The International Energy Association has spoken. What the world needs now is a clean energy technology revolution. 

June saw the 2010 launch of IEA’s biannual report, Energy Technology Perspectives. Speaking at the launch was Nobuo Tanaka, executive director for IEA. The Gulf oil spill, he said, could prove to be a tipping point in the world’s energy consumption habits. He added that the disaster serves as a tragic reminder that our current path is not sustainable.

As far as the IEA is concerned, this is probably a very important moment to start looking at alternative energy sources. If we, as a collective group of consumers, continue on the business-as-usual path, the scenario for 2050 is looking grim.

This baseline scenario sees carbon emissions rising by 130%, with power generation accounting for 44% of total global emissions in 2050. Oil demand will be up by 70% – that’s five times the oil production in Saudi Arabia today. I’ll leave you to imagine what this means from an energy security perspective.

The other scenario offered by the publication, known as BLUE Map, is the “target” scenario. It assumes that all carbon emissions will be reduced by 50% by 2050 and suggests the least costly way to get there. This 50% reduction, the IEA insists, is the absolute minimum, should we want to keep climate change within the more acceptable 2-3 degree change.

The main focus of this scenario is, of course, weaning the world off fossil fuels. Carbon intensity of energy use would have fallen by 64% by 2050. Demand for coal would drop by 36%, gas by 12%, and oil demand by 4%. Renewable energy would be providing a hefty 40% of primary energy supply and 48% of the electricity generated. As for cars, 80% will be electric, hybrid, or hydrogen-fueled.

And while the world is expected to reduce emissions by 50% by 2050 in the BLUE scenario, it is the OECD that will bear the real burden. Non-OECD countries can get away with just a 50% reduction; OECD countries are looking at cutting 70-80% of their 2007 emissions. This would mean that the electricity sector for these 32 countries would have be “almost completely decarbonized” by 2050.

A portfolio of technologies needed to achieve the carbon emissions under the BLUE Map scenario

So what needs to be done to make this work? Well, gird your loins – the “top priority” will be to increase energy efficiency, reduce energy consumption, and lower energy intensity.

But there’s also some exciting news. The revolution is already under way.

On a global scale, total investment into technology and its deployment between now and 2050 would be about US$45 trillion – 1.1% of average annual global GDP over the period. The good news is, that investment has already begun all around the world.

Even as China grudgingly accepts the mantle of the biggest energy consumer, investment dollars are being poured into renewable energy research. China has already surpassed the United States as the largest producer of clean energy, whether it be hydro, wind, solar, or nuclear.

Germany, Europe’s powerhouse, is lining up renewable energy to compete with nuclear. Currently getting 10% of its energy from renewable energy, Germany’s renewable numbers for 2020 are projected at 38.6% electricity, 15.5% heating and cooling, and 13.2% of the transport sector.

And in the United States, the Obama Administration has been pushing for, and encouraging, clean energy research and development since it came into power. On display are a variety of subsidies and loans guaranteed to tempt even the most conservative producer.  Whether it’s the 30% cash up-front that the government is willing to give renewable energy projects or the vast amounts of cash injections into various energy technologies programs, renewable energy is set to take off in America.

For those investment portfolios that have taken a hit from the BP and Enbridge oil disasters, the IEA report is only going to spur up greater interest in the renewables game. Knowing which companies are enjoying political favor from Washington to Berlin and are at the receiving end of substantial grants is a sure-fire way to repair the damage.

By Marin Katusa

The United States Mountain West has long been a hotbed of experimentation and innovation, due in no small part to a decades-long partnership between government, universities and private enterprise. Throughout the 20th century, the federal government invested in dams, transportation infrastructure and military installations that facilitated economic expansion and the emergence of new private industries.

And according to a new report released today by the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program, the Mountain West has a pivotal role to play in securing our nation’s clean energy future.

In the report, “Centers of Invention: Leveraging the Mountain West Innovation Complex for Energy System Transformation,” Brookings’ Mark Muro and Sarah Rahman detail the unique role that the Mountain West region (Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah) can play in driving innovation to make clean energy cheap and ubiquitous. Building off of their 2009 proposal for energy discovery innovation institutes (E-DIIs), the new report also proposes the creation of four to six new “federally funded, commercialization-oriented, and broadly collaborative energy research and innovation centers,” intended to align existing regional assets to accelerate technology commercialization.

This latest Brookings publication adds to a clear and growing consensus among leading policy organizations that new research and commercialization paradigms are needed to overcome the disjointed and overly stove-piped nature of today’s national energy innovation system. Last year, the Breakthrough Institute and Third Way proposed the creation of a National Institutes of Energy–an institution with similar goals.

There are numerous bottlenecks that slow or prevent the successful commercialization of advanced, next-generation technologies, according to the report. These challenges include the price gap between new clean energy technologies and incumbent, low-cost competitors; limited private-sector capital; spillover risks from research that cause firms to focus on short-term, low-risk research and product development; and a general disconnect between publicly funded research and technology commercialization in the private marketplace.

Combine that with the federal government’s anemic support for energy research and development (R&D)–about $3 billion annually and an order of magnitude less than what the government invests in health and defense-related research–and you have a recipe for a stagnant energy sector ill-equipped to meet the nation’s climate and clean energy goals.

Fortunately, notes the report, the Mountain West region already offers many existing assets that can help advance the nation’s clean energy priorities. These assets include world-leading federal energy research facilities, such as the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Colorado and the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico; leading universities conducting path-breaking research on biomass and biofuels (University of Idaho), nuclear (UNLV), and solar (University of Arizona), among others; and abundant supplies of sustainable energy resources.

For example, every Mountain West state ranks within the top ten nationally for solar power potential and all have high-temperature geothermal resources. Three states–Colorado, New Mexico, and Idaho–rank among the top 15 nationally in wind power potential.

To leverage these regional strengths, Brookings recommends creating a network of energy innovation centers, funded at levels similar to the national labs today, intended to facilitate partnerships among leading universities, labs, and industry to conduct translational R&D capable of both addressing national energy priorities and stimulating regional and national economic growth. The centers would leverage existing regional advantages by pursuing research and commercialization activities organized around themes that are largely determined by the private market.

For example, southern Nevada and Arizona, already national leaders in solar energy innovation and production, could coordinate with universities and leading private solar developers to host a solar energy innovation center to conduct research on the entire solar energy supply chain.

The new report clearly indicates the innovation potential of the country’s regional assets. Last June, Brookings released a similar report highlighting the strong energy innovation resources of the United States’ Great Lakes region. Together, these findings show, unequivocally, that nascent clusters of clean energy innovation and production are forming throughout the country, and that with the right type of integrated public-private partnership, these clusters can transform America’s energy system and its economy.

In the wake of the United States failed cap and trade experiment, it is time for Congress to get behind this bold new research effort and finally make progress on our climate and energy challenges.

By Devon Swezey

In conjunction with North America's largest business-to-business solar event - Solar Power International 2010 taking place Oct. 12-14 in Los Angeles - Solar Energy International is hosting a one-day solar installation course. Intermediate Level PV System Installation on Oct. 11 will focus on National Electrical Code (NEC) requirements, best practices, and safe working procedures for installing and troubleshooting solar systems.

"Students will analyze and troubleshoot ground-fault and commissioning scenarios," course instructor Brian Mehalic says. "Class lectures are combined with individual problem-solving exercises covering a wide range of installation considerations."

Grid interface considerations, disconnects, system labeling requirements, and series fusing will be covered. The course also features a slideshow presentation documenting the best - and worst - installation practices and proper procedures for grid-direct systems, including potential safety hazards.

Also on topic is ground-fault troubleshooting to help participants identify, locate, and troubleshoot ground-faults in PV systems.  The one-day session wraps up with a Q&A to offer professional advice from experts in the solar installation field.

Click here to register for this Solar Energy International course. Members of the Solar Electric Power Association (SEPA) or Solar Energy Industries Association (national SEIA only), nonprofit organizations or government employees are eligible for the discounted member rate of $300. The nonmember workshop rate is $350. Register early, as space is limited.

About Solar Energy International
Solar Energy International (SEI) is a non-profit 501(c)3 solar training and renewable energy educational organization with a mission to help others to use renewable energy and natural building technology through education and technical assistance. For information about SEI's solar PV training curriculum and the 2010 workshop schedule please visit solarenergy.org or call (970) 963-8855.

In a last-minute race to the finish-line, the CEC has approved a staggering 2,800 MW (or 3 GW) of solar projects this month in California.

Among them are Tessera Solar’s 709 MW Imperial Valley Solar project in Imperial County (scaled down from 750 MW, by BLM request) and NextEra Energy’s 250 MW Beacon Solar Energy Project, the first large-scale solar-thermal power projects permitted in California in two decades.

During the same time, only one 760 MW fossil plant was approved: Mirant Corp.’s 760-MW Marsh Landing Generating Station.

This ratio of clean energy approvals to dirty energy approvals reverses the pattern over the last ten years.

While 11 Gigawatts of clean energy languished in “environmental reviews”, between 2000 and 2008, 20 Gigawatts of dirty power plants in California were promptly approved and installed.

The sudden uptick in approvals for the solar projects comes perilously close to a deadline, however. A total of 11,180 MW – or 11 GW-worth of clean energy projects are applying for Recovery Act funds, but the projects have to be under way by year’s-end in order to qualify for the stimulus funding that their private financing is predicated on.

All solar installations can get a 30%-off tax deduction because the current congress figures, accurately, that it’s cheaper to switch to clean energy in the long run, balanced against the high costs of fossil energy (in community health, wars, expensive peak oil exposure and skyrocketing climate change costs).

For businesses that made no profit in the recession (to take a tax break against), that 30% tax credit can instead be taken in the form of a credit. But that expires December 31, 2010.

About 11 Gigawatts of solar has been queued up for years to get approved in California, so getting almost a third of it through the CEC approval process is a major step forward. State regulators, environmental lawyers, and of course, the solar companies involved have been working round the clock over the last year to get this unprecedented supply of clean energy through.

Another 56 Gigawatts of clean energy projects, not applying for Recovery Act funding, and ranging in size from 2,500 MW solar or wind farms to smaller 1 MW community solar or fuel cell projects also await approvals.

The Recovery Act is jump-starting clean energy in America with a level of support for clean energy that this country has never seen before. In the next six months, we’ll know how much actually made it through, not just in California, but nationwide.

By Susan Kraemer

The focus of this new initiative would be on energy security, foreign policy, and expanded energy trade

Canadians are not simply consumers of energy. We are also major exporters of various forms of energy -- including electricity. In 2008, electricity exports to the United States totalled 55.7 terawatt hours, valued at $3.8-billion. Yet there is scope for significant increases in Canadian exports of electricity to the United States because of two key shifts in U.S. energy policy -- the desire for enhanced energy security and the need for clean power.

The U.S. electricity sector is heavily dependent on carbon-intensive coal for about half of its electricity production. For the United States, this provides energy security but not clean energy. In contrast, 75% of Canada's electricity production is defined as clean, mostly in the form of hydro power, wind and nuclear energy.

Increasing electricity trade brings strong economic advantages to Canada, including economic growth, an improved international trade balance, job creation, enhanced regional development, development of carbon offsets, and better flexibility and reliability of the electrical system.

Regional development implications can be especially beneficial as projects such as hydro power and wind developments often take place in areas that have poor economic prospects.

Yet there is no formal mechanism to take advantage of the opportunities that now present themselves. The founding of a Canada-U. S. Energy Trade Council would be a first step to changing that.

An energy trade council would offer a formal process allowing Canada and the U.S. to develop a North American strategy, one in which the U.S. could work toward its goal of secure and clean power and Canada's desire to maximize its electricity export potential. Moreover, such an organization would dispense with the current ad hoc approach to electricity exports, which limits Canada's ability to capture of the full range of economic opportunities a formalized process would generate. To this end our federal government should take a leadership role and work closely with the provinces as owners of the resources.

The focus of this new initiative would be on energy security, foreign policy and expanded energy trade, including all forms of energy, not just electricity. Secure energy has a different connotation than clean energy alone, because oil and natural gas exports are also critical to both the health of the Canadian economy and energy security for U.S. consumers.

The proposed council would comprise members appointed by the prime minister of Canada and the president of the United States, including executive-levelrepresentatives of the regulatory agencies in energy, environment and economic development. It would also involve active participation by provinces and states where key decisions are made on fuel choice and technology.

Projects that result in positive federal-provincial relations rather than conflicts are always welcome in a country with high levels of decentralized decision-making. Electricity exports certainly fall into this category, given that most provinces across Canada have the potential to become net exporters of clean electricity. Indeed, expansion of the electricity grid for exports could also lead to the development of a more integrated domestic grid, which would benefit all regions.

With a resource base that can support strong growth in Canadian exports of electricity to the United States, Canada would be better positioned to enhance its development and leadership role in the application of smart grid technologies. Positive spinoffs of exports to the United States include marketing its clean electricity credentials internationally through the development of new clean power technologies and knowledge-intensive electricity services, particularly in the strong growth economies of China and India.

The time for a Canada-U.S. Energy Trade Council has come. The current ad hoc process is inefficient and the price is paid on both sides of the border through lower economic growth and environmental degradation. A trade council would be a major step toward securing a clean energy future for Canadians and the United States.

By Dr. Roger Goodman

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 — President Obama's $787 billion stimulus — has been marketed as a jobs bill, and that's how it's been judged. The White House says it has saved or created about 3 million jobs, helping avoid a depression and end a recession. Republicans mock it as a Big Government boondoggle that has failed to prevent rampant unemployment despite a massive expansion of the deficit. Liberals complain that it wasn't massive enough.

It's an interesting debate. Politically, it's awkward to argue that things would have been even worse without the stimulus, even though that's what most nonpartisan economists believe. But the battle over the Recovery Act's short-term rescue has obscured its more enduring mission: a long-term push to change the country. It was about jobs, sure, but also about fighting oil addiction and global warming, transforming health care and education, and building a competitive 21st century economy. Some Republicans have called it an under-the-radar scramble to advance Obama's agenda — and they've got a point.

Yes, the stimulus has cut taxes for 95% of working Americans, bailed out every state, hustled record amounts of unemployment benefits and other aid to struggling families and funded more than 100,000 projects to upgrade roads, subways, schools, airports, military bases and much more. But in the words of Vice President Joe Biden, Obama's effusive Recovery Act point man, "Now the fun stuff starts!" The "fun stuff," about one-sixth of the total cost, is an all-out effort to exploit the crisis to make green energy, green building and green transportation real; launch green manufacturing industries; computerize a pen-and-paper health system; promote data-driven school reforms; and ramp up the research of the future. "This is a chance to do something big, man!" Biden said during a 90-minute interview with TIME.

For starters, the Recovery Act is the most ambitious energy legislation in history, converting the Energy Department into the world's largest venture-capital fund. It's pouring $90 billion into clean energy, including unprecedented investments in a smart grid; energy efficiency; electric cars; renewable power from the sun, wind and earth; cleaner coal; advanced biofuels; and factories to manufacture green stuff in the U.S. The act will also triple the number of smart electric meters in our homes, quadruple the number of hybrids in the federal auto fleet and finance far-out energy research through a new government incubator modeled after the Pentagon agency that fathered the Internet.

The only stimulus energy program that's gotten much attention so far — chiefly because it got off to a slow start — is a $5 billion effort to weatherize homes. But the Recovery Act's line items represent the first steps to a low-carbon economy. "It will leverage a very different energy future," says Kristin Mayes, the Republican chair of Arizona's utility commission. "It really moves us toward a tipping point."

The stimulus is also stocked with nonenergy game changers, like a tenfold increase in funding to expand access to broadband and an effort to sequence more than 2,300 complete human genomes — when only 34 were sequenced with all previous aid. There's $8 billion for a high-speed passenger rail network, the boldest federal transportation initiative since the interstate highways. There's $4.35 billion in Race to the Top grants to promote accountability in public schools, perhaps the most significant federal education initiative ever — it's already prompted 35 states and the District of Columbia to adopt reforms to qualify for the cash. There's $20 billion to move health records into the digital age, which should reduce redundant tests, dangerous drug interactions and errors caused by doctors with chicken-scratch handwriting. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius calls that initiative the foundation for Obama's health care reform and "maybe the single biggest component in improving quality and lowering costs."

Any of those programs would have been a revolution in its own right. "We've seen more reform in the last year than we've seen in decades, and we haven't spent a dime yet," says Education Secretary Arne Duncan. "It's staggering how the Recovery Act is driving change."

That was the point. Critics have complained that while the New Deal left behind iconic monuments — courthouses, parks, the Lincoln Tunnel, the Grand Coulee Dam — this New New Deal will leave a mundane legacy of sewage plants, repaved roads, bus repairs and caulked windows. In fact, it will create new icons too: solar arrays, zero-energy border stations, an eco-friendly Coast Guard headquarters, an "advanced synchrotron light source" in a New York lab. But its main legacy will be change. The stimulus passed just a month after Obama's inauguration, but it may be his signature effort to reshape America — as well as its government.

"Let's Just Go Build It!"
After Obama's election, Depression scholar Christina Romer delivered a freak-out briefing to his transition team, warning that to avoid a 1930s-style collapse, Washington needed to pump at least $800 billion into the frozen economy — and fast. "We were in a tailspin," recalls Romer, who is about to step down as chair of Obama's Council of Economic Advisers. "I was completely sympathetic to the idea that we shouldn't just dig ditches and fill them in. But saving the economy had to be paramount." Obama's economists argued for tax cuts and income transfers to get cash circulating quickly, emergency aid to states to prevent layoffs of cops and teachers and off-the-shelf highway projects to put people to work. They wanted a textbook Keynesian response to an economy in cardiac arrest: adding money to existing programs via existing formulas or handing it to governors, seniors and first-time home buyers. They weren't keen to reinvent the wheel.

But Obama and Biden also saw a golden opportunity to address priorities; they emphasized shovel-worthy as well as shovel-ready. Biden recalls brainstorming with Obama about an all-in push for a smarter electrical grid that would reduce blackouts, promote renewables and give families more control over their energy diet: "We said, 'God, wouldn't it be wonderful? Why don't we invest $100 billion? Let's just go build it!' "

It wasn't that easy. Utilities control the grid, and new wires create thorny not-in-my-backyard zoning issues; there wasn't $100 billion worth of remotely shovel-ready grid projects. It's hard to transform on a timeline, and some congressional Democrats were less interested in transforming government than growing it. For instance, after securing $100 billion for traditional education programs, House Appropriations Committee chairman Dave Obey tried to stop any of it from going to Race to the Top, which is unpopular with teachers' unions.

Ultimately, even Obama's speed focused economists agreed that stimulus spending shouldn't dry up in 2010. And some Democrats were serious about investing wisely, not just spending more. So House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted on $17 billion for research. House Education and Labor Committee chairman George Miller fought to save Race to the Top. And while the grid didn't get a $100 billion reinvention, it did get $11 billion after decades of neglect, which could shape trillions of dollars in future utility investments.

It takes time to set up new programs, but now money is flowing to deliver high-speed Internet to rural areas, spread successful quit-smoking programs and design the first high-speed rail link from Tampa to Orlando. And deep in the Energy Department's basement — in a room dubbed the dungeon — a former McKinsey & Co. partner named Matt Rogers has created a government version of Silicon Valley's Sand Hill Road, blasting billions of dollars into clean-energy projects through a slew of oversubscribed grant programs. "The idea is to transform the entire energy sector," Rogers says. "What's exciting is the way it fits all together."

"They Won't All Succeed"
The green industrial revolution begins with gee-whiz companies like A123 Systems of Watertown, Mass. Founded in 2001 by MIT nanotechnology geeks who landed a $100,000 federal grant, A123 grew into a global player in the lithium-ion battery market, with 1,800 employees and five factories in China. It has won $249 million to build two plants in Michigan, where it will help supply the first generation of mass-market electric cars. At least four of A123's suppliers received stimulus money too. The Administration is also financing three of the world's first electric-car plants, including a $529 million loan to help Fisker Automotive reopen a shuttered General Motors factory in Delaware (Biden's home state) to build sedans powered by A123 batteries. Another A123 customer, Navistar, got cash to build electric trucks in Indiana. And since electric vehicles need juice, the stimulus will also boost the number of U.S. battery-charging stations by 3,200%.

"Without government, there's no way we would've done this in the U.S.," A123 chief technology officer Bart Riley told TIME. "But now you're going to see the industry reach critical mass here."

The Recovery Act's clean-energy push is designed not only to reduce our old economy dependence on fossil fuels that broil the planet, blacken the Gulf and strengthen foreign petro-thugs but also to avoid replacing it with a new economy that is just as dependent on foreign countries for technology and manufacturing. Last year, exactly two U.S. factories made advanced batteries for electric vehicles. The stimulus will create 30 new ones, expanding U.S. production capacity from 1% of the global market to 20%, supporting half a million plug-ins and hybrids. The idea is as old as land-grant colleges: to use tax dollars as an engine of innovation. It rejects free-market purism but also the old industrial-policy approach of dumping cash into a few favored firms. Instead, the Recovery Act floods the zone, targeting a variety of energy problems and providing seed money for firms with a variety of potential solutions. The winners must attract private capital to match public dollars — A123 held an IPO to raise the required cash — and after competing for grants, they still must compete in the marketplace. "They won't all succeed," Rogers says. "But some will, and they'll change the world."

