Russia toughened on Wednesday its goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions, saying it would target a 25 percent reduction from 1990 levels by 2020 compared with a 10-15 percent pledge previously.

Following are the negotiating positions of the top greenhouse gas emitters before a U.N. meeting in Copenhagen in December due to agree a new global climate deal.

1) CHINA (annual emissions of greenhouse gases: 6.8 billion tonnes, 5.5 tonnes per capita)

* Emissions – President Hu Jintao promised that China would cut its carbon dioxide emissions per dollar of economic output by a “notable margin” by 2020 compared with 2005.. The “carbon intensity” goal is the first measurable curb on national emissions in China. Hu reiterated a promise that China would try to raise the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to 15 percent by 2020.

* Demands – China wants developed nations to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020 and to promise far more aid and green technology.

2) UNITED STATES (6.4 billion tonnes, 21.2 tonnes per capita)

* Emissions – President Barack Obama wants to cut U.S. emissions back to 1990 levels by 2020, a 17 percent cut from 2005 levels, and to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

* Obama says he wants an accord in Copenhagen that covers all the issues and that has “immediate operational effect.”.

Legislation to cut emissions by 20 percent from 2005 levels had been approved by a Senate Committee but people few think it can become law before the Copenhagen talks.

* Finance – The United States says a “dramatic increase” is needed in funds to help developing nations.

* Demands – “We cannot meet this challenge unless all the largest emitters of greenhouse gas pollution act together,” Obama said.

3) EUROPEAN UNION (5.03 billion tonnes, 10.2 tonnes per capita)

* Emissions – EU leaders agreed in December 2008 to cut emissions by 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and by 30 percent if other developed nations follow suit.

* Finance – EU leaders have agreed that developing nations will need about 100 billion euros ($147 billion) a year by 2020 to help them curb emissions and adapt to changes such as floods or heatwaves. As an advance payment, they suggest 5-7 billion a year between 2010 and 2012.

* Demands – The EU wants developing nations to curb the rise of their emissions by 15 to 30 percent below a trajectory of “business as usual” by 2020.

5) INDIA (1.4 billion tonnes, 1.2 tonnes per capita)

* Emissions – India is prepared to quantify the amount of greenhouse gas emissions it could cut with domestic actions, but will not accept internationally binding targets, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said.. India has said its per capita emissions will never rise to match those of developed nations.

* Demands – Like China, India wants rich nations to cut emissions by at least 40 percent by 2020. But Ramesh signalled room to compromise: “It’s a negotiation. We’ve given a number of 40 percent but one has to be realistic.”

6) JAPAN (1.4 billion tonnes, 11.0 tonnes per capita)

* Emissions – Cut Japan’s emissions by 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 if Copenhagen agrees an ambitious deal.

* Finance – Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama told the UN that Tokyo would also step up aid.

7) SOUTH KOREA (142 million tonnes, 2.9 tonnes per capita)

* Emissions – Cut emissions by 30 percent below “business as usual” levels by 2020, which is equivalent to a 4 percent cut from 2005 levels.

BRAZIL (111 million tonnes, 0.6 tonnes per capita)

* Emissions – Will cut its emissions by between 36.1 percent and 38.9 percent from projected 2020 levels, representing a 20 percent cut below 2005 levels.

9) INDONESIA (100 million tonnes, 0.4 tonnes per capita)

* Emissions – Aims to cut emissions by 26 percent by 2020 below “business as usual” levels.

Taking CO2 from deforestation into account, Indonesia is the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases.

Waxman schedules hearing on derivatives legislation

The House Energy and Commerce Committee next month will hold a hearing to examine how the proposed financial reform bill will affect energy markets, the panel announced yesterday.

Last month, the House Agriculture Committee passed H.R. 3795, which would expand federal regulatory authority over currently unregulated over-the-counter derivatives markets, which include energy commodities such as natural gas, electricity and oil. The bill would require clearing for standard derivatives, a limit as to how many contracts or positions one participant could own, additional data requirements and an increase in the margins participants need to post for trades. The House intends to take up the financial reform later next month.

End-users, such as utilities and natural gas suppliers, have protested loudly over the increased margin requirements. They say the additional financial burden will tie up needed capital for investment and will increase costs to consumers. H.R. 3795 does allow for some exemptions for end-users (E&E Daily, Oct. 22).

But the committee said there could still be “unintended impacts” and plans to hold a hearing on Dec. 2 to examine the issue.

“I am concerned that H.R. 3795 was not developed with adequate regard to how the nation’s energy markets actually function,” Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said in a statement. “We need to hear from stakeholders about this legislation in order to ensure that Congress avoids making any grave mistakes.”

Energy and Environment Subcommittee Chairman Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said energy markets are already regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and additional commodities regulations would disrupt the markets.

“The derivatives legislation that has been under consideration in the House needs to be fixed in order to prevent it from interfering with our nation’s electricity and natural gas markets,” Markey said.

The Senate Agriculture Committee heard similar complaints from end-users at a hearing earlier this week (E&E Daily, Nov. 19).

Companies to probe ’symbiotic’ link between algae, coal-fired power plants

An algae-based biofuels startup and an industrial gas company announced a partnership yesterday aimed at developing a symbiotic relationship between coal-fired power plants and algae biofuel production.

