewables can compete on their own against fossil fuels.
Regarding your wish to make the market more "fair"; do you consider an RES to be "fair"? Why should we exclude nuclear and carbon sequestration schemes from a large segment of the market?
Quibbling about subsides for fossil fuel industries, which don't significantly alter the energy market dynamics (as they are nearly negligible on a per unit of energy produced basis) seem petty and counterproductive when you are planning to ask for dramatically larger subsidies for renewables.
Anonymous#1
You are absolutely right about nuclear. But, to keep up with China and Europe we will end up investing in baseband nuclear plants to replace and expand on aging ones. They should be appropiately priced though, to account for waste and potential accidents. Their 60 year lifespan is attractive to Utilities. In the meantime, we also have over 330 GW of Offshore wind potential on the OCS. An eastern grid of Offhore wind can be developed faster than a dozen nuclear plants and provide more energy without the waste. It's not baseband, but combined with Natural Gas it can be.
If anything is myopic, then it is paying trillions of petrodollars to countries that are hostile to the US. It unnecessarily funds the US adversaries in Middle East wars.
Such wars are effectively a further multi-trillion subsidy to the fossil fuel industry.
Only a serious commitment to renewables can reverse this ominous trend.
Fossil & nuclear protagonists ignore & try to discredit the serious threat posed by climate change & nuclear weapons proliferation. Also the threat posed by nuclear plants during war -- when power plants are prime targets.
The radioactivity inside a nuclear power reactor dwarfs that of a nuclear weapon, and if one should be blown up in wartime, Hiroshima will look like a Sunday-school picnic.
Nuclear plants are not CO2 neutral, and in future will be anything but -- as high grade uranium ores (and decommissioned nuclear weapons) are used up, low grade ores will be used. These require massive fossil fuel expenditure.
Agreed that the Government should not subsidize fossil fuels, but your concluding line is, to borrow from "an unprioritized laundry list of possible market adjustments". There is not a pot of money out there that some group of wise people said "this is the optimal amount that taxpayers should pony up to support energy". Expenditure on energy subsidies has been the result of a cumulation of historical decisions that are easy to implement and hard to undo once they are in place. That level of expenditure might be too much on energy, or it might be too little. It is unlikely to be just right.
But say we take the $15 billion, or $30 billion (depending on how one defines a subsidy) of annual subsidies to fossil fuels and switch that amount directly to supporting renewable energy. How would you prioritize that, Mr. Pernick? And in what form would you give it? Support for the installation of solar cells? Well, if you do that too fast, you may simply drive up the price of those cells, as happened in response to Germany's subsidies. Subsidize R&D? Perhaps better, but how you going to choose among the competing claims for that money? And what would you do to avoid locking in old, inefficient technologies, or making the mistake of betting on the wrong horse, as happened with subsidies for first-generation biofuels -- which continue to grow apace. Shouldn't consumers, ultimately, be paying the true cost of energy? Yet subsidies hide that true cost. So what is your exit plan?
This letter was written in spite of an appeal by the Wamanoag Indians over their religious beliefs on Nantucket Sound and the Cape Wind project. Brona Simon, Massachusetts State Historic Preservation Officer, said the request needs further study. This decision will inject delays of more than a year into the Cape Wind timeline.
The United Nations Climate Change Conference takes place DEC 7 to DEC 17 and appears that Massachusetts wants the claim of the Wampanoag Indians out of the picture before the conference. Representative Edward J. Markey, a national leader on energy and the environment, chairs the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming and the Energy and Environment Subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee is not a proponent of the Wamanoag Indians ,the people he represents.
It should be brought to the attention of the United Nations that the Wampanoags say their spiritual greetings of the sun require unobstructed views and say turbines could disturb the ancestral burying grounds.
The North American Indians have rights secured under Indian treaties and agreements with the United States. They have the right to ask for the divine blessing of the creator.
The Indians were the first people. They have a right to be heard. Lets tell the world the genocide of millions of their people, the theft of their lands, and the relentless assault on their culture.