The investments extend all along the food chain. A brave new world of electric cars powered by coal plants could be dirtier than the oil-soaked status quo, so the stimulus includes an unheard-of $3.4 billion for clean-coal projects aiming to sequester or reuse carbon. There are also lucrative loan guarantees for constructing the first American nuclear plants in three decades. And after the credit crunch froze financing for green energy, stimulus cash has fueled a comeback, putting the U.S. on track to exceed Obama's goal of doubling renewable power by 2012. The wind industry added a record 10,000 megawatts in 2009. The stimulus is also supporting the nation's largest photovoltaic solar plant, in Florida, and what will be the world's two largest solar thermal plants, in Arizona and California, plus thousands of solar installations on homes and buildings.

The stimulus is helping scores of manufacturers of wind turbines and solar products expand as well, but today's grid can only handle so much wind and solar. A key problem is connecting remote wind farms to population centers, so there are billions of dollars for new transmission lines. Then there is the need to find storage capacity for when it isn't windy or sunny outside. The current grid is like a phone system without voice mail, a just-in-time network where power is wasted if it doesn't reach a user the moment it's generated. That's why the Recovery Act is funding dozens of smart-grid approaches. For instance, A123 is providing truckloads of batteries for a grid-storage project in California and recycled electric-car batteries for a similar effort in Detroit. "If we can show the utilities this stuff works," says Riley, "it will take off on its own."

Today, grid-scale storage, solar energy and many other green technologies are too costly to compete without subsidies. That's why the stimulus launched the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), a blue-sky fund inspired by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the incubator for GPS and the M-16 rifle as well as the Internet. Located in an office building a block from the rest of the Energy Department, ARPA-E will finance energy research too risky for private funders, focusing on speculative technologies that might dramatically cut the cost of, say, carbon capture — or not. "We're taking chances, because that's how you put a man on the moon," says director Arun Majumdar, a materials scientist from the University of California, Berkeley. "Our idea is it's O.K. to fail. You think America's pioneers never failed?"

ARPA-E is funding the new pioneers — mad scientists and engineers with ideas for wind turbines based on jet engines, bacteria to convert carbon dioxide into gasoline, and tiny molten-metal batteries to provide cheap high-voltage storage. That last idea is the brainchild of MIT's Donald Sadoway, who already has a prototype fuel cell the size of a shot glass. The stimulus will help him create a kind of reverse aluminum smelter to make prototypes the size of a hockey puck and a pizza box. The ultimate goal is a commercial scale battery the size of a tractor trailer that could power an entire neighborhood. "We need radical breakthroughs, so we need radical experiments," Sadoway says. "These projects send chills down the spine of the carbon world. If a few of them work, [Venezuela's Hugo] Chávez and [Iran's Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad are out of power."

Then again, the easiest way to blow up the energy world would be to stop wasting so much. That's the final link in the chain, a full-throttle push to make energy efficiency a national norm. The Recovery Act is weatherizing 250,000 homes this year. It gave homeowners rebates for energy-efficient appliances, much as the Cash for Clunkers program subsidized fuel-efficient cars. It's retrofitting juice-sucking server farms, factories and power plants; financing research into superefficient lighting, windows and machinery; and funneling billions into state and local efficiency efforts.

It will also retrofit 3 in 4 federal buildings. The U.S. government is the nation's largest energy consumer, so this will save big money while boosting demand for geothermal heat pumps, LED lighting and other energy-saving products. "We're so huge, we make markets," says Bob Peck, the General Services Administration's public-buildings commissioner. GSA's 93-year-old headquarters, now featuring clunky window air conditioners and wires duct-taped to ceilings, will get energy optimized heating, cooling and lighting systems, glass facades with solar membranes and a green roof; the makeover should cut its energy use 55%. It might even beta-test stimulus-funded windows that harvest sunlight. "We'll be the proving ground for innovation in the building industry," Peck says. "It all starts with renovating the government."

The New Venture Capitalists
The stimulus really is starting to change Washington — and not just the buildings. Every contract and lobbying contact is posted at Recovery.gov, with quarterly data detailing where the money went. A Recovery Board was created to scrutinize every dollar, with help from every major agency's independent watchdog. And Biden has promised state and local officials answers to all stimulus questions within 24 hours. It's a test-drive for a new approach to government: more transparent, more focused on results than compliance, not just bigger but better. Biden himself always saw the Recovery Act as a test — not only of the new Administration but of federal spending itself. He knew high-profile screwups could be fatal, stoking antigovernment anger about bureaucrats and two-car funerals. So he spends hours checking in, buttering up and banging heads to keep the stimulus on track, harassing Cabinet secretaries, governors and mayors about unspent broadband funds, weatherization delays and fishy projects. He has blocked some 260 skate parks, picnic tables and highway beautifications that flunked his what-would-your-mom-think test. "Imagine they could have proved we wasted a billion dollars," Biden says. "Gone, man. Gone!"

So far, despite furor over cash it supposedly funneled to contraception (deleted from the bill) and phantom congressional districts (simply typos), the earmark-free Recovery Act has produced surprisingly few scandals. Prosecutors are investigating a few fraud allegations, and critics have found some goofy expenditures, like $51,500 for water-safety-mascot costumes or a $50,000 arts grant to a kinky-film house. But those are minor warts, given that unprecedented scrutiny. Biden knows it's early — "I ain't saying mission accomplished!" — but he calls waste and fraud "the dogs that haven't barked."

The Recovery Act's deeper reform has been its focus on intense competition for grants instead of everybody-wins formulas, forcing public officials to consider not only whether applicants have submitted the required traffic studies and small-business hiring plans but also whether their projects make sense. Already staffed by top technologists from MIT, Duke and Intel, ARPA-E recruited 4,500 outside experts to winnow 3,700 applications down to 37 first-round grants. "We've taken the best and brightest from the tech world and created a venture fund — except we're looking for ``return``s for the country," Majumdar says. These change agents didn't uproot their lives to fill out forms in triplicate and shovel money by formula. They want to reinvent the economy, not just stimulate it. Sadoway, the MIT battery scientist, is tired of reporting how many jobs he's created in his lab: "If this works, I'll create a million jobs!"

Obama has spent most of his first term trying to clean up messes — in the Gulf of Mexico, Iraq and Afghanistan, on Wall Street and Main Street — but the details in the stimulus plan are his real down payment on change. The question is which changes will last. Will electric cars disappear after the subsidies disappear? Will advanced battery factories migrate back to China? Will bullet trains ever get built? The President wants to extend transformative programs like ARPA-E. But would they be substitutes for the status quo or just additions to tack onto the deficit? And would they survive a Republican Congress?

Polls suggest the actual contents of the Recovery Act are popular. But the idea of the stimulus itself remains toxic — and probably will as long as the recovery remains tepid. "Today, it's judged by jobs," Rogers says of the act. "But in 10 years, it'll be judged by whether it transformed our economy."

SOURCE: TIME

Green Employment generation has taken centerstage since the approval of the American Recovery Reinvestment and Act (ARRA). Signed by Pres. Obama in 2009, ARRA or the better known as the “stimulus bill” provides special level of funding to boost the economy through infrastructure and development projects including the energy sector. It also financially supports advancement of health care, education system, and expansion of social benefits.

The Bill pleased the renewable energy and environment sector because of the inclusion of $490 million to fund training programs for green workers from all walks of life. It created various green jobs such as organic farming, recycling, manufacturing green products and even green school teaching. It also produced renewable energy jobs like solar installer, wind turbine installer, wind energy technician and energy retrofit installer.

Likewise, non profit green organization like Green Corps. and Sierra Club also benefited from the stimulus bill. The funds received boosted the organizations’ environmental education campaign, clean-up efforts and job trainings for qualified job seekers. Furthermore, The US Department of Energy’s Office of the Energy Efficiency (EERE) received $16.8 billion from ARRA to finance training programs for individuals interested to join the swelling renewable energy industry or clean energy jobs. Opportunities in clean energy consist of manufacturers, installers, maintenance technicians and project managers for wind turbine systems and solar power systems.

For any organization or business firm, an expert is needed to analyze the current trends in the market, to strategize on how to have an efficient workforce, to innovate on investment profitability, etc. This is why green and environmental consultant positions are also making their mark on green job ads. Consultant position requires specialization in one or more areas dealing with ecology and sustainability like company compliance with pollution and emission regulations, renewable energy practices in the workplace. He should be expert in green management, designs, and effective in promoting newly introduced green policies. It is expected that competitive workforce in the field of environmental consultant, management, technical and scientific consulting will be the most in-demand among green opportunities.

In a nutshell, with the rate of green jobs finally happening, a more stable green economy via sustainable jobs is not far behind.

By David Howard

Course offerings diversify to boost career choices

Positions in sustainability are attracting growing numbers of seasoned professionals seeking new opportunities and students who want rewarding, socially responsible work. This area is also big business. Often backed by government funding, the sector is seen as stable with growing value, given its transformative role in the economy.

Indeed, the Globe Foundation of Canada has estimated in a recent study that British Columbia’s green economy – in which it comprises production of clean and alternative energy, energy management, green building, environmental protection, carbon finance and investment and green knowledge – could represent $27.4 billion in economic activity and employ 225,000 persons both directly and indirectly by 2020: approximately 80,000 more than in 2008 (the most recent year for which statistics are available).

Small wonder job-seekers are excited.

“It hasn’t seen the same downturn as some other [sectors],” says Grant Trump, founding president and chief executive officer of the Environmental Careers Organization of Canada (ECO Canada), a national group headquartered in Calgary that focuses on employment in the environmental sector. Green jobs, he says, have been resilient amid recession because of significant stimulus funding that governments have directed toward compatible activities. Remediation in the oilsands and further north in the territories has attracted $3.1 billion in federal funding. Companies have also taken interest in greening operations.

“There’s an increase in work going on. Environment is by no means recessionary-poof, but it is a little more recessionary-resistant because it’s regulatory-driven,” Trump says.

The sector’s stability and growth are reflected in the attraction by universities and colleges of increasing numbers of students to the field and in their expansion of course offerings.

Demand helped spark the formation in April 2009 of the faculty of environment at Simon Fraser University (SFU), where dean John Pierce oversees 200 graduate students and a plethora of undergraduate programs in environmental science, in geography, in the School of Resource and Environmental Management and in the Centre for Sustainable Community Development.

Among the issues students learn to address, he says, are the challenges posed by renewable energy. He notes that professionals will need more than engineering backgrounds to realize rapid growth in this field and apply it successfully to lowering environmental impact.

ECO Canada cites technological, managerial and communications skills as being among the most important attributes for employees seeking green-collar jobs. To these, Pierce adds critical thinking and the ability to weigh different options.

Graduates should be able to conduct and understand environmental-impact assessments and similar analyses not only of how projects work but also of how they fit into broader ecosystems. Understanding land-use planning and other development issues also counts.

“There’s no question that we’re in a growth environment, and the more credentials we can get recognized here, the more comfortable we’re going to feel in terms of placing students,” Pierce says.

It’s a need that BC Colleges, which represents the province’s 11 publicly funded community colleges, appreciates. While its members focus most often on practical skills, they’re expanding courses to reflect the ascendance of renewable-energy projects in the areas they serve.

Geography students in hydrology, as well as environments and society courses at Northwest Community College in Terrace have examined the implications of a run-of-river hydro project that Vancouver-based Swift Power Corp. is proposing for the Shames River.

“The hydrological part of the project is to determine the flow potential of Shames River to generate hydroelectricity as a [run-of-river] project,” instructor Gord Weary said in a description of the program from the college. “The social-environmental part of the project is to determine both the positive and [the] negative consequences of this type of development in the watershed.”
Practical experience exposes students to the potential impact of such projects, from environmental implications to community responses.

At Northern Lights College in Dawson Creek, students study maintenance of wind turbines. The course reflects the sector’s emergence as an alternative to gas exploration, long a regional economic mainstay. Debuting in February 2010 with 16 students, the wind-turbine maintenance technician program is a cornerstone of the college’s Centre of Excellence for Clean Energy Technologies. To the training common for millwrights and electricians, it adds a component on wind turbines.

At Okanagan College’s Penticton campus, a two-year apprenticeship program for geothermal technicians recently launched that will find a home in the college’s Centre of Excellence in Sustainable Building Technologies and Renewable Energy Conservation, set to open in March 2011. Geothermal energy has been key to the sustainable credentials claimed by many buildings in the Okanagan as well as in the Lower Mainland. (For more on the Centre of Excellence, see page 35.)

With so many opportunities for learning, identifying the key sectors of opportunity for careers is a challenge.

“A lot of other employment areas are quite mechanically, rigidly task-oriented. In general, environment doesn’t fall into that category,” Trump says. “The whole concept of environmental employment is that it is multidisciplinary and … cross-sectoral.”

Michael Dayan, chief officer, communi­cations and strategy, at the Vancouver-based Green Collar Association, refers to green-collar jobs broadly as those having “a net benefit on the environment. These include the efforts of white-collar professionals such as lawyers and accountants as well as blue-collar labourers such as electricians and plumbers.”

Referencing federal numbers, Dayan says B.C. ranks third in Canada for green-collar employment, with the largest proportion of green jobs being in administration and support, waste management, and remediation. Agriculture, forestry and fishing collectively reported the second-greatest concentration of green-collar jobs.

Regarding the next two years, Dayan reports that data gathered by the Green Collar Association suggests that positions in waste management and water quality will grow 12 and 11 per cent, respectively, while the sectors addressing energy will post eight per cent growth and air and land quality seven.

Helmut Pastrick, chief economist at Central 1 Credit Union, notes that electric-power engineering and construction activities increased almost 19 per cent in 2009 and that this bodes well for ongoing job opportunities in renewable energy.

To meet demand, courses such as those offered by SFU, Northwest Community College and others will be valuable, but Dayan says workers shouldn’t overlook opportunities to apply their existing skills into alternative sectors: “People in the labour force do not always recognize the easy transferability of their skills. For example, people with the skillset that enables them to drill for oil are also in a position to easily transfer their skills to drilling for geothermal energy.”

West Vancouver engineer and consultant Roger Bayley says that general social awareness is bringing people into the environmental field in search of opportunities and new applications of their skills.

“There is constant expression of interest going on from a wide range of different organizations and groups about this kind of development,” he says. While such interest hasn’t always translated into concrete action, Bayley believes the community is beginning “to head up there now as knowledge and interest … build.”

Regarding research and development, government incentives for new companies and interest from private equity are also creating employment opportunities. Clean tech’s attractiveness to financing brightens its employment landscape.

“The availability of capital will drive employment opportunities,” says Pascal Spothelfer, president and chief executive officer, BC Technology Industry Association. That venture capital can be deployed into the field “bodes well for employment growth.”

By Peter Mitham

Canadian schools are set on instilling students with a green philosophy

As schools begin to recognize the importance of teaching children about respect for the environment, several creative programs have been developed across the country. Each one attempts to integrate sustainability into school practices and provide students with the opportunity to practice what they learn and understand how their actions can affect their world.

Ontario’s Eco-Schools program goes beyond the classroom to involve students in how their schools actually function. Working with custodial staff and teachers, the Eco-Schools certification program focuses on waste minimization, energy conservation, school ground greening and ecological literacy. Eco-Schools are encouraged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, co-ordinate the curriculum with school operations, and find innovative ways to conserve resources and reduce their impact on the environment.

The five-step process to become an Eco-School includes establishing an Eco-Team, conducting an Eco-Review that identifies best practices and areas for improvement, developing an action plan, implementing the plan and then monitoring and evaluating the results. Much like the LEED certification for building, schools are certified based on their performance at bronze, silver and gold levels. With a focus on continuous improvement, schools are required to re-certify every year. Over the past seven years, approximately 18% of Ontario's publicly funded schools have taken on these credentials.

Quebec’s Bruntland Green Establishment (BGE) has a slightly different focus. Established through a network of some one hundred local Centrale des syndicats du Québec (CSQ) organizers (Quebec teacher’s unions) in 1993, the BGE implements actions that support global sustainability. Named after Gro Harlem Bruntland, author of Our Common Future, the BGE’s themes include democracy, sharing, cooperation, equity, solidarity, respect, peace and human rights.

Schools that participate in the BGE program are required to take on an environmental project, raise funds for an international aid project and also help to address local poverty issues.

“For example, one school collected bread bags, cleaned them out and then used them to wrap sandwiches that were distributed to the homeless in their community,” said Tim Grant, former teacher and co-editor of Green Teacher Magazine. The magazine has consistently been a source of information for teachers and youth educators across Canada and other countries for almost 20 years.

Grant says that thanks to strong backing by the teacher’s union, at least one third of Quebec’s 3,700 schools are involved in the BGE.

British Columbia’s Green Schools network runs directly through the province’s Ministry of Education. Working with BC’s Climate Action Secretariat, the Green School network focuses on environmental sustainability through four themes: supporting students, supporting teachers, developing school communities and enhancing school infrastructure and transportation systems.

Manitoba’s Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) focuses on systemic change. Established more than two decades ago, the program brings together teachers, administrators and curriculum coordinators to make school districts more sustainable.

“Environmental education will eventually become systemic and not an add-on to existing curriculums,” said Grant.

“When that happens, kids entering schools will have an opportunity to learn about natural systems which will equip them with the caring and capacity to tackle complex environmental issues,” he said.

“Only then will we have an engaged citizenry.”

By Suzanne Elston

Western Washington University is 12th on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s list of the nation’s top 20 green-energy purchasers in higher education.

Western annually purchases all of its electrical energy from green sources via renewable energy credits. Western was the only college or university in Washington on the recently released list.

The genesis for Western’s renewable energy program began more than five years ago when a small group of students set a goal of having Western obtain all of its electrical energy from a renewable source. To meet the goal, they proposed a student initiative to implement a fee to offset the cost of buying renewable energy.
 
As a result of their efforts and significant research into renewable energy, Western moved to the forefront of the renewable energy field, becoming the first university in the country to implement a student fee for the purchase of green energy.

The student initiative passed in a spring 2004 election with nearly 85 percent approval. Western trustees approved the student fee, which went into effect in 2005.

In spring 2010, the WWU student body voted overwhelmingly – more than 80 percent in favor – to renew the fee.

In addition to funding the purchase of the renewable energy credits — all of WWU’s power now comes from the Endeavor Wind Farm in Iowa — the new fee also finances student projects devoted to increasing energy efficiency, decreasing energy consumption, generating renewable energy, and reducing greenhouse-gas output on WWU’s campus, as well as allowing for the creation of a student position within WWU’s Associated Students to oversee the programs.

The Green Power Partnership is a voluntary EPA program that seeks to increase the use of green power among leading U.S. organizations. The green power purchases help reduce the environmental impacts of electricity use and support the development of renewable generation capacity nationwide.

Purchase amounts reflect U.S. operations only and are sourced from U.S.-based green power resources. Organizations can meet EPA purchase requirements using any combination of three options: renewable energy certificates, on-site generation, and utility green-power products.

Green power is defined as electricity products that are partially or entirely generated from environmentally preferable resources, such as solar, wind, geothermal, biogas and low-impact biomass and hydro resources. For more information, see EPA’s website on the Top 20 College and University Partners list.

TOP PUBLIC MASTER'S-GRANTING SCHOOL IN PACIFIC NORTHWEST

WWU is the highest-ranking public, master’s-granting university in the Pacific Northwest, according to the 2011 U.S. News & World Report college rankings.

“While we are pleased to be recognized by this and other national rankings, the true measure of Western’s excellence is the quality of our programs and, consequently, the caliber of our graduates who are highly sought after by employers and who become leaders in their fields and communities,” said WWU President Bruce Shepard. “The active minds of our more than 100,000 alumni change the lives of the citizens of our state and nation in so many important and enduring ways.”

Western also is ranked third among top public master’s-granting universities in the West, a region stretching from Texas to the Pacific.

And Western was among the top colleges in its category in the West for a high percentage of freshmen students `return`ing to school the following fall.

U.S. News has separate categories for “national” (doctoral-granting or research) universities, and liberal arts colleges, and for specialties such as business and engineering.

The magazine’s annual rankings are posted on its website, usnews.com. Rankings are based on a variety of criteria, including academic reputation, student selectivity and retention, faculty resources, peer assessment and financial resources.

Source: Bellinghamherald.com

Campaign group warns Education Secretary over green school policy

The government is in danger of jeopardising the work on green schools across the country, according to a student campaign network.

People & Planet is calling on the Government not to jeopardise green education for students across the country. Having controversially cut the schools rebuilding programme and recently cut a scheme to create 5000 green work experience placements, the Education Secretary's department now looks set to drop a coordinated approach to creating sustainable schools.

The group says Education Secretary Michael Gove has made it clear in briefings that he intends to drop Department of Education support for the Sustainable School Strategy. Evidence from the previous education department and numerous other sources has shown that those schools who implement sustainability have raised standards as well as staff and pupils well being.

People & Planet, which coordinates the Go Green campaign to help schools cut their carbon emissions, today called on the Government to ensure that there are opportunities and resources for all students to learn about sustainability issues.

Matt McMullen, a student member of People & Planet, said: "As a young person, I and the rest of my generation recognise the colossal challenges ahead. It is vital that we continue to support schools to become sustainable, especially at this critical moment, so that we can create a big society where we can tackle the defining issues of our generation. We want a better future"

Jamie Clarke, People & Planet's education manager, said: "Abandoning a coordinated approach to creating sustainable schools, is akin to abandoning hope that the next generation can tackle the greatest threats to our society. It further compounds the impression that the coalition government is saddling the future generation with an environmental debt. Schools produce a fifth of all public sector greenhouse emissions, tackling these emissions would not only help climate change it would also save millions in public spending.

"A truly green government would see sustainable education being at the heart of learning. The coalition government framed itself as the 'greenest' government ever but is planning to end support for schools to teach sustainability.

"Schools need to be at the heart of the green society, preparing the next generation for the challenges that face our world and to be at the forefront of the future economy. Now is the time to invigorate young people's understanding of environmental, economic and community needs, not the time to drop it. By doing so we can improve students achievements and make significant financial savings now and in the future," added Clarke.