Florida-based Algenol Biofuels and Germany’s Linde Group plan to develop cost-efficient technologies to capture, store, transport and supply CO2 for photobioreactors — troughs filled with CO2-saturated water and algae — whose photosynthesis would yield oxygen that could be used in oxy-fuel coal-combustion power stations.

“We see a symbiotic possibility between coal-fired power plants and the photosynthetic thing,” Algenol CEO Paul Woods said.

There are dozens of startups and researchers investigating the possibility of growing algae near power plants and using CO2 emissions as a feedstock. But Algenol and Linde want to take that a step further, placing the photobioreactors at oxy-fuel combustion plants.

Industrialized Nations Unveil Plans to Rein in Emissions

With less than three weeks remaining before negotiators gather in Copenhagen to hammer out a global response to climate change, a rapid-fire succession of countries are unveiling national plans that serve as opening bids for reining in heat-trapping emissions.

“The list of what is on the table is rather long,” said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the sponsor of the meeting, which runs from Dec. 7 to 18 in Copenhagen.

But, speaking at the United Nations headquarters on Thursday, he seized on the latest pledges to take aim at the United States, which has not yet played its hand.

“We now have offers of targets from all industrialized countries except the United States,” Mr. de Boer said. He emphasized that he was looking to the United States for “a numerical midterm target and commitment to financial support.”

“This is essential, and I believe this can be done,” he said.

Greenpeace says Europe smart power grid affordable

Revving up European power transmission networks to transport 90 percent of renewable energy by the year 2050 could be achieved at affordable sums, pressure group Greenpeace said in a study published on Friday.

European policymakers dream of getting away from fossil fuels but even if these were replaced with wind or solar generation systems, sceptics say the bloc’s decades-old grid systems would effectively hamper shipping the volatile power.

Greenpeace said the cost of strenghtening cross-border lines and building new interconnections to create so-called smart or supergrids would be small if it was spread over 40 years and split between hundreds of million of Europeans.

“All together, the proposal would cost around 209 billion euros ($310.9 billion),” it said in a press release issued to accompany the report’s unveiling in Berlin.

“This would increase the costs of every kilowatt hour by 0.15 cents over 40 years which means for a European household less than five euros a year or 40 cents a month,” it said.

Apart from the cost of preparing grids for new tasks to better manage erratic supplies, there is also concern that over reliance on wind or solar could leave consumers short of power when the wind does not blow or the sun does not shine.

Peak Oil Files: Why Is Saudi Aramco Building Supercomputers?

Saudi Aramco pumps about 10 million barrels of oil a day, about four times as much as Exxon Mobil Corp. How much oil Aramco, the national oil company of Saudi Arabia, can pump has an enormous impact on oil prices – and therefore the global economy.

So, what to make then of Aramco’s recent interest in supercomputers?

The biannual list of the world’s 500 fastest computers was released on Tuesday and Aramco had two new entries at No. 119 and No. 134. Both are Dell clusters, running Intel processors and both are very, very fast.

The oil industry uses Concorde-jet speed computing to aid it understanding underground reservoirs and to look for new sources of oil and gas. Aramco used another computer cluster to build a “full field model” of the Safaniya oilfield in 2008.

Clearly, Aramco is taking a sophisticated approach to understanding its remaining oil resources. And peak oilers will likely argue that Aramco’s interest in teraflops is a sign that it needs all the help it can get to ensure oil keep flowing out of its once mighty fields. After all, why bother throwing so much muscle into understanding the reservoir if there were no worries about its future performance.

Senate duo forms pact on climate

Senate Democratic leaders are resting their hopes for bipartisan climate change legislation on the unlikely partnership of Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

The revelation this fall that the two lawmakers shared a strong bond and a commitment to work together on one of the biggest policy issues facing Congress shocked many of their Senate colleagues.

They do not serve on any of the same committees, which is where many Senate friendships begin.

They are ideological opposites who took very public, antagonist roles in the past two presidential contests.

Kerry, a Massachusetts liberal, challenged President George W. Bush with an anti-war campaign in 2004 and strongly backed President Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign.

Graham, a South Carolina Republican who served as a prosecutor in former President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial, was an enthusiastic Bush supporter in 2004 and served as Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) close confidant during last year’s presidential election.

Kerry is tall and somber-looking with a deep voice. Graham is shorter, softer-spoken and possesses a Southern drawl.

But none of that stopped the two men from teaming up last month on an op-ed that announced their plans to work together on a comprehensive climate change bill and a declaration that their partnership could net 60 votes in the Senate.

E.U. to Mandate ‘Nearly Zero’ Power Use by Buildings

European legislators and countries struck a deal last night to introduce tough new energy-efficiency regulations for all electricity-using appliances and buildings within the next decade.

Most significantly, the European Union directive will require that nearly all buildings, including large houses, constructed after 2020 include stark efficiency improvements or generate most of their energy from renewable sources, coming close to “nearly zero” energy use.

European countries will also be required to establish a certification system to measure buildings’ energy efficiency. These certificates will be required for any new construction or buildings that are sold or rented to new tenants. Existing buildings will also have to, during any major renovation, improve their efficiency if at all feasible.