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2009/10/fossil-fuels-subsidies-more-than-doubles-those-for-renewables
In particular, this article was intended as federal policy advice; so lets consider for a moment how advice to close the strategic petroleum reserve and defund the low income home energy assistance program--both considered a fossil fuel subsidy by the ELI--in order to increase funding for renewables would go over on capitol hill. To accelerate renewable energy technology adoption rates to a significant degree will require market intervention on a scale that is huge by comparison to the paltry few billion dollars per year given to the fossil fuel industry so it is a waste of time fighting over those few crumbs (and many of the subsidies are things rational people would want to keep funding anyway). Even now, the market value of the set asides for renewable generation in the US greatly exceeds the subsidies given to fossil fuels and a large amount of funding for renewables is collected as fees on utility bills.
Steven
I don't recall anyone suggesting that continued reliance on fossil fuels was a good idea. The article written here offers no clear plan for how to reverse our dependence on oil. Indeed, it omits any reference to research funding for new renewable technologies and instead advocates for top-down market manipulation that isn't especially likely to spur technological innovation. In particular, it calls for virtually every form of top-down market intervention rather than a coherent strategy with clear goals and reasonable projections.
The author of comment #6 also writes: "Nuclear plants are not CO2 neutral, and in future will be anything but -- as high grade uranium ores (and decommissioned nuclear weapons) are used up, low grade ores will be used. These require massive fossil fuel expenditure."
This is nonsense. Mining and processing uranium ore does require energy expenditure--as does manufacture of PV cells, wind turbines, etc.--but there is no requirement that this be from fossil fuels. Nuclear fission technology is inherently carbon neutral as no CO2 is produced in the fission process.
Steven
Fact: We need more renewable energy on the US grid to stop relying on third world countries for our sources of energy. We all know this. If you don't or don't agree with this, why are you reading Renewable Energy World.?
How about we take this one step further and figure out where most of the steel in the ground has been financed to date? The answer is the free market. Not the RPS, but everyday people and businesses buying green power from their utilities. Over 50% of the renewable energy steel in the ground to date was built to satisfy the volunteer demand for it. Now, would that steel in the ground have been build anyway? There is no way to quantify that. I guess we could make volunteer renewable programs illegal and see what gets built... Bet you things come to a screeching halt.
Solution: Here in Oregon we have a bill called SB1149. That requires all investor owned utilities in Oregon to have a green power program that offers a 100% renewable option and they cannot profit from it. It sets up a committee made of public and privet energy players to audit the program 13 times a year to make sure the funds go to purchasing renewable energy and requires a third party marketer to market the program.
Effect? Oregon has gone from a nobody for wind energy to in the top 5 states in the country and has one of the largest wind farms in the US under construction with the largest in the world in the permitting process. Our RPS was passed in 2007. We were already in the top 8 states in the country by the time that passed.
So there you have it. The free market works. So there is a new idea to chew on.
I don't agree with the conclusion that SB1149 has made Oregon one of the top 5 states in the country for wind. Investors are in this business to make a profit; and sure if increased prices for green tags and higher prices for renewables increase the value of the output from their investment, they are more likely to invest. But compared to other states in the US, the NW has a consistent wind source near the existing transmission grid, and a steady supply of cheap hydro to balance the wind's intermittentcy. When comparing across states, the key drivers are in these physical characteristics of the existing systems that make the biggest differences.
It's time for the rest of the world (UN) to step up to the plate about what the United States did to the Indians . The US is so critical of genocide around the world! Lets let the Indians have their review of Cape Wind !
While your at home during Thanksgiving with your family give this quote a little thought and who exactley is involved with genocide :
"Since 1970, Native Americans have gathered at noon on Cole's Hill in Plymouth to commemorate a National Day of Mourning on the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. Many Native Americans do not celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims and other European settlers. To them, Thanksgiving Day is a reminder of the genocide of millions of their people, the theft of their lands, and the relentless assault on their culture. Participants in the National Day of Mourning honor Native ancestors and the struggles of Native peoples to survive today. It is a day of remembrance as well as a protest of the racism and oppression which Native Americans continue to experience."
Thank You Rep Ed Markey , Massachusetts
I agree that the NW has several great things going for it for the development of Wind energy. The Northwest is well suited for the development of wind, but the growth of Wind in the NW is a simple case of the laws of supply and demand.