Source: ADEXEC

Illinois Governor Pat Quinn on Tuesday signed a bill that will require utilities to obtain 0.5% of the energy they sell from solar power sources by June 1, 2012.

Previously, utilities were required to hit that level by 2015. The new law is is significantly more ambitious, setting additional targets of 1.5% by June 1, 2013; 3% by June 1, 2014; and 6% by June 1, 2015.

Commonwealth Edison and Ameren (NYSE: AEE) are the two major utilities in the state. ComEd is a unit of Chicago-based Exelon Corporation (NYSE: EXC).

A second bill that ensures the right of individual homeowners to add solar energy panels to their homes, provided they follow certain guidelines, was also signed into law.

Quinn also signed a bill guaranteeing that individual homeowners have the right to add solar energy panels to their homes, provided they follow certain guidelines.

N.C. Grants Tax Credit to Combined Heat and Power

A new law in North Carolina now makes combined heat and power(CH) systems eligible for the state's 35% renewable energy tax credit.

CHP, which combines the production of heat and electricity, is being widely adopted in Europe, but is only beginning to gain attention in the U.S. Systems can be scaled for residential or commercial use and they can reach efficiencies of up to 80%, compared to about 35% for separate systems. They also can reduce carbon emissions by more than 50%.

North Carolina businesses that install a CHP system can now receive a tax credit from the state equal to 35% of the cost of the equipment, construction, and installation, up to $2.5 million dollars. CHP systems for non-business use are eligible for a tax credit of up to $10,500. This credit was previously available only for solar, wind and other renewable technologies.

North Carolina is the third state to offer a CHP tax credit to businesses, and the first to offer it to individuals. CHP is also eligible for a 10% federal business energy investment tax credit.

California EV-Charging Firms Will Not Be Regulated As Public Utilities

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has ruled that companies selling electric-vehicle charging services to the public will not be regulated as public utilities.

"This decision provides needed regulatory clarity to encourage the state's entrepreneurs and investors to develop charging solutions that will satisfy consumer needs and work harmoniously with the electric grid," explains CPUC Commissioner Nancy E. Ryan.

The CPUC is in the process of evaluating alternative-fueled vehicle policies to ensure that utilities are prepared for statewide growth of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.

Nebraska Representative Introduces Small-Scale Hydro Bill

During a recent subcommittee hearing on hydropower, U.S. Representative Adrian Smith (R-NE) introduced a bill designed to encourage the production of more hydropower from smaller sources.

The Small-Scale Hydropower Enhancement Act (H.R. 5922) would exempt any conduit-type hydropower project generating less than one and a half megawatt from Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) jurisdiction. The bill also would require the Bureau of Reclamation to examine its facilities for more conduit generation opportunities using existing funding.

According to Smith, thousands of miles of irrigation canals, pipes, and ditches in the West provide an opportunity for new hydropower generation. Hydropower produced in man-made water delivery systems does not consume or disrupt water deliveries and has no environmental effect on temperature or aquatic life.

Federal policies imposing (FERC) permitting rules, however, have effectively stifled advancements and innovation in the small hydropower field.

Source: SustainableBusiness.com

The recession continues to put many Americans in a difficult situation where demand for their specialized skills is mediocre at best. That hurts everybody because there’s less productivity which eventually translates into less spending and less demand for goods and services. Obama claims the solution to that problem is not only re-training people, but creating renewed demand for existing skills in the form of green jobs.

What kind of green jobs? One major example Obama cited was advanced battery manufacturing. Think of the batteries that power the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, or the Nissan LEAF. China is focused on being a major player in battery manufacturing too, so healthy competition between the two countries is sure to continue.

Specifically Obama mentioned “Just a few years ago, American businesses could only make 2 percent of the world's advanced batteries for hybrid and electric vehicles -- 2 percent. In just a few years, we'll have up to 40 percent of the world's capacity,” according to RTT News. That’s a big jump and it assumes that investments in new technology and infrastructure continue at their current rate.

Given some of the criticisms coming from republicans that may not always be the case, but who’s to say a jump in battery production couldn’t be accomplished some other way, perhaps by using less resources. According to Obama, the resources we’re investing now will result in 800,000 green jobs by 2012 – a respectable number.

A lot of that growth may come from new demand for manufactured parts that are used to build wind turbines, solar panels, electric/hybrid cars, and other renewable energy devices. In some ways the sense of urgency generated by a lackluster economy is a good thing because it encourages us to move away from our dependence on fossil fuels more quickly.

Obama may be facing criticism for big government policies and overspending right now, but if his predictions pan out he’ll end up looking like a visionary 12 years from now.

By Matt Jansen

A group of professors and students at the University of Florida Levin College of Law are researching legal and policy questions related to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

The working group of eight law professors is part of a larger UF Oil Spill Task Force that is coordinating spill-related research across a wide array of academic disciplines. The project is connected to an even larger push involving a number of Florida colleges and universities to enlist scientists and scholars in the state's response to the spill.

The law school's working group is focusing on admiralty law, federal environmental law, state law and government policies. The group also is examining the effects of the spill on the Florida economy, public health and the environment.

"We're trying to anticipate the questions that will arise," said Jon Mills, a former dean of the law school who is leading the working group. "We'll gather and analyze the existing laws. We have the advantage of having scientists telling us, 'Well, in actuality, the environmental impact in this area won't be seen for years.' We can think about how the law will apply in those cases. A lot of this is going to be developing over time."

Although numerous government panels have formed to examine different aspects of the spill, the UF task force will coordinate a wide array of resources, Mills said.

"We're part of a large, public university with experience ranging from biology and water quality to environmental impacts on tourism," Mills said. "We can get into a room with people who bring all that technical expertise to the table."

Unraveling whether state or federal laws will apply to damages claims is one of many questions Mills expects the working group to take up.

"It's going to be complicated," he said. "We anticipate this is going to be a long-term project."

By Karen Sloan

Solar Energy International is fortunate to have one of the largest renewable energy events taking place this summer in our own backyard.

From Aug 19-22, the American Renewable Energy Day (AREDAY) annual conference, held since 2004 in Aspen, Colorado, plays host to a list of notable speakers including Solar Energy International's executive director, Johnny Weiss, on Aug. 21. Johnny will be part of a Saturday afternoon panel discussion focusing on solar energy futures. Rhone Rensch of the Solar Energy Industries Association will moderate the session, and panel members include Neville Williams from Standard Solar and John Woolard of BrightSource Energy.

The theme for 2010 is "Creating a New Clean Energy Economy at Speed and Scale." Scheduled speakers include Colorado Governor Bill Ritter, Ted Turner, T. Boone Pickens, James Cameron, Thomas Friedman, David Orr and Lester Brown, among many others. Summit highlights include creating climate wealth; renewable energy technology; food security; ocean systems; renewable energy financing; the Lungs of the Earth: The World's Forests; politics of climate change; and youth and climate. Solar Energy International will also be hosting a booth at the public AREDAY fair on Sunday, Aug. 22.

If you are in the Aspen neighborhood, or looking for a great travel destination with a purpose this summer, join Solar Energy International at AREDAY. For more information, visit AREDAY.

By Noah Davis

Alberta is managing fair-to-middling when it comes to developing a workforce with green capabilities.

The landmark study of the green-collar sector, published by Calgary-based ECO Canada in 2007, pegs it as representing 11.8 per cent of the province’s total employment. Dicing those numbers down to actual jobs is a bit more difficult, but the good news is they’re spread across virtually every sector, with mining, oil and gas being the single largest sector with 7,763 employees out of a total green-collar workforce of 62,461 people.

Still, the province has a long way to go to catch up with Ontario, where a whopping 42.5 per cent of the workforce is in some kind of green-collar job, or second-place B.C., with 17.6 per cent of its workforce in the green sector.

With interest among students strong, the province has a good shot at improving its capabilities.

Sarah Coffin, communications co-ordinator at the University of Alberta career counselling centre – CAPS: Your U of A Career Centre – says 269 students attended the university’s first green-careers forum in early 2009. Subsequent editions have attracted significantly fewer students, but the same broad cross-section of faculties was represented.

“The student groups that we worked with to organize these forums were all quite keen and all came from different faculties,” Coffin says. “The student attendance at the actual forums was just as broad and students came from different faculties across campus including arts, science and agriculture, life and environmental studies, and more.”

Grant Trump, founding president and CEO of ECO Canada, a Calgary-based organization that focuses on employment in the environmental sector, thinks post-secondary programs leading to green-collar careers have been popular. “We have seen good uptake within the university and colleges system of young people going into environmental careers,” says Trump.

The sector has been resilient in the face of the recent recession because federal and provincial governments have allocated a significant volume of stimulus funding to remediation projects requiring the expertise that programs are providing. There’s also growing interest among private companies in greening their operations.

“The opportunities for environmental employment, as we are natural resource-based economies, are large, and we are going to see the employment continue to grow because the population continues to grow, and as those demands increase, so will the demand for people with the appropriate environmental competencies,” says Trump. “Environment is by no means recessionary-proof, but it is a little more recessionary resistant because it’s regulatory driven.”

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Drawing from diversity

Globally, the Washington, D.C.-based Worldwatch Institute expects annual expenditures on environmental goods and services to double by 2020, approaching US$2.75 billion.

The kinds of jobs fuelling that growth, especially in Alberta, will be diverse.

“I have personally always referred to green-collar jobs broadly as those that have a net benefit on the environment,” says Michael Dayan, chief officer, communications and strategy, at the Vancouver-based Green Collar Association. “These include the efforts of white-collar professionals such as lawyers and accountants, as well as blue-collar labourers such as electricians and plumbers.”

CAPS also includes farmers and farm-market vendors among the vocations that play a role in building the green economy, as well as restaurants serving organic food and eco-tourism enterprises.

“The possibilities for green jobs are virtually endless and they include more than energy, homes and building, infrastructure and food,” wrote Coffin in a 2009 article the career centre published in its fall 2009 magazine. “You can get involved in eco-tourism, start a green advertising business, open a retail store that specializes in local products, build furniture from recycled materials, become a green investment adviser, open a green hotel or become a green lawyer.”

A plan published in 2009 by the Alberta Federation of Labour in partnership with two well-known conservation groups, Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, suggests that transforming Alberta’s economy into a greener creature through the development of high-speed rail connections and renewable energy sources could create between 85,000 and 140,000 jobs within five years.

Regardless of how realistic such a rapid investment of government cash is likely to be given competing priorities, it indicates key areas for growth.

Dayan echoes the report, identifying energy efficiency and renewable energy, as well as transit and high-speed rail line development among the opportunities for Alberta to create “tens of thousands of green jobs.”

“Both conventional gas production and conventional oil production have already peaked in Alberta and, as resources, both are in decline,” Dayan says. “In terms of long-term growth, tar sands output will not be matched by a proportional growth in jobs. ... All of this suggests it would be unwise for Alberta to maintain our over-reliance on the oil and gas sector as a generator of employment.”

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Certification objectives

Technology, management and communications skills will be among the most desired attributes employers will seek, Trump believes. But if these skills are transferrable from other industries, certification in the sustainable realm is also important.

While designations such as LEED-accredited professional have become popular in recent years, other programs exist such as the certified sustainable building adviser, a designation rooted in Natural Step principles. (Natural Step originated in Sweden in the late 1980s and became an approved strategy for sustainable development in that country in the early 1990s.)

Michael Duarte-Pedrosa, principal of Buffalo Jump Environmental Consulting in Blairmore, will debut the nine-month sustainable building adviser program in calgary in October 2010. the program has the endorsement of the Alberta Association of Architects as well as the Architectural Institute of B.C., both of which offer learning units to participating members.

“If you are trying to win a contract to be a subcontractor or provide some sort of service to that building project, it would behoove you to have some green building experience or a course like this under your belt to show that a) you’re committed to what the project is trying to achieve with respect to sustainability and b) that you’ve actually taken the time to become familiar with some of the design or some of the features that can be incorporated into a building to make it more sustainable,” Duarte-Pedrosa says. “This kind of training is essential to be successful in the building marketplace in the future.”

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Training and development

Overlaying such training on other skills may help set candidates apart, if the experience of James Furlong, principal of PCPL Buildings Engineering, a subsidiary of Stantec Consulting Ltd. in Calgary, is any indication. His firm is constantly looking for well-qualified people, but finding candidates with the right mix of skills is difficult.

“It is a high-demand field. What we struggle with, often, is that graduates come out, in my opinion, rather ill-equipped to work in that industry of sustainability because most post-secondary institutions are geared up for more traditional lines of work,” he says.

Most graduates he encounters haven’t been trained in skills such as energy modelling, for example, which helps identify opportunities to reducing energy use in structures. Similarly, architects often lack the knowledge of engineering principles and engineers lack the knowledge of architectural principles. The ignorance leaves both with a less comprehensive means of understanding projects.

“Oftentimes, we’re left looking for applicants with the pieces of education they need, and we have to take it upon ourselves to take that and hope for the best, that they’re going to like what they do and train them up from there,” Furlong says. “There’s just no school that’s singularly going to teach you to be a sustainable consultant and walk out with that knowledge.”

Ann-Lise Norman, director of the University of Calgary’s environmental science undergraduate program, says steps are being taken to address this. The environmental studies curriculum offers students exposure to six areas of study – biology, chemistry, physics, geology, geography and statistics – with a view to enabling students to research, understand and interpret data easily. The program accepts up to 40 new students each year, with 160 students participating at any one time.

“It’s a pretty good program that gives people an idea of the science behind environmental issues, primarily, but it also addresses that interface between the social sciences and the science,” Norman says. “They’re able to tackle environmental problems from a multidisciplinary perspective.”

The undergraduate studies can lead to professional training in the university’s environmental design program.

Some people opt for on-the-job experience.

Roger Bayley, whose eponymous West Vancouver engineering firm Roger Bayley Inc. is part of the redevelopment process for the municipal airport lands just north of Edmonton’s downtown core, regularly has people approaching him in the hope of acquiring some experience on a volunteer basis. He expects the tide of interest to keep rising as political will in Alberta and elsewhere lends a future to green career paths. The kinds of people required under the airport lands redevelopment strategy are examples.

“It is without doubt the most progressive, demanding set of statements from an urban planning bureaucracy that I have ever seen,” Bayley says. “And to meet the conditions laid out in that document will be quite extraordinary. All of these political commitments are going to begin to drive opportunities in environmental and sustainable community consulting and employment.” •

By Peter Mitham

The Obama administration told Congress to find a way to regulate greenhouse gases -- or else.

Last month, Congress refused: Democratic leaders in the Senate declined to take up climate legislation before their August break, which means it looks effectively dead for this session.

Now the White House is stuck with "or else."

The Environmental Protection Agency will soon begin regulating greenhouse gases factory by factory, power plant by power plant. That could be unwieldy, expensive and unpopular -- even President Obama has said it's not his preferred solution.

But for now, it's his only option.

The next few months could bring a climax to the long-running debate over how to combat climate change, with the EPA trying to implement its rules and industry groups and opponents in Congress seeking to block it with lawsuits or legislation.

The administration will cite a mandate from the Supreme Court, which ruled in 2007 that greenhouse gases could be regulated like other air pollutants. But opponents will say it has chosen an approach that stretches the law and could impose serious economic costs.

The result of their fight could be the first limits on greenhouse gases from American smokestacks -- or a significant defeat for the White House and environmental groups.

The administration "wanted to be able to hold out the threat of clean-air regulation [by the EPA], as a way to . . . try to get people to the table," said Jeffrey R. Holmstead, an EPA official under the Bush administration, who now works for the law firm Bracewell & Giuliani. "They're now faced with the kind of unenviable task of trying to make it work."

Great hopes dashed

 To environmentalists, Obama's election in 2008 brought the hope that legislation to cut greenhouse gases was finally at hand. They had a president who had campaigned on the issue, a Democratic Congress and a deadline to motivate them both. In December 2009, world leaders would gather in Copenhagen to hammer out a new climate treaty.

There was an early, encouraging sign: The administration worked out a deal with the car industry to set limits on auto emissions. But since then, little has worked out as environmental groups had hoped.

Last summer, the House of Representatives passed a "cap and trade" bill -- cutting emissions, and allowing businesses to buy and sell allowances to pollute. But the Copenhagen conference fizzled into a multilingual blame game. And the Senate refused to follow the House example: Senators said they worried that new pollution rules would cut jobs and raise energy prices.

Senators have focused on a more modest bill that aims to eliminate the $75 million cap on the liabilities of a company responsible for an oil spill and create incentives for the development of natural-gas vehicles. On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said even that bill wouldn't be voted on in the Senate until after the August recess."

"Congress, particularly the Senate, has dropped the ball and kicked it out of bounds," said Frank O'Donnell, of the District-based group Clean Air Watch. "If we're going to see any progress on climate, it's going to have to be the EPA" doing it at the national level.

Starting in January, under EPA rules new permits will require the largest factories and power plants to show they have installed the "best available" technology to curb emissions. Smaller sources of greenhouse gases like shops, apartment buildings and bakeries are exempt.

That might mean upgrades to make plants burn fuel more efficiently or perhaps to switch from coal to cleaner-burning natural gas.

These are "pretty modest steps, and it's not much compared to what legislation was set out to accomplish," said Joshua Freed, who directs the clean energy program at Third Way, a centrist think tank. "For the overwhelming majority of stationary sources [like power plants and factories] nothing's going to change for a while."

This is where the fight begins.

Some industry groups say that if the EPA requires aggressive cuts, the result could be crushing costs for businesses. So even before it begins, the EPA effort is the subject of lawsuits, from plaintiffs questioning both its science and legal underpinnings. At particular issue is the "tailoring rule" that limits regulation to the largest emitters: Opponents say it deviates from standards written into the 40-year-old Clean Air Act.

Joe Stanko, a lobbyist at Hunton and Williams who represents several greenhouse gas emitters, said the EPA's reasoning has "some basis in rationality if you had a blank piece of paper and you're designing a permitting program. But you don't, you have a statute."

Resistance in Senate

In Congress, some senators have worked to stop the EPA in its tracks. In June, a resolution from Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) narrowly failed. Another bill from Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), which would suspend the effort for two years, awaits a vote.

A White House spokesman said that Obama would veto Rockefeller's measure if it passed. But more attempts could be made.

Carl Pope, the chairman of the Sierra Club, said that EPA administrator Lisa P. Jackson has overcome political pushback by persuading Obama: "She'd bring a regulatory proposal to the White House. The political folks at [the Office of Management and Budget] and Treasury would push back, saying, 'We don't think the science or the law compels you to go that far.' That's code for, 'It's going to cost too much politically.' She would respond, 'What don't you like about the science?' . . . The president would say, 'Well fine, it's the law or if the science requires it, then let's do it."

But critics wonder: If the administration couldn't force a climate bill through Congress, will it really take the heat of regulating greenhouse gases all by itself?

David Doniger, of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said his group intends to defend the EPA in the coming months. . The EPA "needs political support to sustain it. . . . We are going to come down very hard on any of the Democrats and moderate Republicans who flirt with these kinds of things," he said.

By David A. Fahrenthold and Juliet Eilperin

The uses for solar energy are becoming more and more apparent as demonstrated by the recent introductions of solar powered mobile phones in Kenya and India. Both countries have large areas where electricity is not available through a grid tied system. Small solar panels and battery systems offer a cleaner energy solution in rural areas where kerosene is often used. Jeff Olshesky and Trevor Knauff are with Beyond Solar, a US based non profit who has worked with South Orissa Voluntary Action (SOVA) and D.light Design, a solar lantern manufacturer based in New Delhi to provide micro loans to the residents of Koraput; district in the eastern Indian state of Orissa a region about 1000 miles northeast of Mumbai. Their worked allowed the villagers to purchase these small systems and literally light up there huts at night. In Nairobi, Kenyan entreprenauer, Murefu Marasa is working to provide affordable small scale solar products to a district of 500,000 people who have no legal access to electricity. From solar powered backpacks to solar powered airplanes; product innovations and developments are happening everyday. There are also many DIY(do it yourselfers) who are installing solar on their own.

Around the globe, solar and other forms of renewable energy are making a positive impact on the environment, climate change and job creation. In Germany for example, in1998 30,000 people were employed in green related jobs. In 2010 - 300,000 people were employed in green jobs... a growth of ten times.This progress was no accident. Along with many policy changes the German government instituted a number of incentive programs that literally paid homeowners to install solar on their rooftops. America needs to do what the Germans did - create a national renewable energy policy that is sustainable and doesn't rely on the perpetual use of poisonous oil and coal as the main source of energy.

Today China is the worlds largest manufacturer of solar panels. According to Gary Locke, US Secretary of Commerce, China is investing $9 billion a month into clean energy and efficiency.The US Recovery Act is an $80 billion clean energy investment program designed to double American renewable capacity and create thousands of jobs. The United States is now in fourth position in terms of solar power installed.

Meanwhile if the DeepWater Horizon oil rig explosion and forth coming catastrophic consequences in the Gulf of Mexico hasn't revealed why we need renewable energy, I'm not sure what will. Maybe pissed off, mutated, fire spitting, Moby Dick sized toxic shrimp rising from the oily deep ravaging the regions coastlines would be persuasive enough. Like Tony Hayward CEO of BP who wanted his life back, It is not without understanding why oil rig workers and politicians want their way of life to continue. They like we, live in an oil based eco system that's been in place for generations now. But change will come... it always does. Take note,Thomas Edison created an electric car in 1910...that's right 1910! Are we serious enough now, 100 years later when we recognize that 90% of the oil that America uses is for transportation. We know we're a nation of oil junkies...question is are we tired of being strung out? Maybe the 3000 or so oil rigs in the Gulf could be transformed as offshore solar, wind, tidal or wave stations. We're all going to need to participate in this change. We the engineers, scientists, investors, politicians, marketers, artists, thinkers, citizens and inventors have a stake in this.