Buildings are responsible for about 36 percent of Europe’s greenhouse gas emissions, and stricter efficiency requirements have been sought for the past several years as absolutely necessary for the bloc to meets its goal of cutting emissions 20 percent from 1990 levels by 2020. Other regions should take note, said Andris Piebalgs, the E.U. energy commissioner, in a statement.

“By this agreement, the E.U. is sending a strong message to the forthcoming climate negotiations in Copenhagen,” Piebalgs said. “Improving the energy performance of buildings is a cost effective way of fighting against climate change and improving energy security, while also boosting the building sector and the E.U. economy as a whole.”

A second directive agreed on yesterday will expand the scope of efficiency labeling to all consumer products that use energy, eventually covering everything from hot water taps to vending machines.

U.S. and China reach accord on data collection

The United States and China have agreed to cooperate on developing an inventory of China’s greenhouse gas emissions, the Environmental Protection Agency announced Wednesday, an initiative that appears be a response to criticism of Beijing’s data collection.

Several senators whose votes are key to passage of domestic climate legislation, including Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), have questioned whether they will be able to trust any greenhouse gas reductions China reports to the international community. China has surpassed the United States as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases; together they account for roughly 40 percent of the world’s output.

The memorandum of cooperation between China’s National Development and Reform Commission and the EPA calls on the two countries to collaborate in several areas, including “capacity building for developing greenhouse gas inventories.” The two nations have already worked together on monitoring other industrial emissions, such as sulfur dioxide.

“I have to imagine this represents an increased and intensified effort to get China on the path of measuring and reporting its greenhouse gas emissions in a way that’s internationally acceptable,” said Julian L. Wong, a senior policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.

California Requires TVs To Be More Energy Efficient

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California regulators adopted the nation’s first energy-efficiency standards for televisions Wednesday in hopes of reducing electricity use at a time when millions of American households are switching to power-hungry, wide-view, flat-screen, high-definition sets.

The 5-0 vote by the California Energy Commission is just the latest effort by the state to secure its place in the forefront of the environmental movement.

California represents such a big consumer market that environmental groups hope the new standards will lead manufacturers to make energy-saving TVs for the rest of the nation, just as California’s stringent fuel standards for cars and trucks forced automakers to produce more efficient models for all of the U.S.

“Once again, California is leading the way, and we hope others will follow,” said Noah Horowitz, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The commission estimates that TVs account for about 10 percent of a home’s electricity use. The fear is that energy use will rise as people buy bigger, more elaborate TVs, put more of them in their homes, and watch them longer.

Governors say a clean energy answer is blowing in the wind

The governors of Virginia, Maryland and Delaware have announced a partnership designed to promote and coordinate the development of wind energy off the mid-Atlantic coast.

Officials in the three states said that by working together, they hope to advance the construction of power lines and advocate jointly for federal legislation that would help pave the way for what many expect will become a critical source of electricity for coastal communities.

In a joint statement last week, the three governors said offshore wind energy would help meet the region’s electricity needs while doing the least harm to the environment. They also highlighted its potential to create jobs. In Virginia, officials estimate, construction of wind farms offshore and on land would create more than 3,000 jobs over the next two decades.

“With our extensive coastline and highly educated workforce, Virginia is particularly well suited to explore offshore wind energy opportunities,” Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) said in the statement. “In these tough economic times, it’s more important than ever that we invest in renewable energy sources that will create jobs and provide cleaner, more affordable energy for our families and communities.”

Portuguese wind developer plans $4B U.S. investment

Portugal’s EDP Renewables plans to invest up to $4 billion in U.S. wind farms through 2012 — projects that would generate up to 2 gigawatts and create 5,000 direct jobs, company officials said today.

“We have an ambitious target, and we have a strong commitment to economic development and environmental improvement in the U.S.,” said Antonio Mexia, chairman of EDP Renewables and CEO of its Lisbon-based parent company Energias de Portugal SA.

Key factors driving EDP’s investment decision are state renewable electricity portfolio targets and federal tax incentives, Mexia and other company officials said during a Washington news conference. To date, EDP has received $109 million via Section 1603 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which provides a cash payment in lieu of a tax credit totaling 30 percent of the qualifying cost of a project.

EDP, which owns Houston-based Horizon Wind Energy LLC, has invested all of its Section 1603 money into two U.S. wind farms. EDP plans to apply for additional stimulus grants, as well as utilize a federal production tax credit, as the company develops new wind farms, Mexia said.

How better land-use planning might ‘green’ your wallet

Changing America’s car culture will save citizens money, says a new report that makes the financial case for smart growth policies.

Since the majority of transportation costs are privately borne, the potential to save money is commensurately high, the report says. It analyzed neighborhoods around Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento and San Diego and found that residents of the San Francisco Bay Area saved the most in transportation costs because of their good public transportation system.

Within the Bay Area, residents of the best-connected neighborhoods spent $7,200 less on transportation per year than the residents of the worst-served neighborhoods. In the region, individuals spend $34 billion on overall transportation per year, compared to $4.6 billion spent by public agencies. Of that, most spending is on private transportation — operating and owning vehicles — by a factor of 7-to-1.