In 1998, there was only one wind farm in the operation in the Northwest and that was Vansycle for a whopping 25MW. All previous wind farm projects had failed up to this point and no others were even in the permitting process. The wind was there, the lines where there, the hydro was there, but the demand was not. Wind was more expensive to build, so why build it? 1999 SB1149 passes, the two investor owned utilities are forced to create a volunteer green power program and the everyday people of the pacific northwest can choose where they want to buy their energy from. Suddenly three wind farms (State Line, Condon and Klondike P1) go in to the permitting process with an operational date of 2001 for a combined 373MW's. A 1400% increase! Since that time, over 150,000 homes and businesses in the NW have made that switch to volunteering to buy renewable energy from their utility providers while another 2734+MW in Oregon and Washington have come on line. That is proving to investors that building a wind farm in the NW will mean that they have a buyer for their product upon completion. All I am clamming here is that 50% of this growth is due to SB1149.
IF you want to talk investment and the price of REC, then your assessment that REC price equaling the growth of wind in the NW over the last nine years is complete nonsense. Sorry man, but in the years between 2000 and 2007 REC pricing was steady and in many cases went down due to so many wind farms coming on line in such a short time. In 2007, SB838 or Oregon's RPS was passed and since that time REC prices have gone through the roof. California's 30% by 2020 RPS has not helped prices either. Need cheap REC's? Go to a state like Oklahoma without an RPS. Supply and demand.
To Hard bitten Farmers, wary of carbon regulations that only increase their costs, Building soil carbon is a savory bone, to do well while doing good.
Biochar provides the tool powerful enough to cover Farming's carbon foot print while lowering cost simultaneously.
The Clean Energy Partnerships Act of 2009
The bill is designed to ensure that any US domestic cap-and-trade bill provides maximum incentives and opportunities for the US agricultural and forestry sectors to provide high-quality offsets and GHG emissions reductions for credit or financial incentives. Carbon offsets play a critical role in keeping the costs of a cap-and-trade program low for society as well as for capped sectors and entities, while providing valuable emissions reductions and income generation opportunities for the agricultural sector. The bill specifically identifies biochar production and use as eligible for offset credits, and identifies biochar as a high priority for USDA R&D, with funding authorized by the bill.
To read the full text of the bill, go to: http://www.biochar-international.org/sites/default/files/END09F94.pdf.
Senator Baucus is co-sponsoring a bill along with Senator Tester (D-MT) called WE CHAR. Water Efficiency via Carbon Harvesting and Restoration Act! S. 1713, It focuses on promoting biochar technology to address invasive species and forest biomass. It includes grants and loans for biochar market research and development, biochar characterization and environmental analyses. It directs USDI and USDA to provide loan guarantees for biochar technologies and on-the-ground production with an emphasis on biomass from public lands. And the USGS is to do biomas availability assessments.
Individual and groups can show support for WECHAR by signing online at:
www.biocharmatters.org
http://www.biocharmatters.org/
Carbon to the Soil, the only ubiquitous and economic place to put it.
I have lived off grid for 25+ years but I still have an impact on the environment, whether its encouraging my dogs to kill wood rats, or my shooting deer, or my driving to town to pick up my junk mail. Six billion people living as comfortable as I do will never be possible, and I'm unwilling to give up any of my comfort just so some one else can add more people to world population. I think there should be a head tax on every human. Eliminate the subsidies for children. Charge parents for the infrastructure necessary to educate, feed, transport, defend, police, medicate, and entertain their offspring. If they cannot afford it then kill them all. Just kidding!
Instead of a carbon tax, I think we need a pollution tax. This would include all greenhouse gasses, mining waste, industrial waste, nuclear waste, farming runoff, livestock waste, human waste, add your own favorites. That would make me pay the full cost of my PV system and extravagant lifestyle.
There should be a strong relationship between the pack who is being led and the leader, if not, the leader is not a leader.
I would like to see more "world leading" and less "individual developed countries race".
The common goal is to reduce greenhouse emissions, and a lot more can be done in developing countries. Technology transfer and education is important between developed and developing countries to achieve this goal.
Technology such as Smart grid gives users options , and it should be like that everywhere. This is not happening in the island of San Andres, Colombia, where renewable energy subsidies where given only to wind energy and not to solar or other renewables, favoring the wind energy contractor. Locals where not informed properly, only until the business was done. I think this is corruption,. and it will probably happen again.
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