Our nations' call to action is to honestly help create new green opportunities not only for the Gulf fishing industry and oil rig workers, but for all Americans desparately seeking to revitalize their lives in the face of change. When President John F Kennedy spoke of sending a man to the moon he said," we chose to do these things and the other things, not because it's easy, but because it's hard." The power of the oil industry is legendary and yet they too must recognize the danger of deep water drilling and realize it isn't sustainable. Solar alone isn't the answer: it's part of a diversity of innovations throughout our society including renewable energy options such as hydro, biomass and other opportunities yet to be explored. Together they and we have the potential to lead this country to a new green renaissance of environmental, business and social prosperity.

By Richard Andrews

North Carolina State University received grants totaling $1.7 million from the North Carolina Energy Office to provide undergraduate and graduate students hands-on experience and training for jobs in the state’s energy economy, including “green-energy” fields.

The N.C. Energy Office created the program with money from the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Four different NC State units received funding:

● The university’s Utilities and Engineering Services/Department of Energy Management received $475,488 to place six

fellows with various university organizations that study or deliver energy efficiency.

● The Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, a department in the College of Engineering, received $464,801 and will hire 48 full- and part-time interns to either work with outside partners active in conducting energy assessments and studies, or work on campus energy management programs.

● The College of Natural Resources received $435,481 and will provide 45 internships and 3 fellowships in fields including environmental technology, forest management, natural resources, paper science and engineering, and wood products.

● The North Carolina Solar Center, a unit within the university’s College of Engineering, received $373,469 for six internships and four fellowships to share research or projects and provide estimates of greenhouse-gas reductions from their work.

Source: Garner News.net

Arizona State University has been named one of the country’s best institutions for undergraduate education, according to The Princeton Review in its 2011 annual college guide, “The Best 373 Colleges.” ASU also made the “Green Honor Roll,” rating as one of the nation's 18 "greenest" universities, and is named among the top 120 Best Western Colleges.

Only about 15 percent of America’s 2,500 four-year colleges and two Canadian colleges are profiled in the book, which is The Princeton Review's flagship college guide. It includes detailed profiles of the colleges with rating scores for all schools in eight categories, plus ranking lists of top 20 schools in 62 categories based on The Princeton Review's surveys of students attending the colleges.

"We commend Arizona State University for its outstanding academics, which is the primary criteria for our selection of schools for the book,” said Robert Franek, The Princeton Review's senior vice president of publishing and author of the guide. “Our choices are based on institutional data we collect about schools, our visits to schools over the years, feedback we gather from students attending the schools, and the opinions of our staff and our 28-member National College Counselor Advisory Board."

In the profile on Arizona State University, students praise the university for its "seemingly endless opportunities and resources to not only help uncover what you are passionate about, but also to allow you to pursue those dreams and desires."

This is the third year in a row that ASU made The Princeton Review’s list of most environmentally friendly institutions – a list that salutes the institutions that received the highest possible score, 99, in this year's rating tallies.

The university was cited for its School of Sustainability, the first of its kind in the U.S.; its transdisciplinary degree programs taught by more than 60 faculty members representing more than 40 disciplines; its student-run bicycle co-op; and its energy-providing solar panels – the largest collection on a single U.S. university campus.

“Arizona State University is honored to be included in this year's Green Honor Roll. We are grateful for this recognition of the efforts of ASU faculty, staff and students to incorporate the principles of sustainability into every facet of campus life,” said R. F. "Rick" Shangraw, Jr., senior vice president for Knowledge Enterprise Development and director of the Global Institute of Sustainability. “Through our research endeavors, the design and operation of our campuses, and a curriculum that carries sustainability into all disciplines, we join our peers in higher education in rising to the challenge of creating a sustainable future.”

In addition to ASU, 17 other colleges were named to the honor role including (in alphabetical order):

• College of the Atlantic
• The Evergreen State College
• Georgia Institute of Technology

• Harvard College

• Northeastern University

• Northland College

• State University of New York at Binghamton

• Unity College

• University of California-Berkley

• University of California-Santa Barbara
• University of California-Santa Cruz
• University of Georgia

• University of Maine

• University of Maryland, College Park

• Warren Wilson College

• West Virginia University
• Yale University

The Princeton Review developed the Green Rating in consultation with ecoAmerica, a nonprofit environmental organization. The criteria for the rating cover three broad areas: 1) whether the school’s students have a campus quality of life that is healthy and sustainable; 2) how well the school is preparing its students for employment and citizenship in a world defined by environmental challenges; and 3) the school's overall commitment to environmental issues.

Franek noted the rising interest among students in attending green colleges. Among 12,000 college applicants and parents of applicants The Princeton Review surveyed this year for its annual "College Hopes & Worries Survey," 64 percent of respondents said they would value having information about a college's commitment to the environment.

ASU earlier this year also was named among the 50 Best Value Colleges-Public.

By Sharon Keeler

For ages, people have been saying: “Solar is a great, clean, renewable energy source, but it is just too expensive. Other energy sources, like nuclear, may have some (or serious) environmental risks, but they are cheaper.”

Now, a new report out of Duke University says that solar energy and nuclear energy have passed a “historic crossover,” where decreasing solar energy costs and increasing nuclear energy costs have met, and then parted. Solar energy is now cheaper than nuclear energy and is getting increasingly cheaper every day.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Solar Energy–Nuclear Energy Crossover
John O. Blackburn, a professor of economics at Duke University, in North Carolina, and Sam Cunningham, a graduate student at Duke, wrote the paper, “Solar and Nuclear Costs — The Historic Crossover.” They wrote: “Solar photovoltaics have joined the ranks of lower-cost alternatives to new nuclear plants.”

The crossover occurred at 16 cents per kilowatt hour.

Of nuclear energy construction costs, Mark Cooper, senior fellow for economic analysis at Vermont Law School’s Institute for Energy and Environment, says that the estimates have been going up significantly for years (i.e. from $3 billion/reactor in 2002 to about $10 billion/reactor now) and they are expected to continue rising.

In a report Cooper published last November, he found that the costs for U.S. taxpayers and utility users could end up being hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars more than needed to achieve our low-carbon goals if the federal government goes for a nuclear energy intensive approach. The name of the report: “All Risk, No Reward for Taxpayers and Ratepayers.”

Nuclear Industry Push for More Help Could Result in Financial Disaster, & Already Has
The ambitious nuclear energy approach is continuously and heavily being pushed by the nuclear industry, of course. On their wish list are subsidies, tax credits, loan guarantees, procedural simplifications and more. Unfortunately (and the route of this word really stands out to me writing this), the federal government has been giving in.

The nuclear industry is also pushing for help on the state level.

Diana Powers of the NYTimes writes:

At the state level, the industry has also pressed the case for “construction work in progress,” a financing system that requires electricity users to pay for the cost of new reactors during their construction and sometimes before construction starts. With long construction periods and frequent delays, this can mean that electricity users start to pay higher prices as much as 12 years before the plants produce electricity.

Think the environmental risks and disasters of building nuclear power plants are the only problem? Think again.

As far back as 1985, Forbes magazine called construction of the first generation of U.S. nuclear plants “the largest managerial disaster in business history.”

More from the NYTimes:

The first round of plants resulted in write-offs through bankruptcies and “stranded costs” — investments in existing power plants made uncompetitive by deregulation — which essentially transferred nearly $100 billion in liabilities to electricity users, said Doug Koplow, an economist and founder of Earth Track, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which campaigns against subsidies it considers environmentally harmful.

And, even more astounding than that, take a look at this info:

From 1943 to 1999 the U.S. government paid nearly $151 billion, in 1999 dollars, in subsidies for wind, solar and nuclear power, Marshall Goldberg of the Renewable Energy Policy Project, a research organization in Washington, wrote in a July 2000 report. Of this total, 96.3 percent went to nuclear power, the report said.

And these costs and risks are nothing compared to what is expected if a new wave of nuclear reactors gets the government backing the industry is looking for.

Why does the industry continue to push forward? Because they aren’t at risk with the government’s support.

“With such financing the utility is making a one-way bet, allowing it to make a profit even when the project fails,” Cooper said. “The people bear the risks and costs; the nuclear utilities take the profits. Without loan guarantees and guaranteed construction work in progress, these reactors will simply not be built, because the capital markets will not finance them.”

Source: CleanTechnica.com

The Democrats abandon their efforts to limit emissions through legislation

“THE one approach I will not accept,” said Barack Obama in June of Congress’s faltering efforts to fight global warming, “is inaction.” Instead, the president instructed America’s lawmakers to “seriously tackle our addiction to fossil fuels”. Yet the energy bill unveiled by the Democratic majority in the Senate on July 27th does nothing of the sort. Harry Reid, the majority leader, having earlier abandoned as hopeless an effort to limit America’s emissions of greenhouse gases through a “cap-and-trade” scheme, is proposing nothing more substantial than subsidies for home insulation and trucks that run on natural gas. (The bill also removes the $75m cap on oil firms’ liability for damage from offshore spills, in response to the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.)

Mr Obama has said he will fight on for a weightier bill. But the prospects do not look good. Mr Reid complained that inveterate Republican opposition had prevented the Senate from taking up the cap-and-trade scheme passed by the House of Representatives last year. That is true: even Republican senators who had supported the idea in the past, such as John McCain and Lindsay Graham, had pointedly backed away from it in recent months.

Most Republicans dismiss cap and trade as a job-killing stealth tax. They point out, rightly, that any measure that puts a price on carbon would raise energy bills—something they view as madness when the economy is so weak. Elections in November are likely to increase the Republicans’ strength in Congress, and thus make the adoption of strict limits on emissions even more unlikely.

But they are not the only sceptics. Many Democrats, especially from states with a lot of coal or wilting manufacturers, have long been unenthusiastic. Ten such senators wrote to Mr Reid in 2008 expressing grave misgivings about cap and trade. Some members of the House complain that their vote in favour of the scheme could cost them their jobs in November.

Voters, by most pollsters’ accounts, are becoming less energised about global warming. Earlier this year Gallup found that 48% of “moderate” Americans believe the seriousness of global warming “generally exaggerated”, up from 35% just two years before (see chart). Cap and trade (or “crap and tax”, as more excitable Republicans have called it) has become so controversial that Mr Reid now refuses to use the term, referring obliquely to controls on pollution.

.Even the president, environmentalists complain, has not done as much as he might have to push climate legislation forward, despite his stirring rhetoric. He deliberately left the details up to Congress—a mistake in the eyes of activists, who think he should have demonstrated his resolve by taking charge. There was none of the individual browbeating of recalcitrant congressmen that Mr Obama exercised with recent bills on financial reform or the extension of unemployment benefits. His advisers seem to have concluded that a climate bill was a non-starter given the parlous state of the economy, and concentrated on health care instead.

That is quite a reversal for a man who declared, after he clinched the Democratic nomination for the presidency, “This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” Just last year, at the United Nations climate talks in Copenhagen, Mr Obama promised to reduce America’s emissions in 2020 to 17% below their level in 2005.

The demise of cap and trade in Congress, however, does not call a complete halt to the administration’s efforts to cut emissions. In 2007 the Supreme Court ruled that the Clean Air Act could be applied to greenhouse gases, and therefore that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should decide whether they posed a danger to public health. Last year the EPA concluded that they did. It is now working on regulations to mitigate the danger, to be applied to big, stationary sources of emissions such as power plants over the course of next year. The EPA is likely to set minimum standards of energy efficiency and to mandate the use of particular green technologies, among other things.

Using the Clean Air Act, by the administration’s own admission, is not the cheapest or most effective way to cut emissions. But officials at the EPA also say that they are prepared to use the law if Congress fails to act. And it is not the only tool at the president’s disposal: different government agencies have the power to set fuel-efficiency standards for cars and energy-efficiency rules for appliances, for example. The severity of these regulations, by and large, is at the government’s discretion.

Many states are also pressing ahead with planned curbs on emissions. Ten north-eastern ones have already put a cap-and-trade scheme in place for utilities; several more in the West and Midwest have pledged to follow suit. California is particularly ambitious: it aims to pare its emissions back by 85% by 2050.

Nicholas Bianco and Franz Litz of the World Resources Institute, a think-tank, have studied the potential to cut emissions under existing state and federal regulations. They conclude that if all the officials involved are ambitious, America could belch out 13% less by 2020.

That is less than America pledged in Copenhagen, and also less than most scientists would like. And it is the optimistic scenario. In November’s elections Californians will vote in a referendum on the repeal of the law underpinning the state’s planned emissions cuts. In several other states, Republicans are running in noisy opposition to Democratic environmental initiatives. There are moves in Congress to repeal or defer the EPA’s power to regulate greenhouse gases. And Mr Obama’s administration will probably hesitate to ram through dramatic emissions cuts by decree, for fear of appearing undemocratic.

Even if officials around America do promulgate fierce regulations, those will take some time to come into force, and are bound to be the subject of endless lawsuits. Moreover, such an approach will lead to a patchwork of different rules in different states, to the great expense and annoyance of many firms. Adding to the confusion and uncertainty will be the chance that a more sweeping federal law might eventually be enacted, if the political winds change once more. That may leave big energy firms regretting their opposition to cap and trade. As one old utility hand puts it, “There’s a sense of ruefulness in the industry.” It is widely shared.

Source: The Economist

 

With a steady wind turning the blades of wind turbines east of Tehachapi, Jim Pagano, CEO of Terra-Gen Power, addresses a group gathered for the groundbreaking ceremony of the Alta Wind Energy Center. The center will be the largest wind power project in the world, generating up to 1,550 megawatts of wind energy.

That's enough to power 275,000 homes, and projections are that it will inject $1.2 billion into the local economy, creating 1,000 to 1,500 temporary and permanent jobs.

The project west of Mojave and south-southeast of Tehachapi has been years in the making, stymied along the way by financial trouble, ownership changes, bureaucracy and land owners worried about noise and safety. Most of the 600 wind turbines planned for the project are to be placed on leased, privately owned land.

But dignitaries who gathered for speeches, thank-yous and congratulations Tuesday preferred to focus on the future.

"Wind energy has been part of this county for about 30 years, yet it's been slow and trickling along," said Kern County Supervisor Don Maben.

Now, at last, there is real progress, and the county couldn't be more thrilled, he said, adding that he now has a cure for his painful "oil well envy."

"This is the only district in the county that doesn't have an oil well, but mine is the only district in the county that has this," Maben said, gesturing at wind turbines towering behind him.

Ned Farquhar, deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Interior, called Alta Wind a "world class, internationally significant wind project."

Assemblymembers Jean Fuller, R-Bakersfield, and Connie Conway, R-Tulare, pledged to do whatever they could in the Legislature to clear red tape as the project progresses.

Tuesday's ground breaking was for the first of at least five wind farms being developed by New York-based Terra-Gen Power, LLC. The privately held company's primary investors are Global Infrastructure Partners and ArcLight Capital Partners.

The project is to be built in phases west of Highway 14 and south of Highway 58 adjacent to existing wind projects, and will include 386-foot-tall turbines as much as 25 times more powerful than older generation turbines nearby, said Terra-Gen chief executive officer Jim Pagano.

The first five wind farms have landed $1.6 billion in financing, helped by Terra-Gen's 2006 agreement with Southern California Edison to buy 1,500-megawatts of power over 25 years.

Investor-owned utilities are mandated by state law to obtain 33 percent of their power from renewable energy sources by 2020.

The outlook is less certain for wind farms beyond the first five as state and federal funding dwindles.

But the project has significant momentum, Billy Gamboa said in a telephone interview. He's a renewable energy analyst with the California Center for Sustainable Energy.

"It will be by far the largest project in the country once it's done, just dwarfing everything else," he said. "In California, alone, it's at least five times bigger than anything like it, and it's already overcome some of the biggest hurdles."

Prospects for Alta Wind and other wind farms in the area got a significant boost from the ongoing construction of the Tehachapi Renewable Transmission Project, a new high-voltage transmission line that will deliver power to energy users from wind farms, solar panels and other sources.

The line is tangible proof of both public and private support for growing Kern County's clean energy industry, supporters said at Tuesday's groundbreaking.

Michael Picker, senior advisor to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, applauded local leaders for shepherding the region's growing green economy.

"Kern County is a traditional energy producing county, yet you are leading the way in clean energy," he said. "I admire your courage in making this leap into the future."

By Courtenay Edelhart

Seven U.S. states and four Canadian provinces have moved ahead with plans to create a market for buying and selling pollution allowances.

The Western Climate Initiative on Tuesday unveiled new details of its cap-and-trade system, which is a cornerstone to its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions regionally by 15 percent by 2020. The trading system is expected to handle about $21 billion worth of allowances annually.

"The WCI partner jurisdictions are strongly committed to continuing to provide leadership in the development of affordable, innovative clean-energy solutions that will create new jobs and reduce our dependence on imported oil, helping to protect consumers from volatile petroleum prices," the WCI said in a news release.

Under a cap-and-trade system, a state or provincial government places a ceiling on the amount of carbon that a refiner, utility and energy company can emit. They also issue carbon allowances to big polluters that can be bought and sold on an open market.

Companies that cause less pollution can sell their unused allowances to heavier polluters, creating incentives to lower emissions voluntarily.

The WCI said that five of its 11 members - California, New Mexico, Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia - already have such a system running or are in the process of developing one. Those regions represent about 70 percent of all carbon emissions in the WCI's member regions.

The WCI's new plan, slated to launch in January 2012, will create a central market for allowances issued in California, New Mexico or Canada. For instance, allowances issued in California could be bought and sold by oil companies, utilities or investors in British Columbia and vice versa.

WESTERN CLIMATE INITIATIVE:

Participating jurisdictions in the U.S.:

-Arizona

-California

-Montana

-New Mexico

-Oregon

-Utah

-Washington

Participating jurisdictions in Canada:

-British Columbia

-Manitoba

-Ontario

-Quebec

By Rick Daysog

The rapid growth of wind farms, whose output is hard to schedule reliably or even predict, has the nation’s electricity providers scrambling to develop energy storage to ensure stability and improve profits.

  As the wind installations multiply, companies have found themselves dumping energy late at night, adjusting the blades so they do not catch the wind, because there is no demand for the power. And grid operators, accustomed to meeting demand by adjusting supplies, are now struggling to maintain stability as supplies fluctuate.

On the cutting edge of a potential solution is Hawaii, where state officials want 70 percent of energy needs to be met by renewable sources like the wind, sun or biomass by 2030. A major problem is that it is impossible for generators on the islands to export surpluses to neighboring companies or to import power when the wind towers are becalmed.

On Maui, for example, wind generating capacity over all will soon be equal to one-fourth of the island’s peak demand. But peak wind and peak demand times do not coincide, raising questions about how Hawaii can reach its 70 percent goal. For now, the best option seems to be storage batteries.

In New York and California, companies are exploring electrical storage that is big enough to allow for “arbitrage,” or buying power at a low price, such as in the middle of the night, and selling it hours later at a higher price. In the Midwest, a utility is demonstrating storage technology that can go from charge to discharge and back several times a minute, or even within a second, bracing the grid against the vicissitudes of wind and sun and transmission failure. And in Texas, companies are looking at ways of stabilizing voltage through battery storage in places served by just one transmission line.

Renewable goals can be met, many in the industry insist. But if the energy source is intermittent, “you can’t do that without batteries of some sort,” said Peter Rosegg, a spokesman for the Hawaiian Electric Company.

His company has agreed to buy electricity from a wind farm on the northern shore of Oahu, where the Boston-based power company First Wind has just broken ground.

The spot is one of Hawaii’s best wind sites, Mr. Rosegg said, but the supply is gusty and erratic. What is more, it is at the farthest point on the island from the company’s main load center, Honolulu, and does not even lie on its high-voltage transmission backbone.

So the 30-megawatt wind farm, which will have enough power to run about 30 Super Wal-Marts, will have Xtreme Power of Austin, Tex., install a 15-megawatt battery.

Computers will work to keep the battery exactly half-charged most hours of the day, said Carlos J. Coe, Xtreme Power’s chief executive. If the wind suddenly gets stronger or falls off, the batteries will smooth out the flow so that the grid sees only a more gradual increase or decrease, no more than one megawatt per minute at some hours of the day.

The Hawaii installation is designed to succeed at a crucial but obscure function: frequency regulation. The alternating-current power system has to run at a strict 60 cycles per second, and the battery system can give and take power on a micro scale, changing directions from charge to discharge or vice versa within that 60th of a second, to keep the pace steady.

The battery system can also be used for arbitrage, storing energy at times when prices are low and delivering it when prices are high. It can hold 10 megawatt-hours, which is as much energy as a 30-megawatt wind farm will produce in 20 minutes if it is running at full capacity. That is not much time, but it is huge in terms of storage capacity.

Neither First Wind nor Xtreme Power would say what the project cost, but publicly disclosed figures put the project in the range of $130 million, with about $10 million for the battery. The Energy Department has provided a $117 million loan guarantee.

Across the country, it is proving hard to predict the cost and the value of power storage to consumers. The electricity stored in off-peak hours could be quite low in cost, and prices at peak hours could be quite high. If the reliance on renewable energy reduces the need to burn coal and natural gas, that would yield an additional advantage.

Mr. Coe estimated the battery system’s round-trip efficiency — that is, the amount of electricity the batteries could deliver per megawatt-hour stored in them — at over 90 percent. If that figure is borne out, it would be a significant advance from the largest form of energy storage now in general use, pumped hydropower, whose efficiency is put at 70 to 85 percent.