Affordable transportation can also offset high housing costs, the report found. While San Francisco has high housing prices, its proximity to public transportation puts it in 11th place in the overall affordability rankings.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, public transportation is also good for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In the Bay Area, households in areas with good transportation and job prospects drive 11,000 fewer miles per year than households in areas with fewer jobs and transportation options.

Seeking Wind Energy, Some Consider the Sea

LAST June in a fjord in southwestern Norway, a 213-foot-tall wind turbine did something large wind turbines normally don’t do: it headed out to sea.

Towed by tugboats, the newly built turbine, with three 139-foot rotor blades and a 2.3-megawatt generator atop the tower, which itself was bolted to a ballasted steel cylinder extending more than 300 feet below the waterline, made its way to a spot six miles off the coast. Once in position it was moored with cables to the seafloor, about 700 feet below.

The project, called Hywind and owned by Statoil, the giant oil and gas company based in Stavanger, Norway, is the world’s first full-scale floating wind turbine. After being hooked up to a transmission cable, it began supplying electricity to the Norwegian power grid on Sept. 21.

“We’ve been baby-sitting the turbine so far,” said Sjur Bratland, asset manager for the project. “The main point for us is not to produce as much power as possible.”

Rather, Mr. Bratland said, over the next two years Hywind will test the feasibility of what some people think may be the next big idea in alternative energy: generating power from the winds over the open ocean, far from land.

“Our real opportunity for ocean energy is deepwater wind,” said Habib J. Dagher, director of the Advanced Structures and Composites Center at the University of Maine, who with an $8 million grant from the federal Department of Energy is organizing a consortium of universities, companies, government agencies and nonprofit groups to develop floating wind turbines in the United States.

Browner: U.S. in ‘good standing’ heading into Copenhagen talks

White House climate czar Carol Browner downplayed the idea that the absence of a domestic emissions law would hinder U.S. leverage in Copenhagen and said the U.S. could tout major accomplishments heading into next month’s international climate talks.

In wide-ranging remarks at a climate conference in Washington, D.C., Wednesday, she also said President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao made substantial progress in their Beijing discussions this week.

Browner, the senior White House energy and climate adviser, pointed to tens of billions of dollars in “clean energy” financing in the stimulus law, as well as House passage of broad energy and climate legislation. A slow-moving Senate bill has been put off until next year.

She also cited several steps the administration has taken using its existing power, such as EPA and Transportation Department work to create joint vehicle mileage and greenhouse gas standards, as well as Energy Department appliance efficiency standards.

“We think we are in very, very good standing that this president has clearly demonstrated incredible leadership,” she said at a conference hosted by The Economist.

Image Credit:  Jetson Green.

Rest comfortably knowing that NYHOTEL drinking cups are 100% sanitary and are completely GREEN compliant.

Hmm.

First, I had thought glass was a clear winner life-cycle-wise last night, but the jury appears to be out and you have to reuse the glass cups a lot to break even — all things being equal.

Second, however, all things aren’t quite equal.  These paper cups were individually wrapped in plastic, no doubt to be persuasive about the sanitary claim.  That’s a lot of waste.

Third, even if it’s a wash, so to speak, what the heck is this claim of “completely GREEN compliant” designed to reassure the user?  It seemed pretty bogus at the time, and I found nothing on Google today.

In any case, I didn’t rest comfortably.  [Note to self:  What else is new?]  I’d have been happier without the note.

“Earl Haynes, of CGE Solutions, installed a blower door, left, in the front door of the columnist David Leonhardt’s home while conducting an energy audit. A blower door depressurizes a home, allowing a rater to measure air flow through a pressure ring in the fan and determine the amount of air leak.”

Promise in a “Cash for Caulkers” home weatherization program

The one highly visible success of the stimulus program has been the cash-for-clunkers program. It induced a boom in vehicle sales this summer that clearly would not have happened otherwise.

The rest of the stimulus has created a lot of jobs — 700,000 to 1.5 million, according to economists’ estimates. But it has done so in thousands of little ways: scattered construction projects, plugged-up school budgets and the like. Politically, these measures are not popular enough to create a groundswell for more of them.

And the economy still needs help. So White House officials are looking at creating a new version of cash for clunkers — this time for home weatherization.

John Doerr, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist, and former President Bill Clinton have separately suggested versions of the idea to the White House. Mr. Doerr calls his proposal, which would give households money to pay for weatherization projects, “cash for caulkers.” Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s chief of staff, told me, “It’s one of the top things he’s looking at.”

The idea has a lot to recommend it. The housing bust has idled contractors and construction workers, who could be put to work insulating homes and caulking air leaks. Many households, meanwhile, would save substantial money — not to mention help the climate — by weatherizing their homes, research by McKinsey & Company has shown. All in all, a cash-for-caulkers program seems like a promising part of the jobs program for 2010 that Mr. Obama has suggested he is planning.

But I would also mention one point of caution: the details of any caulkers plan will matter enormously. Weatherizing a home, as I recently discovered, turns out to be a lot more complicated than buying a car.

For background, see “Energy Secretary Steven Chu on home weatherization: Saving money by saving energy.”  The story continues:

This year, my wife and I had an energy audit done on our home. We were interested in finding out if we could save money and, given the attention that weatherizing was starting to get, I figured it could also make for good column fodder. For $400, an auditor spent hours scouring our house, with the help of a big fan he set up in our front door and an infrared camera. He produced a full-color, 13-page detailed report, informing us of the leaks in our house, and he was also willing to tell us which changes were usually a waste of money (new windows).

Even so, we are still trying to figure out which weatherization projects we should do. The whole package would probably cost $4,500 and save us something like $400 a year. We may not stay in the house nearly long enough to justify the investment.

Such concerns are typical. How do you find an auditor? How do you know whether you should seal a few ducts or pay $2,000 for new insulation? Which of the existing subsidies — state and federal — might you qualify for?

Mr. Doerr and Mr. Clinton are well aware of these problems. Mr. Clinton has sent the White House a memorandum written by his foundation staff that lays out the reasons people don’t weatherize their homes. Mr. Doerr, who sits on a board of outside economic advisers to Mr. Obama that is working on a formal cash-for-caulkers proposal, told me that his goal was to “keep it really simple so we can do it really fast.”

The Doerr plan would cost $23 billion over two years. Most of the money would go for incentive payments, generally $2,000 to $4,000, for weatherization projects. The homeowner would always have to pay at least 50 percent of the project’s total cost. About $3 billion would be set aside for retailers and contractors in the hope that they would promote the program, much as car dealerships promoted cash for clunkers. (Mr. Doerr says he owns no stake in any weatherization companies.)

The Clinton plan depends on the reallocation of clean energy money from the stimulus bill that has not yet been spent. It covers not just houses and apartments but also commercial and industrial buildings.

Perhaps most intriguing is its proposal to help homeowners and building owners who are nervous they will end up selling their property before a weatherization project has paid for itself. Under the Clinton plan, they could add the project’s cost to their long-term property tax bill, effectively splitting the cost with the next owner. The New York State Legislature approved such a program on Monday.

All these efforts would lead to more weatherization. But I would be surprised if they were enough to create a program as successful as cash for clunkers. Remember: Many homeowners could already save money by weatherizing their homes. And they are not doing so.

Obama: Copenhagen will “rally world” for climate change push

President Barack Obama touted the importance of next month’s climate change summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, in spite of the event’s downgraded objectives.

Obama over the weekend acknowledged the meeting won’t produce a legally binding deal to cut emissions, but on Tuesday he insisted a political agreement in Copenhagen, the new goal of the summit, will have an “immediate” effect.

“Our aim there, in support of what Prime Minister [Lars Lokke] Rasmussen of Denmark is trying to achieve, is not a partial accord or a political declaration, but rather an accord that covers all of the issues in the negotiations, and one that has immediate operational effect,” Obama said in Beijing following a meeting with China’s president.

“This kind of comprehensive agreement would be an important step forward in the effort to rally the world around a solution to our climate challenge,” he added.

In Singapore over the weekend, Obama and other heads of state said the objective for Copenhagen would be a political agreement on climate change. Lower-level administration officials had already been downgrading expectations for a final binding agreement on cutting emissions.

Obama made the remarks after he and Chinese President Hu Jintao announced a series of joint “clean energy” agreements that Obama cast as a sign of progress on climate change. China and the U.S. are the world’s two largest emitters of greenhouse gas emissions.

The two nations have reached several specific agreements on low-emissions power and vehicles, the White House said. This includes establishment of a joint clean energy research center, building on an agreement Energy Secretary Steven Chu reached with Chinese officials in July. Other joint measures are aimed at spurring use of electric vehicles, renewable power, low-emissions coal and other technologies.

Deputy National Security Adviser Mike Froman stressed that the U.S.-China deal would add momentum to international efforts in Copenhagen despite the absence from the agreement of specifics on emissions-curbing measures.

“I think the agreement today reflected in the joint statement does give momentum to the Copenhagen process,” Froman told reporters. He acknowledged that “further specifics” must be fleshed out by negotiators.

China is believed to back a reduction in its emissions intensity — which means emissions relative to economic activity — rather than an outright reduction target.

Blown away: Wing power keeps growing in Texas

Can the U.S. produce 20% of its electricity from wind? The U.S. Department of Energy thinks it can get there by 2030.

That doesn’t sound so far fetched anymore. A couple weeks ago – October 28th to be exact – wind turbines provided about 25% of Texas’ power consumption.

Of course, that could have been in the middle of the night when the good people of Flatonia, Amarillo and Gun Barrel City – not to mention Houston and Dallas – were asleep. (Update: It was in the middle of the night. Three a.m. to be exact.) Spain topped out at 53% of grid electricity from the wind earlier this month, but that occurred at about 5 a.m. while most Spaniards were asleep.

But back in Texas, a little before 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday October 28th, the Lone Star State got about 6,223 megawatts from the wind. That’s a record. At the time, the total load was about 35,000 megawatts. That’s 17.8% of its power from the wind. (That’s not sleepy-time power usage. Texas power consumption peaked in October at 49,100 megawatts.)

What does this mean for Texans electric bills? They could be headed down. A recent report finds that wind power is replacing more expensive forms of power generation.