At a pumped hydro plant, off-peak electricity is used to pump water from a reservoir at a low elevation to one at a higher one. At hours of peak demand the water flows back down through a turbine, creating electricity.

Electric companies are using other strategies for storage and frequency regulation. In Stephentown, N.Y., near Albany, a Massachusetts company, Beacon Power, is building a bank of 200 one-ton flywheels that will store energy from the grid on a moment-to-moment basis to keep the alternating current system at a strict 60 cycles.

Atop each flywheel is a device that can be a motor at one moment and a generator the next, either taking energy and storing it in the flywheel or vice versa. The Energy Department provided a $43 million loan guarantee to assist in the $69 million project.

The Energy Department is also supporting storage projects that rely on compressed air. Surplus electricity is used to pump air into an underground cavity; when the electricity is needed, the air is injected into a gas turbine generator. In effect, it acts as a turbocharger that runs on wind energy captured the previous night, instead of natural gas burned at a peak hour.

The department is contributing to two projects explored by PSEG Global, an affiliate of Public Service Electric and Gas, based in New Jersey. It plans to provide $30 million of the $125 million estimated price of a 150-megawatt project envisaged in upstate New York, perhaps at an abandoned salt mine, and $25 million toward a $350 million, 300-megawatt project to be built in Northern California.

Both will be used to store power made in off-peak periods and deliver it in peak times, when prices are higher, said Paul H. Rosengren, a spokesman for P.S.E.G.

In Presidio, Tex., American Electric Power and MidAmerican Energy Holdings have just completed a four-megawatt battery system that is not tied to any particular wind farm but is intended to improve reliability in the town, served by only one major transmission line. American Electric Power already has smaller batteries working in Ohio and Indiana to provide more stability in its distribution systems there.

By Matthew L. Wald

At Boston Latin, sustainability is goal

 

Take Boston Latin School, and pack on top of its building a weather station, a greenhouse, two outdoor classrooms, a cafeteria, and a garden. Then add solar panels, wind turbines, and the outdoor elevator.

It’s a 70,000-square-foot, $6.2 million green roof dreamed up by Boston Latin students, and it’s becoming a reality.

“It started out as a simple request for how the school can reduce its carbon footprint,’’ said Gail Sullivan, the architect who has been working with the students free of charge. “But then the students said yes, yes, and yes to all the different features.’’

Unfazed by the hefty price tag, students from the school’s Youth Climate Action Network have been raising money and applying for grants over the past year to make their green wonderland a reality, piece by piece.

A 28-solar panel array and 350 trays of sedum, a flowering succulent plant, have been installed on the school’s roof.

Up next are the outdoor classrooms and elevator, a $2.7 million project to be completed in fall 2011, according to Sullivan, who works for Studio G Architects.

Sullivan said she expects to finish the project in five years, but said the timeframe depends on when the students can raise the money.

But the vision does not stop there.

Last week, students in the Youth Climate Action Network were helping 30 Boston area teachers, 15 from Boston Latin, to develop a middle school and high school sustainability curriculum to be piloted this fall at their school. Eventually, classes will be held on the roof.

Students can measure the wind velocity from the rooftop turbines or test how much energy the solar panels generate. English and art classes can find inspiration from the rooftop orchard and garden.

Other schools can plan a field trip to the top of Boston Latin, which has grades 7 to 12. The possibilities are endless, students say.

“A lot of what we learned about climate change seemed very abstract; it didn’t seem like kids could really do anything,’’ said Nhu Le, a sophomore at Boston Latin and a member of the network.

But after a screening of “An Inconvenient Truth’’ three years ago, Le said, she and her peers started brainstorming ideas for transforming the nation’s oldest public school into an energy-efficient building with an avant-garde sustainability curriculum.

“I think schools can do a much better job integrating sustainability into the curriculum and not just have one unit about climate change but incorporate entire themes,’’ Le said.

Led by eighth-grade US history teacher Cate Arnold, the network launched a campaign in 2007 for sustainability education across the state. The students hope to see the project completed when they graduate.

While several schools in the state have installed green roofs — two in Boston public schools — Arnold said that from talking with other educators and school officials, Boston Latin’s green venture appears to be the most complex, student-driven project with a heavy emphasis on integrating sustainability education.

In a series of workshops this summer, Boston area teachers of all subjects are developing lesson plans integrating sustainability ideas, with the help of the Children’s Environmental Literacy Foundation, a nonprofit based in New York that develops sustainability curriculums in schools.

At Boston Latin, half the 400-member senior class takes environmental science as an elective course, according to Lynne Mooney Teta, the headmaster.

Under this fall’s pilot program, all students will be exposed to sustainability issues in a wide range of courses.

“It’s not an add-on to what teachers are already doing; it’s simply a shift in perspective,’’ Teta said. “Teachers from across the building of all disciplines will play a role.’’

With many features, the green roof that students envision is more of an educational center than a cost-saving measure for the school, Sullivan said.

Sullivan was unable to provide an estimate of how much energy the school would be saving from the various green features, adding that her firm is conducting an energy-use analysis.

“If the only goal were reducing energy costs, it might make the most sense to cover the roof with solar panels,’’ Sullivan said. “The process of creating something that can shape their school is an incredibly educational process, and the students are really excited about using the roof as a kind of learning lab.’’

The green roof, once constructed, will allow teachers to incorporate hands-on experiments into the sustainability curriculum, serving as an example for school districts across Massachusetts, Boston Latin faculty said.

“I teach a section on energy, for example,’’ said Christopher Doss, a high school physics teacher. “The students can use the green roof to look at how we use energy, how much energy is used.’’

Jesse Southwick, another physics teacher, agreed, adding that he envisions sustainability issues as the “backbone of the curriculum,’’ integrated in many subject areas.

“Our goal as educators is to help students understand how to get to a sustainable world,’’ Southwick said.

For Steven Gingras, a sophomore at Boston Latin and a member of the network, growing local foods in the rooftop greenhouse for the cafeteria is his favorite feature.

“I’m excited for it to teach students about agriculture and hard work,’’ Gingras said. “It’ll be nice to eat something that you’ve grown.’’

By June Wu

If President Obama and Congress had announced that no financial reform legislation would pass unless Goldman Sachs agreed to the bill, we would conclude our leaders had been standing in the Washington sun too long. Yet when it came to addressing climate change, that is precisely the course the president and Congress took. Lacking support from those most responsible for the problem, they have given up on passing a major climate bill this year.

It’s true that passing legislation to rebuild our fossil fuel-based economy was always going to be a momentous challenge. Senators and representatives feel in their bones (and campaign accounts) the interests of utilities and the coal and oil industries. Even well-intentioned members of Congress struggle to balance the competing needs of energy-intensive industries, coal workers and American families.

But with climate change a stated priority for President Obama and Congress, how did they fall so short? By weaving four coordinated threads into a shroud of inaction. This began long before President Obama took office, but rather than rip up the old pattern — as he advocated during the campaign — the president quickly took his place at the loom.

Thread No. 1: Climate is out; green jobs are in. Despite climate change being the greatest challenge of our time, with millions of people facing inundation, starvation and conflicts over scarce resources, the White House directed advocates not to discuss it. At a meeting in April 2009 led by Carol Browner, the White House coordinator of energy and climate policy, administration message mavens told climate bill advocates that, given the polling, they should avoid talking about climate change and focus on green jobs and energy independence.

Had Lyndon Johnson likewise relied on polling, he would have told the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to talk only about the expanded industry and jobs that Southerners would realize after passage of a federal civil rights act. I could imagine Dr. King’s response.

The urge to avoid the topic of climate change is not new. While Bill Clinton and Al Gore have done noble work on climate since leaving office, when they had the presidential megaphone they did little to educate the public about the wolf at our door. President Obama has followed suit, and our national comprehension of climate change continues to stagnate. Virtually the only public officials working to shape opinion on this over the past two years have been those committed to misrepresenting the science.

Thread No. 2: Devising a bill for historic polluters, not the American people. Remember the president’s campaign pledge to represent the people, not the lobbyists? That’s not what he’s done on this issue.

For several years the Beltway wisdom has been that it is impossible to pass a bill without the approval of historic polluters, particularly the utilities, which run coal-burning power plants, the nation’s single largest source of climate-changing pollution. The administration and Congress did their best to get the industry’s permission for new regulations. They proposed handing power companies hundreds of billions of dollars worth of allowances to pollute, additional billions to subsidize the development of technology to sequester carbon from coal-fired plants, and evisceration of federal authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon. Peter Orszag, the budget director, said giving away pollution permits would be “the largest corporate welfare program that has ever been enacted in the history of the United States.” But no matter — it wasn’t enough.

Thread No. 3: A Rube Goldberg-policy construction. Because Congress built a policy machine designed for special interests, most proposals were chockablock with policy contraptions impossible to even explain, much less put into effect. Provisions included pollution allowances for favored corporations, carbon credit-default swaps, complicated worldwide offset provisions to enable avoidance of actual pollution reductions at home and loopholes to extend the life of the dirtiest coal plants. By the end of the process, even Campbell Soup demanded a special deal for the carbon-intensive job of making chicken noodle soup.

This rush to the trough was inevitable once President Obama ditched his plan to push a simple market-based bill that would have required polluters, rather than citizens, to pay for switching from fossil fuels to renewable forms of energy.

Thread No. 4: The public sits it out. American history has few examples of presidents or Congresses upending entrenched interests without public pressure forcing their hand. Teddy Roosevelt is on Mount Rushmore for a reason.

Citizens wouldn’t support an approach they couldn’t understand to solve a problem our leaders refused to acknowledge. Even the earth’s flagging ability to support life as we know it couldn’t stir a public outcry. The loudest voices insisted that leaders in Washington do nothing.

They obliged.

By Lee Wasserman; director of the Rockefeller Family Fund.

Policymakers await next-generation fuels, while industry waits for policy

 
By now, well into the 21st century, at least some U.S. cars were supposed to be running on an exciting new power source—clean fuels refined from corn husks, timber waste and tall, fast-growing grasses.

But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, acknowledging that not a single facility is yet producing this advanced “cellulosic” ethanol, has proposed dramatically scaling back a federal program to promote the fuel for the second straight year.

Instead of requiring that the oil industry blend 250 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol into the gasoline sold at the pump next year, as Congress envisioned under the Renewable Fuels Standard program, the EPA said July 12 that it intends to cut the 2011 mandate to 5 million gallons. That’s the same level of cellulosic ethanol the EPA required this year, even though Congress had originally set a 2010 goal of 100 million gallons.

The proposal, to be finalized later this year, is just one example of how alternative transportation fuel policy stands at a crossroads, just three years after the 2007 energy bill that aimed to slash U.S. oil dependence, in part by tripling consumption of biofuels to 36 billion gallons by 2022. Since then, the nation’s ethanol use has essentially doubled, to about 12.8 billion gallons this year, but all of it is alcohol fuel refined from corn, a fact that has created—in the minds of many—a competition between food and fuel.

At least 100 companies are working to make fuel from agricultural material that is tougher than corn, but that process requires the extra step of breaking down the plant fibers, the lignocellulose, through heat or biochemistry. This next-generation ethanol, many hope, would be more environmentally friendly, and wouldn’t create controversy over land use.

(Related, “‘Green Grass’ Shows Promise as Super-Efficient Fuel”)

But the government says it is still waiting for the industry to emerge. Meanwhile, many in the industry blame government for failing to provide strong policy to spur the investment they need.

A Role for Big Oil?

Take, for example, Qteros, a three-year-old Marlborough, Massachusetts-based company that has developed an advanced microbiological technology for converting non-food based plant biomass into fuel.

Qteros says its technology, by consolidating several steps of the process, is lower cost than other methods for making cellulosic ethanol. The company has attracted $30 million in venture capital, but to commercialize its platform, it is looking for strategic partners from around the world willing to invest the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to build out commercial-scale production facilities, according to chief executive John McCarthy. Such facilities could cost $300 million or more, he says.

McCarthy says that the EPA’s slashing of the cellulosic ethanol requirement is “unconscionable,” even though he agrees there won’t be enough product on the market to meet the requirement, and even though the law allows the agency to adjust the requirement downward to meet the market supply.

This flexible approach, McCarthy says, “is just what the oil companies want.” Instead, if the EPA were to treat the production levels set by Congress as mandates, the oil industry would be subject to rising penalties each year it failed to meet the targets, he argues. That sort of pressure would give the oil industry a financial incentive to invest in cellulosic ethanol and other advanced biofuel plants, McCarthy says.

Qteros’ current investors, in fact, include big refiner Valero and oil giant BP. Given BP’s Gulf spill-sullied reputation, some might question why fossil fuel companies should be counted on to spur an alternative fuel revolution. McCarthy argues that only Big Oil can provide the scale of investment needed to get next-generation fuels off the ground.

“No one company, no ten companies—no matter how entrepreneurial or creative they may be—can initiate the kind of changes that are needed without the existing energy complex being a supporter of it,” says McCarthy. “It just can’t happen.”

Finding the Right Ethanol Mix

But in the view of the wider ethanol industry, including those who make alternative fuel from corn, there is a more fundamental policy problem stifling investment in advanced fuels.

Current federal regulations say that ethanol may be mixed into gasoline only at concentrations up to 10 percent for use in any gasoline-powered vehicle. The U.S. market is already nearly saturated with so-called E10, with ethanol making up about 9.2 percent of the gasoline sold by volume in the United States this year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. (There are a few pumps in the country and a few flex-fuel vehicles that can use a blend that is 85 percent ethanol, E85.)

The ethanol industry has been lobbying for the government to break down this “blend wall,” but officials have put off a decision because of a variety of interests—including auto and parts makers who say higher concentrations could cause engine damage, food industry companies that worry about rising corn prices, and some environmentalists who question ethanol’s benefits in cutting carbon dioxide.

(Related, “Green Dreams: Making Fuel Crops Could be Good for the Planet, After a Breakthrough or Two”

Although the blend wall is a more immediate problem for corn ethanol makers, it also discourages investment in cellulosic ethanol, argues Brian Jennings, executive director of the American Coalition for Ethanol. “There’s not a certain market for ethanol in the future unless higher blends are allowed, and the lenders will not finance a project unless we know there is a market,” he says.

EPA has indicated it plans to make a decision on the blend wall in September, but only for cars manufactured after 2007.

What About the Federal Subsidy?

Yet another crucial ethanol policy decision looms in Washington: What to do about the big federal subsidy, the 45-cent-per-gallon excise tax credit on corn ethanol, due to expire by the end of this year. (Cellulosic ethanol, if it were being produced, would be eligible for an even higher subsidy.)

The tax credit, expected to cost $7.6 billion this year, is designed to create demand for ethanol by paying the oil companies a premium when they purchase ethanol to blend with conventional gasoline.

The big ethanol advocacy group, the Renewable Fuels Association, says a five-year extension is crucial to protect alternative fuel makers against the volatility of the petroleum market.

But some ethanol companies have broken from the pack; their advocacy group, Growth Energy, co-chaired by retired U.S. Army Gen. Wesley Clark, wants the tax credit phased out and replaced by a new policy focused on installing more E85 pumps, new ethanol pipelines, and a requirement that all U.S. cars be flex-fuel vehicles. But who would pay for this infrastructure build-out? If the proposal were put into legislation, that key question would have to be answered.

The alternative transportation fuels industry, in other words, is still looking for the boost it sought in 2007, when Congress voted to ramp up production by fiat. At the time, Renewable Fuels Association President Bob Dinneen called it “the moment America chose a new energy policy path.” But with debate raging over how much subsidy to provide and how much ethanol to allow into the fuel mix, the  renewable fuels industry is still looking for  its way forward.

By Marianne Lavelle

The oil spill in the Gulf has called many things into question. As millions of gallons of crude oil spewed from leaks in the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig that exploded on April 20, evading containment efforts, the full impact of the country’s continued oil dependence came into sharp focus. That includes President Obama’s stated support for offshore oil and gas drilling just a month prior in regions never before opened to such exploration—along the Atlantic coast, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska.

Only incredible public pressure forced the administration to finally issue a ban on offshore drilling operations in the Gulf, in addition to a six-month moratorium on new offshore drilling permits. But the moratorium only applies to wells deeper than 500 feet—shallower wells are exempt and can still be approved with an environmental waiver—the same type of waiver granted to the Deepwater Horizon plan.

How we can continue on such a course despite the oil-covered marshes, seabirds and fish, the ruined beaches, the crippled fishing industry and the altered chemistry of the ocean as a whole is hard to fathom. But if we are to ever seriously wean ourselves from oil, one thing is clear—it will require a complete national overhaul that begins with an updated power grid. A smart grid.

Those crisscrossing power lines that bring to life our appliances, TVs and computers are sorely outdated. They don’t well manage power drawn from intermittent, highly dispersed sources like wind and solar, or transmit such power well over significant distances, and they do not allow you and I, exercising judicial energy decisions at home, to help utilities determine how much power they have available at any one time. Our technology as a nation has surged into the future, but we’ve left our energy grid behind.

The time for a smart grid has come—so that we might lower our thermostats from our iPhones and track our household energy use on our laptops. Such a grid will speed the development of plug-in electric and hybrid cars that can act as sources of power while they are plugged in. It will allow us to reap the benefits of producing our own power through home solar and wind systems, to utilize smart appliances, ready to act when it’s most efficient, and for we, as a nation, to better control our energy habits as we aggressively move toward new renewable sources of power.

Some oil is better left alone.

By Brita Belli

A Smart Grid That Lets Us Better Control Our Energy Use May Finally Be Ready to Launch

 
Our current electric power grid hasn’t changed in the last 100 years. It’s designed to move electricity in one direction—from mostly fossil-fueled generation plants to user—and makes only limited use of automation and information technology. And it can’t collect power consumption information in real time. The smart grid would change that dynamic with a two-way flow of both electricity and information. It would also open the door for renewable energy sources like wind and solar to get connected and start to reduce the national dependence on dirty fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas.  

Many homes already feature solar panels and even wind turbines that could actually add electricity to the grid. But the current system of transmission lines isn’t able to determine how much renewable energy will be available at a given time—after all, solar power and wind power are both subject to fluctuation—so utilities produce the same amount of electricity regardless. And, in general, they have to overcompensate. In order to match electricity supply with demand, utilities decide on a level of demand that would be excessive and then match it.  

“In reality,” write Lena Hansen and Amory B. Lovins for the Rocky Mountain Institute, “neither electricity demand nor generation is steady over time. Demand changes at every moment as individual devices turn on and off.” What’s more, the pair write, all generators are intermittent, too. Lots of coal-fired, gas-fired and nuclear power plants have unexpected shutdowns. From 2003-2007, coal-fired capacity was shut down an average of 12.3% of the time—4.3% without warning—according to the North American Electric Reliability Council.

Utilities, in other words, have had to adapt to sudden changes in demand and supply since the current grid was built in the late 1800s. The only difference now is that they have a lot more clean and efficient renewable energy generators at their disposal—but not the technology to use them.

Enter the Smart Grid
 
A smart grid—basically the electric grid gone digital—would allow power plants to respond, in real time, to power needs. The “real time” aspect is important. It means consumers will be able to decide ahead of time what they are willing to pay. Run a washing machine at night, for instance, and pay a cheaper rate. Tell the utility company to diminish or even shut down service during peak usage times, and reduce your rate even further. 

Adding consumer control represents a big paradigm shift. Rather than “broadcasting” power down one-way transmission lines, the smart grid promises the same interactivity that transformed communication over the Internet. On a digital network of power lines, transformers, turbines, homes, businesses and even automobiles, energy will be a two-way street.

“The smart grid will allow distributors, meters and even appliances to communicate with each other, while providing customers with information, tools and pricing options to manage their energy costs and usage,” says James Robb, senior vice president for enterprise planning and development at New England’s largest energy supplier, Northeast Utilities. “With a smart grid, there are no excuses for using energy inefficiently. We will have tools to control our usage that do not exist today, like using a cell phone to change the thermostat settings in your home in response to peaking energy prices.”   But the dream of using cell phones and smart meters to reduce energy prices is still a ways off. Plenty of infrastructure and investment obstacles remain. “The infrastructure challenges are enormous,” says Gus Ezcurra, CEO and president of San Diego-based Advanced Telemetry, a smart grid technology provider. “Smart grid implementation will be a decades-long endeavor.”   Other concerns—chief among them, new questions about privacy as private and public utilities extend their digital fingers into individual homes—pose additional hurdles. “Part of what makes the smart grid ‘smart’ is its ability to know a lot about the energy-consuming devices in our homes,” says Susan Lyon, a privacy and security attorney at law firm Perkins Coie in Seattle. “Home energy consumption patterns could be gathered and analyzed on a room-by-room and device-by-device basis. Although this sort of information may not be considered terribly invasive for some, for others anything that violates the sanctity of ‘home’ may cause tremendous concern.”

Who Pays?   In years to come, utilities and their customers will recoup the smart grid’s startup costs through improved reliability and efficiency. But there’s still a question of who pays now. Political considerations are likely to hamper efforts to make consumers pay for the new grid ahead of time. Instead, wake-up calls like the August 13, 2003, Northeast blackouts periodically jump-start the process.

Blackouts are becoming more frequent and are predicted to increase, bringing plant shutdowns, food spoilage, traffic light failures and other dangerous problems. When power fails, big dollars are lost: $20 trillion in delayed trades during a 2000 blackout in Chicago, $6 billion lost during the 2003 blackout. 

Reporting that our current transmission system is woefully underfunded—only 668 additional miles of interstate transmission have been built since 2000—the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) reports that demand for electricity is expected to double by 2050, while the cost of raw materials needed to operate the grid has tripled since 2006.