Going green in China, case by case

This region of Inner Mongolia, home to one of the biggest deserts in China, is being transformed into the site of a pine forest that will stretch across its low hills as far as the eye can see.

The local government’s tree-planting program is part of a plan to “assume our green responsibilities and build a civilized way of life,” Du Zi, the local Communist Party secretary, told energy executives at a conference last month in Beijing.

Also on tap: the world’s biggest plant to convert sunlight to electricity, built by First Solar of Tempe, Arizona, part of a 12-gigawatt wind, solar and biomass power-generating zone. And General Electric is helping the land of Genghis Khan cut wastewater emissions into the Yellow River, which borders the region.

“This shows what local leadership can do in China these days,” said Kenneth Lieberthal, head of the Brookings Institution’s China Center in Washington, which played host to Mr. Du and other provincial officials at the Oct. 21-23 conference. “They’ve gone flat-out.”

Regions are vying to outdo one another in a race to develop alternative-energy sources and reduce pollution. Gansu Province in western China is building a wind farm equivalent to about 20 nuclear power facilities. In the east, Zhejiang Province is installing solar panels on roofs. Beijing bans motorcycles from the city center in favor of electric bikes.

Their efforts demonstrate that China, the world’s largest producer of the emissions blamed for global warming, will continue to accelerate development of energy from renewable sources, even as it resists binding targets for reducing carbon emissions ahead of a U.N. summit meeting in Copenhagen next month aimed at forging a new treaty to curb greenhouse gases.

Some regional officials now see environmental projects as a way to bolster their economies after decades when companies were allowed to poison the air and water without penalties while expanding output.

Earning a profit by ending energy waster

The Community Preservation Corporation, a 35-year-old nonprofit lender that specializes in issuing mortgages to landlords of small buildings and properties receiving public subsidies, is offering $1 billion in credit to New York State apartment building owners.

The group’s new “green financing initiative” offers mortgages or refinancing to landlords who fix wasteful energy and water systems in their buildings.

The initiative presumes that savings from such retrofitting will be large enough for an owner to cover a loan with profit to spare, said Sadie McKeown, a senior vice president with the organization. As Ms. McKeown told an online seminar of 70 potential borrowers on Nov. 10, “we want to empirically show upside after a retrofit.”

The backers of the initiative include the government-controlled mortgage agency Freddie Mac, New York City and State public employee pension funds and a consortium of banks. These investors have worked with the corporation over the decades to assemble financing for buildings with low-income tenants, and now some of these buildings need retrofits to become profitable or saleable.

Michael D. Lappin, the Community Preservation Corporation’s chief executive, said the new fund was an effort to induce owners and lenders — including his organization — to reap value from fixing buildings as they age. Mr. Lappin said the idea for the initiative came to him last summer, when he commissioned a study of the energy costs in the corporation’s portfolio and found extreme variations. Some buildings were spending seven times as much for heat and hot water as other comparable buildings, he said.

Andrew Padian, an energy expert who joined the Community Preservation Corporation’s senior staff in March, said common building flaws wasted many thousands of dollars a year. These problems are as simple as boilers that send constant heat to apartments, stairwells with lights on when nobody needs them and landlords who refuse to install dishwashers, letting water costs run wild.

Proposed regulations in New York City would require landlords of older buildings to conduct annual energy audits and meet benchmarks for energy efficiency, or pay fines. The corporation’s initiative could give owners of buildings with low-income tenants a head start in finding fuel savings. The organization’s loans carry an interest rate of about 6 percent.

Since the program began last month, owners of 10 buildings have received $18 million in financing to fix up 725 apartments. The buildings include a 375-unit complex on West 110th Street, a 17-unit walk-up co-op on East First Street and a low-income garden apartment complex in Bedford Hills in Westchester County.

Some owners are refinancing existing mortgages with the corporation, while others are creating new ones. Mr. Lappin said he expected the fund to commit the full $1 billion, across the state’s cities and inner suburbs, by 2013.

Will Houston become an electric car capital?

Gas-guzzling Houston, bete noire of environmentalists worldwide, is planting the seeds of an electric future.

On Tuesday, Mayor Bill White and local electricity retailer Reliant Energy launched a plug-in hybrid program that includes 10 vehicle-charging stations around the city. Seven of the stations will be available to the public, and electricity will be free the first year, Mayor White said.

The move comes amid a marketing and lobbying push by several electric providers and car maker Nissan–which has an all-electric vehicle due in late 2010–to quicken the pace of car electrification and the same day that General Motors said its electric Volt is on track for commercial production a year from now. At The Wall Street Journal CEO Council on Tuesday, Nissan Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn said that by 2020, 10% of all cars sold will be zero-emission vehicles.

The “Electrification Coalition” called for “electricity ecosystems,” or select cities where the electric-car revolution can take root. But who knew that would include Houston?

Last week, Reliant (a subsidiary of NRG Energy Inc. and a member of the carmaker’s “Electrification Coalition”) and Nissan announced that they’d make the Texas city a “launch city” for the all-electric LEAF, due in late 2010. Reliant promised to install public charging stations and provide equipment to charge cars at home. Talk about taunting the devil in its own lair.

At first blush, it’s hard to imagine a city less amenable to electrification of the transportation fleet than this sprawling metropolis, criss-crossed by tentacular highways. Many of Houston’s more than 5 million inhabitants appear to think nothing of driving 30 miles to work on tricked-out pick up trucks getting 12 miles a gallon.

And many owe their livelihoods to the same oil-derived fuels electric car makers hope to displace. Houston is not only a big refining center, but home to ConocoPhillips and significant operations for the likes of Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Shell and BP.

There are plenty of challenges. Houston’s public charging stations, 4-foot long cyliners, can take 8 to 10 hours to fully charge a car, for example. Leave the hazard lights on. And the SUV-loving market here may still find electric cars unpalatable—at least until all-electric Ford pickups hit dealer lots.

For all that, Houston actually makes a lot of sense. Unlike many places in the country, Texas’ electricity grid isn’t under stress, for starters. And from an environmental perspective, it’s fairly clean, with a lot of juice coming from wind farms and natural-gas fired plants.

Electricity-guzzling cars that up the demand for natural-gas for power generation could even make the region’s fossil fuels industry happy, says says Kenneth Medlock, an economist at Rice University. And since most cars would charge at night, Texas’ booming wind-energy industry would find new customers, too.

In the end, America’s fourth-largest city epitomizes the country’s love affair with the car. Unlike in green urbs like San Francisco or Seattle, it’s all but impossible to live here without wheels—so they might as well be electric. It will probably be cheaper and easier to electrify urban sprawl than rein it in altogether.

]]> http://climateprogress.org/2009/11/18/energy-and-global-warming-news-cash-for-caulkers-weatherization-obama-copenhagen-climate-action-wind-power-texas/feed/ 12 http://climateprogress.org/2009/11/17/energy-and-global-warming-news-for-november-17-south-korea-confirms-strictist-co2-cuts-for-2020-concentrated-solar-thermal-goes-dry-cooling/ http://climateprogress.org/2009/11/17/energy-and-global-warming-news-for-november-17-south-korea-confirms-strictist-co2-cuts-for-2020-concentrated-solar-thermal-goes-dry-cooling/#comments Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:56:48 +0000 Michael http://climateprogress.org/?p=14183 South Korea to Cut Greenhouse Emissions 30% from expected 2020 levels

South Korea, Asia’s fourth-largest polluter, said it plans a 30 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 even as a binding global accord on climate change appears unlikely at next month’s summit in Copenhagen.

“South Korea’s voluntary target will stimulate efforts by the global community despite the pessimistic outlook for the Copenhagen meeting,” President Lee Myung Bak said in a statement today. The goal is set at the highest level recommended for emerging economies by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change under the United Nations, according to the statement….

South Korea had outlined in August three proposals: cutting emissions by as much as 4 percent by the end the next decade from 2005 levels; capping them at the 2005 output; or allowing an 8 percent increase by 2020….

The target “basically corresponds to 4 percent cut from 2005,” Choi Seung Kook, secretary general of Green Korea United, non-profit environmental group, said by telephone. “Still, a forecast based on business as usual levels in 2020 is changeable and the target itself falls short of goals of other countries.”

South Korea’s annual emissions may rise to 813 million metric tons by 2020 in the absence of measures to curb carbon output, a committee under the presidential office said Aug. 4. That would be an increase of 37 percent from the 594.4 million tons produced in 2005.

This target will be a true “challenge for South Korean industries, where carbon emissions doubled in the period from 1990 to 2005, the fastest rate in the OECD,” as the WSJ noted.  “The steepest cuts will occur in construction and transportation, the government said. In construction, which accounts for 25% of carbon emissions, South Korea is targeting a 31% reduction by what they would have been in 2020. In the transportation sector, which accounts for 17% of emissions, it plans to trim emissions by 33% to 37%.”

Concentrated solar thermal goes dry (cooling)

Yesterday, after months of pressure from environmental groups and some concerned residents, one solar project developer backed out of controversial plans to buy rights to a billion gallons a year of local farmers’ water.

The water was needed to supply two proposed solar thermal plants in Nevada’s parched Amargosa Valley, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Over the plants’ lifetime, climate change promises to only worsen water shortages in the region.

The decision to switch to more expensive “dry cooling” technology will cut the project’s water demand by 90 percent, the developer, Solar Millennium LLC, said yesterday. The German-backed company is a subsidiary of Solar Millennium AG.

The recent move highlights the tensions surrounding the water consumption of large-scale solar thermal power projects proposed largely on federal and state lands in the West. At about 12 cents a kilowatt-hour of lifetime energy costs, solar thermal power produces cheaper electricity than solar photovoltaic technologies do today.

The problem comes because conventional solar thermal is a water-guzzler.

Like coal or nuclear plants, solar thermal plants yield electricity by generating steam to spin a turbine. In the typical wet-cooling process, water is mainly needed to replace the steam lost to evaporation during the process. Per unit of power, solar thermal can demand the same water as a coal-fired unit, or more, according to a Department of Energy study.

More problematic is where and when the water is needed: high noon in the middle of the most water-stressed region of the country. So concerns about water are bubbling to the surface as federal and state regulators push a glut of solar thermal applications through the review process….