Although the U.S. lags behind Europe and Canada in smart grid implementation, the Electric Power Research Institute’s IntelliGrid program finds U.S. utilities well positioned to assume the lead in smart grid technology. Based in Palo Alto, California, IntelliGrid is already in use at utilities like Southern California Edison and the Long Island Power Authority.  

And through its Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, the DOE created the new Smart Grid Task Force. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), meanwhile, is developing smart grid standards through an organization called the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel. “We have engaged hundreds of organizations and over 1,500 individuals to develop a framework,” says George Arnold, the panel coordinator. “Ultimately, hundreds of standards will be needed.”   But government agencies and power plants alone can’t make the grid smarter. Once power is in the building, it’s the people inside who must use it efficiently. This should happen, in part, as customers are able to better monitor when electricity is more or less expensive throughout the day, and alter their use accordingly, but “this information alone cannot and will not reduce energy consumption or costs,” says engineer and smart grid expert Michael C. English. Even with the added incentive of saving money, people may prove reluctant to change their habits—i.e., in deciding when to wash clothes or dishes or run the air conditioner. A public education campaign will almost certainly need to be part of a smart grid rollout.   Privacy Concerns   And then there’s the issue of privacy. Not everyone is comfortable with the idea of outside monitors tracking their daily household habits. “The smart grid requires deployment of monitoring technology in every home it touches,” says attorney Lyon. “The impact is significant, considering that home privacy is such an important value in our society that its protection is guaranteed in the U.S. Bill of Rights.” But the smarter the home, the more apt it is to present privacy challenges.   “Security technology already exists to monitor break-ins. Could that same technology be applied in a smart grid environment to monitor residents?” Lyon asks. “Will a ‘smart’ refrigerator be able to disclose the food products and pharmaceuticals stored on shelves? Who will get this information?”   Security and privacy aren’t necessarily comfortable partners, either. Citing the Federal Cybersecurity Act—which aims to protect our nation’s infrastructure, including our energy grid, from threats by hackers, terrorists and foreign intelligence—privacy advocates are concerned that legal provisions mandating access to “relevant data” could someday include household activities tracked by the smart grid.   And as stores and businesses take on smart grid features, they, too, will have to consider their customers’ privacy rights.  Pilot Projects   Widespread smart grid use may be years away, but pilot programs—from small concept to big picture—are already happening. With its Plan-it Wise program, utility Connecticut Light & Power studied 3,000 participants, and learned that residential customers who used smart grid technologies reduced energy consumption by 16.1%, versus a 2.8% savings for commercial clients. Smart thermostats and other so-called “control technologies” reduced peak energy use by 7%, while information devices like power cost monitors “had no statistical effect in reducing peak energy usage,” according to Robb.

Attempting to modernize the energy grid in Boulder, Colorado, utility company Xcel Energy has launched SmartGridCity (see “A City Gone Smart,” page 26). More than 50,000 homes and businesses in Boulder are scheduled to be connected to the smart grid, with participants installing smart meters that program their home energy use through an online site, where they can watch exactly how much energy they consume.   In Austin, Texas, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) went a step farther with its Pecan Street Project. Calling it “a unique community-wide collaboration” involving a local utility, universities, nonprofits, a chamber of commerce and local government, EDF National Energy Program Director Jim Marston says participants set out to “reinvent the current energy delivery system.”   Local utility Austin Energy “had already begun installing smart meters in most households,” Marston explains. Wanting to tie the smart grid to green, low-carbon lifestyles, Pecan Street participants also added technologies such as plug-in hybrid cars.   “As far as we know, there isn’t any other similar project involving such a diverse group of stakeholders and interests,” Marston says.   But that diversity has also posed management difficulties. Focusing on tough questions such as how utilities could continue to profit as electricity use went down, Marston says his group “ultimately got so many recommendations that it has been a chore narrowing the project’s scope.”   But, overall, it’s been a success. “Getting green benefits from the smart grid, understanding business model problems and system integration are the keys to getting maximum social benefits from the smart grid,” Marston says. “EDF views Pecan Street as so groundbreaking, we believe we’ll be able to recommend it as a future model for other utilities around the nation.” 

The Big Smart Picture   Arnold says the U.S. leads the world in smart grid development—particularly when it comes to establishing standards. But, he adds, “Italy has already fully deployed smart meters, and other nations are moving rapidly. China, for example, is making huge investments in transmission using advanced technologies.”   Next-door neighbor Canada has jumped ahead of the U.S. “in terms of the deployment of smart meters and customer technologies,” Robb adds. Sweden and Denmark have made important advances and in the U.K., “there are strong mandates to have a smart meter in each home by 2020,” he says.     But don’t expect a coordinated worldwide smart grid to happen overnight. Instead, experts say, the smart grid will come online in small bursts, one city at a time.

By Mike Martin

When you think of next-generation energy technologies, burning wood pellets probably isn't the first thing that comes to mind. But buried in energy proposals across Capitol Hill are policies that promote doing just that.

Many lawmakers want the government to require utilities to derive a certain percentage of their electricity from clean sources. And one of the sources that would probably qualify is so-called renewable biomass -- everything from forest debris to algae, which can be burned in some power plants. Sure, the logic goes, you produce carbon emissions when you burn this material. But when the stuff grows back, it takes carbon out of the atmosphere, too.

That logic works well if harvesting biomass results in additional net plant growth, or if you're collecting discarded forest debris that would otherwise degrade and release its carbon into the atmosphere anyway. Chopping down and burning forest that gobbles up and stores lots of carbon, on the other hand, could easily do more harm than good.

This should be a simple problem to address: Require that qualifying biomass have low net emissions across the course of harvesting, burning and regrowth. But there are political obstacles to this, not least the farm bloc in Congress, which prefers a different regulatory scheme and also doesn't want certain land-use changes to factor into such "life cycle" emissions calculations, a critical part of accounting for biomass's carbon cost.

In a recent letter to Congress, 90 scientists pointed out that biomass's accounting problems only get worse from there. Climate legislation and international treaties, for example, don't count emissions from the burning of biomass, treating it as though it produced none at all. "Improper accounting," they say, could lead to massive clearing of the world's forests. And some argue that this effect is already visible as plants open in the South to produce wood pellets for burning in European power plants, which can receive carbon credits under similar policies.

Even if you don't share the scientists' degree of alarm, it's hard to disagree with the resulting policy conclusions. Any biomass that qualifies as "renewable" or "clean" should significantly reduce emissions relative to natural gas. That calculation must honestly account for land-use changes attributable to the harvesting of biomass. And any net emissions that result should be counted as such under any carbon cap.

Source:Washington Post

Con Edison has released a new animation on the company’s Web site showcasing the energy grid of the future - smart grid. Smart grid combines various technologies that modernize the electric grid, including self-healing capabilities. It also allows for a two-way flow of energy and information between customers and utilities, giving up-to-date information about the energy being used.

“Our goal was to create a communications tool that simplified the complexities of smart grid,” said Marie Berninger, Third Generation Systems of the Future department.  “We wanted to show how elements such as intelligent grid systems and solar energy fall into our vision of smart grid.”

Con Edison’s smart-grid efforts include a $6 million pilot project in Queens announced last August and a system-wide smart grid effort backed by $181 million awarded recently by the Department of Energy (DOE) under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Please visit www.conEd.com for more information about smart grid. 

Some of the smart grid technologies in the short animation include:

• Intelligent grid systems that use sophisticated communications technology to find problems on the electric grid and fix them faster, enhancing reliability.
  Greener energy sources that are more easily integrated into the electric system, lessening our dependence on fossil fuels.
  Smart building technologies, such as in-home energy monitors, that communicate with a smart meter to allow customers to track and mange energy use.

Source: coned.com

Renewable resources could supply nearly half the world's electricity by 2050, under a low-carbon technology scenario published by the International Energy Agency late Thursday.

In "Energy Technology Perspectives 2010," IEA says that a revolution in energy technology is occurring, spearheaded by substantial increases in renewables generation, particularly wind and solar power.

It warns, however, that "these encouraging developments represent but the first small, fragmented steps on a long journey towards transforming the way we supply and use energy ... recent studies indicate that climate change is  occurring even faster than previously expected."

The study offers several options -- not forecasts -- dubbed the BLUE scenarios that could see world energy production shift toward renewable energy, nuclear power, carbon capture and storage, energy efficiency and fuel switching.  The goal would be to slash energy-related CO2 releases almost 50% by mid-century compared with 2005 levels -- even as primary energy use increases 32%.

These options for reducing CO2 by fostering low-carbon technologies "can deliver a dramatically different future" from IEA's baseline, or business-as-usual, scenario, the agency said.

Under the BLUE Map scenario, for instance, renewables would generate 48% of the world's power, with nuclear energy accounting for 24% and plants equipped with CCS 17%.

In addition, CO2 emissions from buildings would plummet by two-thirds through the use of low-carbon electricity, energy efficiency and low- or zero-carbon technologies, including solar water and heating and combined heat and power.

"Achieving this will be challenging, and will require significant investment," according to the study, with costs of up to $175 for each metric ton of CO2 reduced. This strategy, though, would not only halve carbon releases by 2050 but also provide additional paybacks through lower energy bills, stronger energy security and improved quality of life by reducing atmospheric pollutants from fossil-fuel burning.

By contrast, IEA's baseline scenario assumes that CO2 releases from energy would roughly double and primary energy use would soar 84% in 40 years.  Fossil fuels would account for more than two-thirds of power production, with renewables supplying 22%, under this option.

Similar stories appear in Renewable Energy Report

by David Jones

A $2 million grant from the state will cover training for up to 500 green jobs at the two-campus San Jose-Evergreen Community College District.

The two-year grant from the California Economic Development Department, one of six awarded throughout the state, is expected to provide training leading to degrees or industry credentials through the district's Workforce Institute.

A three-tiered training program will highlight the following areas: outreach specialists/assessors providing lead generation for retrofit contractors; home performance certification and building information management for efficient energy provided for contractors with experience in the construction field; and integration demand side management for power engineers who provide energy analysis and management.

Monica Gomez, the district's public information officer, said the training may begin as early as November.

"We are proud of this partnership with the private industry, especially because it offers a unique approach for connecting community college programs and students with prospective employers," Doug Treadway, acting district chancellor, said in a statement.

It is expected that some of 4,700 former employees of the New United Motor Manufacturing, or NUMMI, car manufacturing plant in Fremont that closed April 1 will participate in the training. The program is being sponsored by the Workforce Institute, Pacific Gas & Electric Corp., the California Building Performance Contractors Association and the NUMMI Transition Center Network.

"Through the Workforce Institute's training programs and industry partnerships we are creating immediate and long-term employment opportunities within the home performance market while paving the way towards sustained efficient energy usage throughout Santa Clara County," Carol Coen, executive director of the Workforce Institute, said in a statement.

by David Goll

One of the unexpected twists of the global climate change debate is that the roles of government and business have in many ways been reversed. To traditional greens, business was the enemy, polluting with impunity, and government was the hero, ready to restrain. That was the mindset of environmentalism's first great boom, when landmark legislation like the Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act gave Washington the power and the tools to begin cleaning up the country.

But when it comes to climate change, times have changed. Although industry is still the engine of all those carbon emissions — more than a few CEOs doubt that global warming even exists — it is also the source of clean-energy solutions, which are emerging from every layer of the business world, from tiny startups to Fortune 500 behemoths. Major corporations set their own plans for greenhouse gas emissions reductions that far greener than targets that nations throw about at U.N. climate change summits.

Meanwhile Washington is paralyzed, seemingly incapable of coming to grips with global warming or the looming energy crisis. What we need is smart policy to deal with the biggest long-term challenge facing the country. What we get is vacuum.

That was the overriding theme at the 2010 World Energy Technologies Summit (WETN) held in New York City on Mar. 12. Speaker after speaker came to the podium to map out the technologies that could lead to a clean energy future: solar farms in the desert, wind turbines on a capital scale, the resurgence of nuclear power, even the recycling of energy we use today. But those solutions will sputter without the right government policy in place — especially without a firm price on carbon, according to most of the experts at the summit — and Washington can no longer be trusted. "It's going to be a three-ring circus," said Peter Goldmark, the program director for climate and air at the Environmental Defense Fund, talking about the Washington debate over climate and energy legislation. "And no one can tell you what's going to come out of this."

But does it even matter? After all, some of the smartest companies in the country are forging ahead on clean energy in the absence of legislation. Take Google, for instance. Dan Reicher, the director of climate change and energy initiatives for the Internet giant, described Google's plan to scale up renewable energy that could compete directly with coal — "RE

The company is also applying its Internet smarts on the energy sector, which in many ways has barely changed since the time of Thomas Edison. Google's PowerMeter, a free software tool, will let households customize their energy use, better tracking the electrons they're buying — a direct route to greater energy efficiency. "It's ET meets IT — energy technology meets information technology," said Reicher.
(Watch video: "Energy Summit Showcases Breakthroughs and Barriers to Sustainability")

If Google can do for utility bills what it's done for email, it could change the way many of us view energy, dragging a reluctant industry into the 21st century. And the company's got a long-term plan — Clean Energy 2030 — that charts a way to wean the U.S. off coal and drastically cut petroleum use.

But even the mighty Google can't do it alone. Reicher has testified before Congress about the need for strong climate legislation, including a firm carbon price that could help renewable energy compete today. A carbon cap alone isn't enough, however; the U.S. needs to establish requirements for renewable energy, and just as important, vastly increase the public research money spent on energy. That last part is often missed in the energy debate, but Reicher pointed out that despite the urgency of the energy and climate crisis, the U.S. (outside of the one time bump of the stimulus) is now spending less than it did on energy research in the Carter Administration. "We need a wave of innovation, and the current levels of funding just isn't going to bring that," says Reicher, who worked in the Department of Energy during the 1990s. "That can't be forgotten."

While Washington dithers, trapped in health care hell, other countries like China and Germany are forging ahead, seizing the reins of the clean-energy economy. In the meantime, U.S. corporations will continue making tentative steps toward supporting renewable energy, and venture capitalists will keep looking for the next big solution.

There's even a chance that we could see a real change of values at the CEO level. At the Mar. 12 summit, Mindy Lubber, the president of CERES, a national network of investors and green groups, plotted out a roadmap to true corporate sustainability for the 21st century. Sustainability might be the only way to survive in a time of scarcity — and the next several years or even decades could be lean ones, as more of us are competing for what feels like less and less.

It would be a lot easier if Washington were really participating. "We need a price on carbon," said Lubber in WETS's last panel. "That's it. That's the bottom line." We'll see if Congress will heed the call.

by Bryan Walsh

Cap and trade — which seeks to reduce air pollutants by mandating a decreasing limit on emissions levels and letting the market find the most efficient way to meet it — began as an obscure academic idea, before becoming the mainstream method for tackling climate change. On Wednesday, when Senators John Kerry and Joseph Lieberman unveiled the American Power Act — climate legislation that would reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and boost clean energy — cap and trade reached its apogee. It also may have reached its end.

Kerry and Lieberman's draft bill — the product of eight months of contentious negotiations with environmentalists, the energy industry and nearly everyone in between — would establish a carbon cap that aims to reduce U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions to 17% below 2005 levels by 2020, and ultimately 80% below those levels by midcentury. It would also devote billions of dollars in aid to transportation, including public transit, and expand funding for carbon sequestration and clean-energy research and development. If the bill passes — and if it is reconciled with the tougher cap-and-trade bill passed last year by the House — it will represent the first truly national program to reduce the greenhouse-gas emissions that contribute to climate change. "The American Power Act will finally change our nation's energy policy from a national weakness into a national strength," said Kerry at the bill's unveiling. "It's time to act."
(Watch a video about Google and clean energy.)

Joining the two Senators at the bill's introduction were representatives of the broad coalition the legislators had worked hard to hold together — chief executives of energy companies, senior military officers, some centrist environmentalists. Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers, who has a more progressive attitude toward climate legislation than most of his industry peers, spoke in support of the bill, focusing on its potential to build a clean-energy economy rather than its impact on climate change (Rogers' company still operates more than a dozen coal plants.) "This bill will not only create jobs today but tomorrow and in the future," Rogers said, echoing a note the White House has also struck repeatedly on energy. "It gets the transition right to a low-carbon world."

It took some doing to get major carbon emitters and energy executives to stand shoulder to shoulder with environmentalists. Kerry and Lieberman had to make more than a few concessions: the bill contains $54 billion in loan guarantees for up to 12 nuclear plants; heavy industrial emitters would receive free carbon allowances to help them adjust to life under the cap; carbon limits would not be phased in until 2013; and manufacturers would not be subject to the cap until 2016. There would also be upper and lower limits on the price of carbon in a trading market — between $25 and $12 per ton, with a steady increase year on year — to ensure stability.

Most controversially, however, the bill would allow for expanded offshore oil and gas drilling, with restrictions; states would be able to veto offshore drilling in a neighboring state and opt out of drilling that would occur in waters within 75 miles of its shores. (The Interior Department would carry out studies to determine which states drilling would impact.) As an additional incentive, states that allow drilling would retain 37% of the federal royalties from oil and gas development — right now all the money is kept by Washington, an arrangement most inland states want to keep in place.

The concessions are a way to thread the differences between the Republicans who still want to drill here and drill now, and the green, coastal Democrats who have threatened to oppose any energy bill that supports expanded drilling. Before the BP spill, offshore oil and gas exploration was meant to be the bridge that would convince some Republicans to support climate legislation. (The Democrats don't have the votes to beat a filibuster.) But the spill has made offshore drilling politically radioactive for Democrats and even some Republicans — especially after BP released a video showing thousands of barrels of oil pouring out of the wreckage of the rig. "The oil spill has completely changed the politics of this thing," said an environmental leader.
(See pictures of climate change in the Himalayas.)

Indeed, the offshore provisions were just one reason that many deeper-green environmental groups came out against the bill, despite requests that critics wait at least 72 hours before attacking it. Other groups, including Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, argued that the bill was too weak to meet the demands of climate science and contained too many giveaways for the fossil-fuel industry. "The climate proposal put forth today by Senators Kerry and Lieberman represents a disaster for our climate and planet," said Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity.

Most major environmental groups came out in support of the bill, however, saying the legislation represented the best chance to put the country on a low-carbon path and that Kerry and Lieberman should be credited for attempting to pass legislation in such a toxic political environment. At Wednesday's press conference, Fred Krupp, head of the centrist green group Environmental Defense Fund and one of the fiercest advocates of cap and trade, reminded the audience that U.S. businesses need a signal from government before they will truly begin investing in clean energy. "We need to remove the shackles of uncertainty that has restrained investment," he said. "I've been at this a long time, and this is the first time we've had such a broad level of support."

But the kind of support the bill will need to become law — from Republicans — was nowhere to be seen. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who had been a major player in the bill, dropped out abruptly late last month, ostensibly because the Senate Democratic leadership seemed poised to act on controversial immigration reform before energy. It's not clear what Graham will do now — he did not endorse the American Power Act but did say in a statement that he may eventually support it. No other Republican has moved to endorse it, and even the White House in its statement of support managed to reference the bill by the wrong name, calling it the American Clean Energy and Security Act, the title of last year's House cap-and-trade bill.

It is no surprise to the bill's co-author that criticism is coming from every side, from hard-green environmentalists to climate-change-denying conservatives. "A comprehensive climate bill written purely for you and me — true believers — can't pass the Senate no matter how hard or passionately I fight on it," Kerry wrote in a post on the green website Grist on Wednesday.

Kerry has said the bill could be the last, best chance for cap and trade — but right now, it looks like it might just be the last.

Source: TIME

In a partnership that illustrates the powerful currents at work in today’s environmental movement, the United Steel Workers labor union has joined with the American Wind Energy Association and BlueGreen Alliance, an organization that includes other labor unions, the Sierra Club and the National Resources Defense Council, to produce a blueprint for new green jobs in the wind power industry.

In pushing hard for green jobs, this diverse labor-industry-environmental group puts itself squarely on the side of the U.S. military’s push for alternative energy in the interests of a strong national defense.  It also joins a growing number of leading U.S companies calling for national climate legislation and green jobs, in yet another sign that the dominance of fossil fuels is rapidly coming to a close.

More Green Jobs in Wind Power

The report is titled Winds of Change: A Manufacturing Blueprint for the Wind Industry.  Basically the report details how the wind energy industry has been growing and creating new jobs even without all of the advantages accorded to fossil fuels, such as billion-dollar subsidies and supportive national policies.  More support for alternative energy has been forthcoming from the Obama administration, and the report calls ramping up those efforts through, among other things, a stronger Renewable Electricity Standard of 25%, more tax credits for the renewable energy industry, and strong national climate legislation.  All of these measures would be geared toward creating more jobs in the U.S. wind industry, rather than shipping in components from overseas.

Wind Power and Local Communities

The BP oil spill in the Gulf, poverty and poor health throughout the Appalachian coal mining regions, and the hazards of natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania all clearly demonstrate the obvious: fossil fuel harvesting is a high-risk endeavor for local communities.  A new wind farm in Missouri points up the contrasts: rather than destroying the local environment, the turbines sit on land leased on existing farms that continue to operate as always.  The wind farm pays local taxes that support schools and roads, creates new green jobs, and boosts civic pride in its host county.  In a similar vein, the U.S. EPA is undertaking a major campaign to reclaim former industrial sites for wind and solar power installations that create new green jobs in local communities.

Powerful Forces at Work for Wind Power

The environmental battles of past years were as complex as any, but on the surface they seemed simple: groups of citizens duked it out with powerful U.S. industries and achieved some amazing successes despite the mismatch.  Now nothing is simple, not even on the surface, and the match is far more even.  The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is facing open revolt among some of its leading members due to its obstruction of climate legislation, and the practically the entire U.S. electric utility sector is investing in more solar energy research and other alternative energy.  Add to that the sustainability commitment of the entire U.S. military, as aptly described by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and you can see why fossil fuels are on the verge of marginalization.

by Tina Casey

Image: Wind farm by foxtwo on flickr.com.

Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) is writing legislation to cap emissions from the utility sector, an approach that is gaining traction in Washington amid fresh concerns about what carrots might be dangled in front of power plants as incentive to sign on.

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee chairman said yesterday that he has a bill that would cap greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. "I've done some work on that, but I haven't introduced anything," he told reporters, adding it has some "significant differences" from the Kerry-Lieberman cap-and-trade measure.

Although Bingaman said he was not sure how much further he will go with the draft bill, the utility-only approach could be the most feasible way to set a limit on carbon dioxide emissions this year, given the limited time left on the legislative calendar and November's elections looming. White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel has said the approach would be welcomed when President Obama meets with a bipartisan group of senators today to discuss the issue.

Bingaman, who has downplayed the chances of an economywide climate bill passing this year, said he will wait before introducing his bill -- if at all. "I think it would depend on how much support there would be for that," he said. "I don't want to just introduce bills in order to add to the list of bills that have been introduced."

A utility-only cap shepherded by Bingaman may have a better shot at winning bipartisan support than if it were championed by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), a co-sponsor of a Senate cap-and-trade climate bill who became a partisan magnet after his failed bid during the 2004 presidential contest.

"I've talked to him about it and we've talked about some other variations on that," Kerry said yesterday. "It may be possible to find a way to do something intelligent." The bill from Kerry and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) would set emission caps on the utility, manufacturing and transportation sectors.

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) "welcomes all creative proposals that will help pass comprehensive clean energy legislation," a Democratic aide said.

Bingaman is also the lead author of a bipartisan energy bill that cleared the Energy and Natural Resources Committee last summer. At the time, it was thought that bill would be combined on the floor with cap and trade, but now the measure may go to the floor on its own. That bill -- which cleared the Energy Committee by a 15-8 vote -- includes a renewable electricity standard and offshore drilling provisions but no cap on carbon dioxide emissions. Bingaman has also worked across the aisle on previous energy bills.

"I think that there is no doubt that Senator Bingaman enjoys the widespread confidence of the energy sector, the manufacturing industries, as well as progressive interest groups that want to develop reasonable legislation," said Scott Segal, an industry attorney at Bracewell & Giuliani. "While Senator Kerry has made at times heroic efforts to be open to a broad spectrum of views, Senator Bingaman has a track record of understanding the unique circumstances of the energy sector."

Asked whether there are any political advantages to Bingaman taking a lead role on the utility-only approach, Kerry said, "Senator Bingaman has always had a lead role on this; he's chairman of the Energy Committee. We've always included him as -- he's one of the key leaders on this thing -- I mean, he's very helpful, obviously, but I think it depends again on what the total picture is."

Kerry said he does not expect Bingaman to introduce the bill. "I'm expecting Harry Reid to come out with some kind of a bill," Kerry said. "And Jeff may come up with some proposal, there are a lot of proposals, and Harry Reid's going to sort of pick between them.

"But I think any proposals from Jeff or anybody else right now, that move you in the direction as I've said, you know, the polluter pays, pricing carbon principle is the key," Kerry added. "There are a number of ways of doing it. I'm not locked in to any one way. I just want to get it done."

Concerns about political tradeoffs

Although addressing the electricity sector may be the route to setting a price on carbon dioxide emissions, that path is not without potholes. Because not every sector will be covered by a carbon cap, environmentalists worry about possible incentives that may be necessary to sweeten the deal for the power industry.

Utilities are divided on the approach. Some say a cap on just their sector will offer certainty and is better than none at all; others are reluctant to go it alone. The Edison Electric Institute -- a trade group whose members represent about 70 percent of the U.S. electric power industry -- has thrown its support behind economywide bills but has not publicly taken a position on a utility-only approach.

Getting the industry's buy-in could require some political horse trading, which may force supporters of a climate bill to pick between getting a cap on carbon emissions or allowing U.S. EPA to plow ahead with aggressive regulations.

"There's concern that they would want something in `return` for being the only sector that's under a mandated cap," said Joe Mendelson, director of global warming policy at the National Wildlife Federation.

For example, Mendelson said, it would be a nonstarter for environmentalists if a climate bill included regulatory relief for other pollutants, like hazardous air pollutants or soot- and smog-forming pollution.

Some utility representatives say they would push for additional measures in a climate bill aimed at offering more regulatory certainty.

Duke Energy Corp. CEO Jim Rogers co-wrote an op-ed last week in Politico with Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, urging utilities to pave the way with a national emissions cap.

Sensible policy, they wrote, must "clarify federal emissions regulations so electric utilities can shift to cleaner and more efficient power plants without the uncertainty of patchwork regulatory approaches and the threat of litigation."

Jeff Holmstead, an attorney at Bracewell & Giuliani who represents utilities, said the industry will want regulatory certainty from a climate bill. "If the bill only deals with CO2, then that doesn't help them," he said, because there is a "whole series of other regulatory requirements that EPA is threatening that could fundamentally affect the way that utilities operate." Holmstead served as EPA's air chief during the George W. Bush administration.

Those pending EPA rules include a national air quality standard for ozone, an upcoming replacement for a Bush-era standard limiting smog-forming nitrogen oxide and soot-forming nitrogen dioxide from power plants, and plant-specific limits on hazardous pollutants like mercury. EPA is also working on regulations to curb greenhouse gas emissions from industrial facilities, which many industry representatives want Congress to pre-empt through legislation.

Duke spokesman Tom Williams said it is premature to discuss what incentives the utility industry would want to back a sector-specific cap. "It's a bit premature to speculate on that," he said. "I think it's a fair discussion. There are a lot of issues we would like to discuss."

Additional measures could be added to offer regulatory certainty, Williams said. "If the regulations do come down, then they may be litigated. But if you have it wrapped up into one bill, we can have certainty on carbon ... and you remove other uncertainties. We're not asking for leniency at all."

Clean Air Watch President Frank O'Donnell said there is "grave danger that some utilities will seek to interfere with efforts to clean up dirty power plants.

"This could subject the public to added years of life-shortening pollution," he said. "We unequivocally oppose trading off public health protections in order to buy utility support for a weak climate bill."

Graham won't attend White House meeting

One of the leading Republican negotiators on energy and climate legislation won't be attending today's meeting at the White House with President Obama.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who drafted legislation with Kerry-Lieberman but later dropped out as a co-sponsor, said yesterday that he will miss the meeting because it conflicts with the Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing for Gen. David Petraeus, who was nominated to take over the top U.S. military post in Afghanistan.

Graham said he asked the White House to move the meeting but was refused. "I'm just not going to run down to the White House and do that meeting and miss the Petraeus thing," he said.

"It's pretty clear that after their caucus there's divisions about what to do with the oil spill legislation and how much carbon pricing you can attach to it," Graham added, referring to last Thursday's Democratic caucus meeting. "So it seemed to be a long way away from consensus on their side, much less our side."

Democrats slated to attend today's meeting are Reid, Bingaman, Kerry, Sens. Max Baucus of Montana, Mark Begich of Alaska, Barbara Boxer of California, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Maria Cantwell of Washington, Tom Carper of Delaware, Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Bill Nelson of Florida, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan. Lieberman, who caucuses with Democrats, is also expected to attend.

Republicans invited to attend include Sens. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, Richard Lugar of Indiana, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and George Voinovich of Ohio.

By Robin Bravender

Michael Bellefeuille looks at algae inside a test tank at the XL Renewables Inc. research facility in Casa Grande, Ariz., in May 2008. With high fuel prices, companies including BP and Chevron are studying how to make fuel from quick-growing algae. Phoenix-based XL Renewables Inc. is taking a slightly different strategy by growing algae that can be sold to make animal feed, biodiesel and food oils, rather than strictly focus on biofuel.

In its push for clean energy sources, President Obama's administration is exploring all options -- including algae-based biofuels.

The U.S. Department of Energy announced Monday that it's awarding up to $24 million for three research groups to figure out how to make such biofuels commercially viable.

"The United States must find effective ways to hasten the development of technologies for advanced biofuels made from algae and other renewable resources to reduce our need for foreign sources of oil," Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Cathy Zoi said in the announcement.

To help develop non-polluting energy sources, DOE has awarded billions of dollar -- much of it from the three-year Recovery Act -- for nuclear power plants, solar energy systems, wind turbines, energy efficiency and carbon capture technology.

Obama and Energy Secretary Steven Chu have set aside $800 million in Recovery Act funds to research new biofuels. DOE says algae has potential but technical and economic challenges remain. To guide future work, it released the National Algal Biofuels Technology Roadmap.

The report says that the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 requires transportation fuel sold in the U.S. to contain a minimum of 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels, including biomass-based diesel, by 2022.

It says cellulosic ethanol is expected to play a large role in meeting that target, but "next generation biofuels" such as those derived from algae show "significant promise."

In a press release, DOE described the three new research projects:

Sustainable Algal Biofuels Consortium (Mesa, AZ) – Led by Arizona State University, this consortium will focus on testing the acceptability of algal biofuels as replacements for petroleum-based fuels. Tasks include investigating biochemical conversion of algae to fuels and products, and analyzing physical chemistry properties of algal fuels and fuel intermediates. (DOE share: up to $6 million)

Consortium for Algal Biofuels Commercialization (San Diego, CA) – Led by the University of California, San Diego, this consortium will concentrate on developing algae as a robust biofuels feedstock. Tasks include investigating new approaches for algal crop protection, algal nutrient utilization and recycling, and developing genetic tools. (DOE funding: up to $9 million)

Cellana, LLC Consortium (Kailua-Kona, HI) – Led by Cellana, LLC, this consortium will examine large-scale production of fuels and feed from microalgae grown in seawater. Tasks include integrating new algal harvesting technologies with pilot-scale cultivation test beds, and developing marine microalgae as animal feed for the aquaculture industry. (DOE funding: up to $9 million)

Source: usatoday.com

You know the politics of energy are changing in the United States when the senior senator from the oil-soaked state of Louisiana publicly admits that the oil era is passing and "the transition to clean renewable energy [must] begin immediately." So said Democrat Mary Landrieu, responding to President Obama's Oval Office speech of June 15. Landrieu's words are remarkable, considering her long record of devotion to the oil industry. Like her state's junior senator, Republican David Vitter, Landrieu seems never to have met an oil industry subsidy she didn't like. In this, she remains far from alone. Recently she joined a majority of the Senate in extending $35 billion in subsidies to the industry, even as BP's deep-sea well continued to gush tens of thousands of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

And yet, as Landrieu's rhetorical evolution shows, the old calculus on Capitol Hill may be shifting. Obama's prospects for passing strong climate and energy legislation will only grow brighter if Republicans continue their self-sabotaging strategy of apologizing to BP, following Representative Joe Barton's bumbling lead. But the White House must seize the opportunity this moment affords. The president did himself no favors with his vague, lackluster speech, though he did rebound nicely the next day, staring down BP big shots during a four-and-a-half-hour meeting in the White House to win $20 billion for a fund to compensate individuals and businesses damaged by the gulf disaster. The president also took a firm stand with his moratorium on deepwater drilling — earning not only the ire of Big Oil and its Congressional champions but a ruling from a federal judge in New Orleans to block the moratorium, now on appeal.

Will Obama continue this relatively tough line as he pushes for energy and climate legislation in Congress? He clearly understands the big-picture reasons the United States needs a green energy revolution. Politically, to rely on foreign oil leaves us hostage to events outside our borders, including the desire of some oil-rich states to smite the Great Satan by closing off supply. Geologically, experts say peak oil is either imminent or has already arrived. The easy-to-access petroleum on this planet has been exhausted, which is a big part of the reason BP was drilling so deep — nearly four miles beneath the earth's surface. Economically, clean energy is a key to prosperity and competitiveness in the twenty-first century, as China and Germany clearly recognize.

But Obama has offered precious few specifics on how his administration plans to rise to this challenge, and the approaches on the table in Congress leave much to be desired.

Public anger at BP is real and unlikely to wane anytime soon. Popular support for clean renewable energy is broad and deep. It's hard to imagine a better time for the president to stand up to the corporate chieftains whose greed and arrogance produced not only the BP blowout but the dysfunctional energy system plaguing this country. We have seen two different Obamas in recent days: the Obama of the Oval Office speech and the Obama of the showdown with the BP bosses. The latter Obama was a calm but fierce fighter, willing to stand up for ordinary citizens through words and actions that cannot be misunderstood. The future of America's energy and climate policy — and perhaps of Obama's presidency — will depend in no small measure on which Barack Obama we see more of in the weeks and months ahead.

Source: npr.org

As President Obama's calls for a new energy policy and the U.S. Senate takes up climate and clean energy legislation, political opposition and public attitudes about global warming will be prominent in the news again.

The recent statement that fewer Americans believe in global warming now than a few years ago is disturbing for a number of reasons.

•There has been an aggressive campaign to convince the public that climate change is not an important problem.
•The array of environmental problems covered by climate change is more complex than merely global warming.
•There is a tendency for the media to consider the public viewpoint a belief rather than encouraging their audiences to gain understanding of the science behind the issues.
•In light of the global economic crisis, there is the attitude that any action is too expensive.

The lack of credibility for the major pertinent international organization, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, undermines action to avert climate change. The panel is not dogma from a small cabal of like-thinkers; it is a series of reports put together by a very large and diverse group of international environmental and social scientists over two decades.

Conclusions in the IPCC reports have evolved over time with increasing input of new data.  Before release, the reports receive extensive review by environmental and social scientists other than the authors as well as review from most of the governments of the world.

'Climategate' explained

As normal practice in the scientific process, with more information, there is a continual clarification and revision of conclusions and predictions.

These reports are based on solid data and sophisticated mathematical models that are interrelated. Added to a misunderstanding of the IPCC report is the recent furor over emails from the University of East Anglia "climategate."

"Climategate" does not comprise a conspiracy within the climate science community; excellent explanations have been published that clarify the meaning of comments taken out of context.

Unfortunately, the purloined e-mails do expose an arrogant attitude of a few scientists who failed to accept that there are some legitimate disagreements and skepticism that should be openly discussed.

Most environmental scientists who have studied the evidence conclude that the Earth is warming and that human contributions of excess greenhouse gases are, at least partially, the reason for the warming. The evidence is not dependent upon a single flimsy source.

It comes from multiple sources including direct measurements of land and sea temperatures made over decades, records in high latitude and high altitude ice cover, changes in distribution of terrestrial and marine plants and animals, and paleo-evidence from ice cores and tree rings.

The evidence for human contributions of greenhouse gases comes from direct gas measurements made for over a half century, longer-time evidence from ice cores of gas concentrations for hundreds of thousands of years, and detailed records of gas emissions from the past century.

Humanity is to blame

The conclusion is that the atmospheric carbon dioxide today is about 30 percent higher than any time in the past half-million years and that this is directly due to human activities -- primarily fossil fuel emissions and land-use changes. For most of the past 500,000 years, atmospheric CO2 ranged from about 190 to 300 parts per million; today, the level is about 390ppm.

The CO2 in the atmosphere is the major contribution to the increased greenhouse effect due to human activity. However, the issue is not just global warming. The increased CO2 also has other impacts and there are other problems caused by human activities.

Claims that the increased CO2 is good because it will increase plant production are not correct. Plant production and biomass on land and the sea are generally not limited by CO2 and our massive input of CO2 is not going to lead to a desirable greening of the Earth.

A higher concentration of atmospheric CO2 is contributing to a higher inorganic carbon concentration in the ocean, causing acidification of these waters that cover 70 percent of the surface of the Earth.

Fossil fuel combustion also is contributing massive amounts of nitrogen oxides to the atmosphere that are altering the global nitrogen cycle, and contributing particulate materials and ozone producing chemicals that cause extensive localized pollution problems.

As we are seeing today, offshore oil drilling can have disastrous consequences. There are many environmental reasons why fossil fuel use and emissions should be cut.
More from scientists, media

As an environmental scientist, I feel that my profession has failed to communicate effectively with the public and policy makers.

We need to improve our ability to present scientific evidence so that public understanding can be based on sound information. We need to explain the breadth of environmental change problems, and not just doom and gloom about global warming, one oversimplified part of the bigger issue.

Also, the media can be faulted in their failure to be more discriminating in their presentation of opinions and news. To give coverage of ideological views equal to that of solid scientific evidence is not a fair balance in the news. Often, the majority of scientists agree on an issue but the media will put that view on equal footing with one nay-sayer, often one with little knowledge or expertise.

In an effort to sell news, controversy is emphasized and created. Rather than assisting the public to evaluate and make their own decisions, the press coverage often appears to give the reader a choice of which of the opposing views to accept on faith.

Changes of prevailing climate patterns of our planet will contribute to accelerated sea level rise, will cause massive alterations of plant and animal distributions, will expand areas where human diseases can thrive, and will change rainfall patterns to increase both floods and droughts.

A major contributor to the climate change is the increased atmospheric CO2 that comes primarily from fossil fuel emissions. In addition to the varied climate change responses, the increased CO2 is changing seawater chemistry, causing it to become more acidic.

Controls of fossil fuel emissions will not only lessen CO2 input to the atmosphere, but will also decrease nitrogen oxides, particulate matter and ozone in the atmosphere. These decreases will benefit human health as well as the ecology of the planet.

Can we afford to do anything? Many knowledgeable people think that the overwhelming answer is yes. Properly addressed, efforts to decrease fossil fuel emissions can be turned into economic benefit, rather than burden. There are many little things that individuals can do to decrease their environmental footprints, especially fossil fuel emissions.

Purchasing a car with lower emissions is one thing that can be done, but even easier is to drive less, use less electricity, recycle more and generally make purchases that have smaller impacts. The cumulative impact of these individual actions is not trivial, but alone, it is not adequate.

Rich past as innovators

We need a massive new energy policy in this country.

The U.S., as the largest per capita carbon-emitting nation, has a responsibility to be a leader in controlling emissions. Perhaps a more important consideration is the rich history of our country for technical innovation and research and development. We should be leading the world in development, use at home, and export of technology for alternate energy.

Some outstanding ideas have surfaced recently from industry, institutions of higher education, nonprofit groups and Congress.

Also, some excellent grass-roots beginnings are occurring, like the new University of Delaware wind turbine in Lewes. These ideas and small steps that are being taken should be nurtured and advertised by the media in a non-political unified campaign for national progress.

The nation that responded to urgent needs to develop the atom bomb, develop satellite technology, put a man on the moon, and develop the Internet has the capability to turn a new energy policy into an economic boon as well as an environmental salvation.

by Jonathan H. Sharp

With balloons and bouquets, the weekend's graduation ceremonies at Foothill and De Anza community colleges honored thousands of hardworking students.

But they were celebrations of two campuses, as well.

"Community colleges are an unrecognized gem of education," said U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the nation's top educational leader, who addressed both commencements.

"These two schools are two of the best in the country," he said. "They're absolutely inspiring."

Combined, the Foothill-De Anza Community College District campuses serve more than 45,000 students a year. On Friday night, 497 graduated from Foothill, located in Los Altos Hills; on Saturday morning, 1,900 graduated from De Anza in Cupertino.

Among them was Haig Vartanian, 20, who moved to San Jose from tumultuous Baghdad five years ago, speaking little English. He earned a 3.5 grade point average at De Anza and is headed to UCLA in September to study biochemistry.

"It is an awesome school," he said. "The English teachers made me a great writer. The science teachers made me love science and want to pursue it more and more."

Another new graduate, 22-year-old Danielle Keene, arrived in San Jose from Missouri with just one suitcase. She needed to support herself, and "De Anza was a very accessible education, with an extremely flexible schedule," said Keene, who will study graphic design at San Jose State. "My classes were at night, or online, so I could work during the day."

Overcoming obstacles

In individual speeches at each school, the Harvard-educated Duncan asked graduates to raise their hands if they were the first in their families to graduate from college, had come to the United States from another country, or had worked or raised a family while in school.

At both events, he faced a sea of hands. At De Anza on Saturday, he said: "The class of 2010 has had to climb steps and overcome obstacles that younger students at four-year residential colleges typically don't face. Please give yourself a round of applause."

He reminded the Foothill audience that "President Obama and the first lady were not born to privilege. The first lady has talked openly about the fact that neither of her parents went to college. "... But you know what? The first lady didn't let the doubters stop her from chasing her dreams."

At De Anza, he cited the life stories of two accomplished immigrants — Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke and Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, both elevated by education.

Duncan praised the efforts of Foothill faculty members to use free or low-cost Web-based "open educational resources" as substitutes for costly college textbooks. At De Anza, he lauded the tent city erected in the quad to protest state budget cuts and the entrepreneurial De Anza Flea Market, which provides about $300,000 a year to support student programs.

Attending both ceremonies was former Foothill-De Anza Community College District Chancellor Martha Kanter — now undersecretary of education — and the first in the history of the department with experience as a community college leader.

"We're trying to shine a huge spotlight on community colleges," said Duncan, explaining his decision to attend both ceremonies. The United States has fallen behind other developed countries in college attainment, and there are large gaps in completion for low-income and minority students.

Boosting enrollment

Saying two-year institutions are critical to boosting the nation's college enrollment, President Barack Obama has called for an additional 5 million community college graduates by 2020.

To help, the administration raised the maximum Pell grant award to $5,550 from $4,860 and is providing $17.3 billion for the program in the stimulus package. In addition, $2 billion has been committed to summer and youth employment, expansion of on-the-job training and "skill refresher" courses at community colleges, he said.

"As America gets back on its feet, community colleges will play a huge, huge role, whether health care jobs, green energy or tech jobs. As families get back to work, community colleges will help them get there," Duncan said.

Departing for his flight home to the nation's capital, Duncan said, "We've been to 67 graduations and I tell you, there have been none we've enjoyed more or appreciated more than the spirit and camaraderie than these two."

"I've been honored to be here," he said.

by Lisa M. Krieger

First Solar Inc. (FSLR) is the world's largest solar-panel maker. Now, it wants to compete with fossil-fuel power generators.

In addition to making flat, glass panels that convert sunlight into electricity, First Solar has built some of the largest solar farms in the U.S. including a 21-megawatt facility in Blythe, Calif., owned by NRG Energy Inc. (NRG) and a 10-megawatt plant in Boulder City, Nev., owned by Sempra Energy (SRE).

First Solar plans to build several more solar farms with a project-development business assembled over the last year through its acquisitions of NextLight Renewable Power LLC in April, a unit of Edison International (EIX), in January and part of privately held OptiSolar last year.

The move is a risky one for the Tempe, Ariz.-based company. First Solar hopes it can leverage its expertise in solar panels to build solar farms capable of taking on gas-fired power plants. The goal: to greatly expand solar power's share of the U.S. power market.

With 2,200 megawatts of solar farms under development, First Solar hopes it can demonstrate that solar power is a reliable, reasonably priced source of valuable daytime electricity. For investors, the company aims to prove that solar farms can be lucrative.

"Our major goal is to provide renewable power that's sustainable over time," said First Solar Chief Executive Rob Gillette in an interview earlier this month. In turn, that will "drive the costs of our technology down to where it is competing with fossil-fuel peaking resources," he added.

This year, the company will sell most of its panels into the red-hot solar-power market. Global installations of solar panels are expected to nearly double this year to about 13 gigawatts, due to strong demand in Germany and other European countries, where developers are rushing to nail down projects ahead of government plans to cut subsidies later this year.

Meanwhile, demand in the U.S., Japan, China and other countries has been steadily rising. In addition to clean energy requirements and improving economies, falling solar-panel prices have generated greater interest.

With its low-cost thin-film manufacturing technology, First Solar is a formidable competitor in a market increasingly populated by low-priced Chinese manufacturers. The company isn't standing still. First Solar is in the process of expanding production of solar panels by nearly 60% to 2,100 megawatts by 2012, while working to cut manufacturing costs and improve its product.

The solar-farm business has perplexed some analysts and investors who view it as a detour from First Solar's tried-and-true business.

"It's not necessarily an ideal situation," said Barclays Capital analyst Vishal Shah. While building solar farms may be a good way to grab a big chunk of a fast-growing market, there are plenty of risks involved, including financing and execution risks, he said.

But Gillette sees solar farms as a valuable channel for selling panels, which will help the company gain market share and push the boundaries of the solar market, which in the U.S. accounts for less than 1% of power generation. Figuring out how to build and engineer a solar farm to squeeze the most electricity out of each panel each day is an important job that few are doing, he said.

"There are all kinds of things that we're learning about how to...yield a lower total-system cost," Gillette said. "Without the capability of [engineering, procurement and construction] and understanding how to drive that total system cost down, you don't really know. You're just responding to a [request] for modules."

Solar-company stocks have fallen due to concerns about Europe and its currency. Shares of First Solar closed Thursday at $116.88, down about 14% year-to-date. That compares to American depositary shares of top Chinese solar-panel suppliers Suntech Power Holdings Co. (STP), Yingli Green Energy Holding Co. (YGE) and Trina Solar Ltd. (TSL), which were down between 35% and 44% year-to-date. Preferred shares of U.S. solar-panel maker SunPower Corp. (SPWRA, SPWRB) closed Thursday at $13.38, down 43% year-to-date.

First Solar plans to sell about 75% of its panels in Europe this year, but the percentage will drop as demand grows in the U.S., China and other countries, Gillette said.

Analysts predict U.S. solar-power demand could double this year to nearly 1,000 megawatts and continue growing over the next several years. Much of that growth will be in California and other Western states where state renewable-energy requirements and strong solar resources have created a springboard for the solar market.

by Cassandra Sweet

It’s a sobering image: Well-dressed people, standing patiently in long lines while they wait for any prospect of a job. For most, the image is only a picture, a page in the history of the Great Depression.

Although the unemployment rate in the U.S. has not reached that level, the patient desperation of those who are out of work is evident all around us. California ranks 49th highest in unemployment at 12.4 percent, with San Joaquin County even further back in the line at 17.7 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Those tracking trends look at future housing starts as a sign to predict when we will be out of this recession — which is ludicrous, really. We don’t need more housing right now — or more single-family suburban sprawl — with rates of foreclosure on the rise.

What we need is a smarter model that says we have learned from our excesses and won’t repeat our mistakes. At the moment, the engine that could is in the “green job” sector.

While traditional jobs have shrunk by 1 percent in each of the past four years, the green jobs sector continues to expand by 5 percent a year.

But ask anyone what a green job is, and you’re likely to get a pause. Those who are prejudiced about environmentalism — those who believe anything “green” gets in the way of business — should become educated about what green jobs really are: A retooling of traditional engineering, manufacturing and construction jobs.

According to the Employment Development Department, green jobs are those jobs that produce goods and services in the five categories that spell out “GREEN”: Generating and storing renewable energy; Recycling existing materials; Energy efficiency product manufacturing, distribution, construction, installation and maintenance; Education, compliance and awareness of the green sector; and Natural and sustainable product manufacturing.

The U.S. Green Building Council forecasts that green construction will support more than 7.9 million jobs in the next four years. Examples of green job growth are all around us. Telsa bought the shuttered General Motors-Toyota NUMMI plant in Fremont to build electric cars; Electric Vehicles International relocated from Mexico in 2009 to build commercial-grade electric vehicles in Stockton; Solar Power will open a factory to build solar panels in Roseville run by its own solar panel plant.

Green jobs aren’t reinventing the wheel, but instead are taking traditional roles and expanding the knowledge of capable engineers and technicians into more sustainable areas.

The byproduct? We will have a smarter workforce creating a more sustainable world. We will be less dependent on foreign oil, toxic energy production and show more respect for our natural resources like water and the land that grows our food. That’s the economy we want.

by Christina D.B. Frankel

Last week, BP agreed to put aside about $20 billion for oil spill claims. This announcement came one day after President Barack Obama recommended the company set aside a large reserve to cope with what is expected to be, almost literally, an ocean of damage claims, and after several days of volatile BP stock prices that inspired analysts and television pundits to consider assorted BP bankruptcy scenarios.

But if BP were allowed to go bankrupt, would it help or hurt environmental recovery in the Gulf?

Despite the mountain of evidence that BP and the U.S. Minerals Management Service underestimated the risks, and had no plan in place to handle a disaster of this magnitude, it doesn’t change the fact that BP can still play a positive role in the outcome. We must be mindful of future risks, not just at BP, but throughout the industry. If BP or a subsidiary were to go bankrupt, it likely would impede the lessons learned, and probably mean bad news for everyone except its competitors.

Here’s why. First, the businesses and coastal users who currently bear the economic costs of the spill could become less likely to receive compensation in a bankruptcy.

Second, BP is the world’s largest deepwater oil producer, and rounds out the top three biggest private oil producers overall. If BP survives to pay the full costs of this environmental disaster, these costs would be passed on to energy users. This effect is, to some extent, desirable from an economic standpoint because the only way to reduce our insatiable demand for environmentally hazardous energy is to make us pay its true cost.

Third, the decades-long history of U.S. oil spill disasters suggests that the industry copes poorly with catastrophic risk. Rightly or wrongly, BP is now the poster child for this syndrome — charged as it is with failing to take adequate precautions in the Gulf and in previous calamities in Alaska and Texas. One hopes that the Deepwater Horizon spill changes the risk psychology of BP’s future operations so it becomes one of the more environmentally conservative energy companies on the planet.

Going forward, all firms doing business in offshore oil should be capable and prepared to pay the full costs of potential spills and environmental disasters. As we learned from a recent House Energy and Commerce hearing where oil company executives testified, they might not be.

There are ways to address this risk. Performance bonds — advanced security deposits that reflect the worst-case cost of a spill — could be posted by offshore oil companies. Like requiring banks to hold sufficient capital to cover financial crises, the federal government should require the same of firms in which environmental crisis is a likely part of doing business.

Quickly, we would expect to see a market for performance bonds. Smaller companies could buy performance bonds the same way people buy bail bonds or other types of insurance. Companies that can demonstrate risk-reduction practices and can show they are well prepared to deal with an environmental disaster would pay lower rates on performance bonds — just like good drivers pay lower insurance rates.

The United States has suffered several major “teachable moments” the last several years, and the Deepwater Horizon is providing another one.

BP could teach the industry far more about responsible energy production through economic survival and corporate sacrifice than through bankruptcy. But before that, BP has to survive long enough to learn from this moment.

by Linwood Pendleton, Director of ocean and coastal policy at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

Those of us committed to sustainability might sometimes be hard pressed to stay optimistic. Bombarded with news of murky oil spills and other woes we might flirt with feelings of hopelessness. But, these are the times to search out the good things, to find what is going right, to find things that give hope. The tremendous advances made in sustainability in and through centers of higher learning give reason to expect only the best from future generations.

Universities and colleges promote sustainability in three ways. First, the institutions become more sustainable themselves, adopting green campus initiatives. Further, universities  develop new green education programs, preparing the next generation of workers to excel at finding solutions to our environmental problems. Lastly, as centers of research and development, schools serve as living laboratories for new processes and technologies.

I usually skim my alumni magazine before tossing it in the recycle bin, but I read the last one cover to cover. I was pulled in by articles on the school’s green programs, efforts not in place when I graduated in 2001. The school signed the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment two years ago, pledging a more sustainable campus. At the end of 2009 there were 665 signers nationwide, a growth of 5400% since the programs inception. By signing, schools commit to annual inventories of GHG emissions; develop a Climate Action Plan; and make sustainability a part of the students’ education. The reporting of ACUPCC is powered by Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE), a member centered alliance of educational institutions focused on sustainable initiatives.

While greening their campuses and reducing their emissions, schools are simultaneously shaping and forming tomorrow’s green leaders. Degree programs have emerged to meet the needs of a changing workforce. Managers can now earn a Sustainable MBA, with emphasis on the triple bottom line, from leading and accredited universities, online or on campus. Community colleges and technical schools are lined up to train and inspire the next generation of green collar workers, the fifth largest market sector in the U.S. according to Green Tech. Professional certifications are offered by major institutions and private organizations, offering advanced studies for those new to sustainability or continuing education for industry veterans.

Finally, centers of higher learning continue to be powerhouses for research and living demonstrations of best practices. Universities are well positioned to create and test new methods, technologies and resources that might later become mainstream. I am encouraged by what many  are doing. For example, since 2003, Yale University has been offering the best in education and sustainable agriculture through its Yale Sustainable Food Project. On Earth Day of this year Green Mountain college in Vermont opened its $5.8 million dollar biomass plant, aiming to reduce its own emissions by 50% by next year. The plant will serve as an educational lab for students and the general public, educating all about the plausibility of renewable fuel sources.  These are two small examples among thousands.

So, there is reason for optimism. Academia is living up to its purpose of bettering society. Higher education is leading the way for this generation and the next. As with so many great things, sustainability starts in the schools.

by Leslie Back

The University of Washington's new College of the Environment is one-year-old and now has its first dean, who says the next big challenge will be to understand and improve the way that ecosystems, societies and economies interact.

The college incorporates the forestry, atmospheric sciences and oceanography departments, among others. It is designed to pull together the environmental research going on at the UW, facilitate partnerships with other departments and the outside community, make it easier for students to pursue an education and a career in the environmental field, and, importantly in this climate of state budget cuts, help UW scientists bring in money in the form of research grants and private funding.

"The UW is already known nationally and internationally for this kind of research, although not so well perhaps right here in our own back yard and among the citizens and leaders of our state," said Dennis Hartmann, who had been serving as the Interim Dean of the College of the Environment for the last year. "We need to do a better job of conveying that message."

The UW Provost, Phyllis Wise, said that these strengths were one reason that the she worked with faculty and other administrators to put together the college of the environment in the first place.

"During the first year that I was here I kept on hearing from different faculty and different other stakeholders that we were really, really strong in research and scholarship and education on the environment, but that we didn't really have a cohesive way of creating synergies and taking advantage of our strengths," she said.

UW administrators and faculty said that the College of the Environment has already had some important successes. On its Web site, for instance, the new college reported that it brought in over $74 million in external public funding and $20 million in private support during the 2009 fiscal year. Together, this revenue is almost four times the money the college brought in from state appropriations and tuition.

'A wave' of excitement

The College of the Environment also announced on June 9 that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has selected a joint institute from within the college as a partner in a study of ocean-atmosphere interactions. That could mean $100 million in research funding over five years.

"The college of the environment will be, I hope, even more effective than in already is, and it is already quite impressive in terms of its ability to get grants and contracts and gifts," said Wise. "I hope that having a college will help donors understand our ability to find solutions and develop better environmental practices."

Lisa Graumlich was approved as dean on Thursday. She got her PhD from the UW School of Forestry in 1985 and is to take over as dean of the new college in July, said environmental issues where becoming more salient and that the public wants to see solutions to problems like biodiversity loss and climate change.

"There's a deeper and deeper realization that questions of environmental issues and sustainability are rising in prominence in the scientific community," she said. "I'm definitely riding a wave of great excitement and momentum and there are large expectations."

Graumlich said she expects this new college will serve as a model to other research universities around the country, and that as it develops it is being watched carefully.

One way that the College of the Environment is to be somewhat revolutionary is by forming partnerships with NGOs, government, and other departments on campus, according to both Hartmann and Graumlich.

"We need an interface between natural sciences and what I call the human dimension, the social and policy science side of it," said Hartmann. "It's a challenge. It's something that hasn't been done before."

Graumlich said making these connections went to the heart of the environmental challenges that we are facing now.

She said when she first got involved in the environmental field, people were focusing on how to minimize the human-nature interactions. Now, she said, scientists are beginning to realize that we should concentrate on making those interactions as environmentally-friendly as possible.

"One could cite the things people often cite, you know loss of biodiversity, climate change, ocean acidification," said Graumlich. "But all of those things in the end come back to how we organize our economies and our livelihoods and our lives."

The new college is also designed to help UW students passionate about environmental issues understand what courses they can take and careers they can pursue in that field.

"If you are an undergraduate and you are really intrigued and motivated to come to the UW to study the environment, it's really unclear where you go," Graumlich said. "Now that we're all together as one college we'll be much more effective in how we reach out to undergrads."

She said she hopes she can implement some of the same outreach programs to businesses, governments, and NGOs that gave the School of Natural Resources and the Environment that she has directed since 2007 at the University of Arizona an almost 100 percent employment rate for undergraduates leaving the program.

Over her career, Graumlich's research has centered on climate change and other environmental changes and their impacts on ecosystems and human societies. Graumlich and Wise said that the new college would incorporate cutting edge research on climate change, but that this would not necessarily be a focus of the college as a whole.

Wise pointed out that several members of the faculty now working in the College of the Environment contributed to the IPCC, the international group that compiles climate change research and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

Graumlich said climate change was a very important environmental challenge, but that the new college would have a broad focus.

"Part of what makes the College of the Environment strong is the diversity of the research that goes on," she said. "I'm kind of an intellectual omnivore, and this, to me, is a wonderful opportunity."

by Katie Schmidt

President Obama compared the political consequences of the Gulf oil spill to those of the attacks of 9/11, saying the environmental disaster will profoundly shape America’s future energy policy, just as the terror attack shaped foreign policy and national security priorities. The president is currently touring four states in the Gulf region affected by the spill and will deliver his first national address from the Oval Office this evening. He is expected to make a push for comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation.

Senate Democrats are demanding that BP set up a $20 billion fund for oil spill cleanup costs and compensation for people and businesses hurt by the disaster.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu says the BP “disaster” is a reminder that “we do need a comprehensive energy strategy in the United States for the coming decades.”

A new series of television ads call out three Republican Senators who voted for Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s failed resolution to block the E.P.A.’s ability to regulate CO2 emissions. The ads seek to pressure the lawmakers into supporting comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation. To watch one, click here.

Dismantling the myth that environmental protections must take a backseat to economic recovery, a piece at Grist argues that FDR’s Depression-era administration joined the two supposedly divergent concerns in instructive ways.

Last week, the Department of Energy announced a $1 billion public-private investment plan for three carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects in three states.

Anticipating the growth of the electric vehicle market, the E.P.A. is looking for a way to measure fuel efficiency that will be more appropriate to new technology than the fossil fuel-related miles per gallon system.

Local Green: U.S. Geothermal, Inc. was awarded a $102 million dollar Department of Energy loan to build a 22-megawatt facility in eastern Oregon.

The California Independent System Operator Corporation (ISO) manages approximately 80 percent of the state’s electricity and is responsible for integrating renewables into the energy grid. Some say bureaucracy and a fossil fuel-centered focus is slowing the adoption of clean energy.

by Christopher Greenspan

Long the sleeping giant of potential solar markets, New York state has installed under 25 megawatts of PV, amounting to less than 0.01% of the state’s total electricity mix.

It's not the sunshine that's the problem. Every six weeks, nearby New Jersey installs the same amount of solar that New York does in an entire year. Nor is it solar's ability to compete with local electricity rates, which consistently rank among the highest in the nation. Nor is it any lack of public support or the absence of a workforce primed for green jobs. The problem is the state's policy, which provides only intermittent support for harnessing electricity from the sun. The existing program falls short of the predictable, transparent policy framework it takes to build robust solar markets.

A strong solar bill now moving through the state capitol looks primed to give New York what it needs to be a solar leader. The New York Solar Jobs Act of 2010 would establish aggressive-but-achievable targets for New York utilities to bring solar capacity on-line each year -- scaling up to 2.5% of the state's energy mix by 2025. That equates to approximately five gigawatts of solar (or 5,000 megawatts, or 5,000,000 kilowatts -- however you say it, it means a ton of new solar capacity).

The pending legislation would help New York generate enough clean electricity to power about a million homes. But it is the bill's ability to generate economic opportunity that's really turning heads in the state legislature. We here at Vote Solar recently released a report quantifying just how substantial an economic boon the bill would be to New Yorkers.

Using NREL's Job and Economic Development (JEDI) model in conjunction with state-specific inputs and assumptions, we determined that the 5 GW by 2025 program is likely to support 22,198 direct and induced jobs. These are high-quality local employment opportunities across a broad range of education requirements, salary levels and fields.  It's worth noting that the analysis errs on the conservative side and does not include any potential manufacturing jobs that might result from building strong local demand for solar products. 

In addition to job creation, New York could expect to see about $20 billion dollars in economic output from the proposed solar policy. That includes wages, salaries and other revenues that can be reinvested into the state economy. That's a marked departure from New York's traditional electricity generation, which is largely dependent on non-local coal resources that send energy dollars out of state.

Now there's no such thing as a free lunch. And certainly, there's no such thing as building a new energy economy for free, either. We enlisted the independent energy consultants at Crossborder Energy to help quantify the expected costs. Their analysis used historical Public Service Commission (PSC) rate data from across New York's utilities and customer classes to extrapolate expected rate trends for the lifetime of the proposed solar legislation. The result? Those 5 GW of solar are expected to add 39 cents to the average monthly residential electricity bill. So, if all New Yorkers simply switched to online payment instead of using a postage stamp to mail their utility bill, they'd come out ahead AND have a shiny new energy economy to boot. That's what we call a good investment.

And we're certainly not alone. The bill is being supported by a coalition representing environmental and economic interests alike: the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Solar Alliance, the Apollo Alliance, and the Alliance for Clean Energy New York to name but a few. Recognizing the strategic importance and lasting benefits of solar development, New York's State Assembly Energy Committee voted resoundingly in favor of the legislation last month. And with bi-partisan support continuing to build as the bill moves through both the Assembly and the Senate -- things are looking decidedly sunnier for solar in New York.

by Shaun Chapman & Rosalind Jackson

Mid-State Technical College expects to break ground on its renewable energy program center this fall, with the new teaching space ready for students by August 2011.

The project will include $1.5 million worth of new construction and about $750,000 in upgrades and remodeling at the Wisconsin Rapids campus, said Elizabeth Moran, MSTC spokeswoman. Somerville, an architect company from Green Bay, is leading the design phase.

About 10,000 square feet of additional space will be developed, including several classroom labs and a rooftop laboratory for students to test wind and solar technologies, said MSTC Facilities Director Craig Hjelle. Several labs also will be remodeled.

"They will be rather high structures, so we can do the stuff with renewables and urban forestry," Hjelle said.

The college -- which has Stevens Point, Marshfield and Wisconsin Rapids campuses and a center in the city of Adams -- produced its first graduates this spring from its five renewable energy programs.

Mid-State's district board already approved the expansion project, but Hjelle intends to take the updated designs and plans to board members in September or October before the groundbreaking.

Hjelle has worked with the college's renewable staff to identify classroom needs for the students.

"We never do anything around here without input from the users," Hjelle said. "It's always fun, and I enjoy the new construction. The neat thing comes in the project when we get the students and users in there, and we find out the space is serving them well."

College officials are hopeful this construction is only the first phase in campus expansion and remodeling projects for the renewable programs.

U.S. Rep. Dave Obey, D-Wausau, is seeking $4.5 million in federal funds to supplement the expansion by connecting campus buildings and creating more space, but Hjelle doesn't expect to hear if the school funding is approved until the next federal budget cycle.

"We need to meet the needs of this program," Hjelle said. "We have 80 students or more for these programs and we haven't given them any space."

by Adam Wise