There are alternatives for solar developers, as the Solar Millennium decision indicates. Increasingly, projects are proposing so-called “dry cooling” technologies, which stem water losses by closing the system and using air to cool the steam.

Recently, for example, BLM and the California Energy Commission completed a joint environmental review of BrightSource Energy’s Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, a proposed 440-megawatt project in the Mojave Desert. It is one of nine solar projects now being fast-tracked by BLM, including three other Solar Millennium projects in California.

Though it faces other environmental controversies, water is not one of them. The Ivanpah project, which uses dry cooling, needs 30 times less water than traditional wet-cooling technologies, said company spokesman Keely Wachs. The water it does draw is mostly to wash the mirrors….

For more on dry cooling, see “The secret to low-water-use, high-efficiency concentrating solar power.”  The story continues:

Solar Millenium spokesman Keegan said the company’s three proposed California projects, unlike the Amargosa Valley project in Nevada, were all proposed with dry cooling in large part because that’s what California utilities, which have signed power purchase agreements, demanded.

But in other places, it may not be a pressing concern.

“Utilities are still in the mindset that they have more pressing needs today, like dealing with CO2,” said Cara Libby, a project manager at the utility-funded Electric Power Research Institute. “They all know water is going to be important, but it hasn’t really hit their business yet.”

Ban Links Food Security, Climate Change

A comprehensive plan to combat threats to global food security was presented Monday during a U.N.-sponsored food security summit in Rome.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said global food shortages were aggravated by climate change and population growth that will see 2 billion more mouths to feed in 2050 — 9.1 billion in all, the United Nations said in a release.

The World Summit on Food Security is being conducted at the Rome headquarters of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. More than 60 heads of state, including Pope Benedict XVI, are attending the summit, but some of the larger countries, including the United States, are absent, Italian news agency ANSA reported.

Ban outlined steps ranging from immediate needs such as food aid, safety nets and social protection, to long-term goals achieved through more investments in agricultural development, better market access and fairer trade for smaller farm operations, the United Nations said.

Looking for a Solution to Cow’s Climate Problem

With the approach of the U.N. Climate Conference in Copenhagen next month, the livestock industry is coming under renewed scrutiny for its contribution to greenhouse gases.

Methane, which is a byproduct of digestion by cud-chewing animals, is a gas 23 times more warming to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. A 2006 report by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization attributed 18 percent of the greenhouse gases produced each year to livestock.

But a more recent report for the World Watch Institute, by Robert Goodland, former environmental adviser to the World Bank, and Jeff Anhang, environmental specialist at the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corp., estimates this figure to be much higher: 51 percent, when the entire life cycle and supply chain of the livestock industry is taken into consideration.

Their report — “Livestock and Climate Change: What if the key actors in climate change are … cows, pigs and chickens?” — factors in emissions from the tens of billions of animals exhaling CO2 annually, as well as deforestation for feed production and grazing, which prevents the reduction in greenhouse gases that would normally result from photosynthesis.

In the World Watch report released last month, Dr. Goodland and Mr. Anhang wrote that “livestock (like automobiles) are a human invention and convenience, not part of pre-human times, and a molecule of CO2 exhaled by livestock is no more natural than one from an auto tailpipe.”

Electric Avenue: Or, How to Rev Up the Electric-Car Revolution

A broad group of corporations got together in Washington today to prod policymakers to make the electric-car revolution a reality. The goal? By 2040, 75% of light-vehicle miles should be driven with electric cars, rather than today’s gasoline engines. That, the group says, would essentially end U.S. imports of oil, improving the environment, America’s energy security, and its coffers. (There’s more here and here.)

The Electrification Coaltion groups all sorts of companies that stand to gain, one way or another, from an electric-car revolution. There are utilities (NRG and PG&E); battery types (A123 and Rockwood); Automakers (Nissan); venture capitalists (Kleiner Perkins); and others, such as FedEx.

Whether electric cars remain a plaything of the rich or do to today’s cars what cars did to horses is still a very open question. For some, the combination of better performance and pricey oil makes it a no-brainer. For others, the prospect of expensive batteries and scattered charging stations makes it a chimera.

All that is spelled out in a very, very detailed roadmap of how to get there, put together by the Electrification Coalition and PRTM, the consulting firm.

Deforestation of the world’s largest tropical rain forest, in Brazil, fell by the largest amount in more than 20 years, dropping 45 percent from nearly 5,000 square miles to some 2,700 square miles this past year, the Brazilian government announced yesterday.

From August 2008 to July this year, deforestation fell to the lowest it has been since Brazil’s Space Institute began monitoring the destruction with satellite technology, said Gilberto Câmara, the institute’s head.

“This is a very happy moment — to note that the efforts of Brazilian society to contain the deforestation of the Amazon have reached a very satisfactory level,” he said.

The new figures were reportedly rushed out ahead of the U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen next month. Earlier this week, Brazil said it would take a proposal to the summit that would see it voluntarily reduce carbon emissions by up to 42 percent by 2020, partly by continued efforts against illegal deforestation.

Environmental groups welcomed the news, but also pointed out that the falling trend coinciding with a worldwide recession, which resulted in a reduced demand for products linked to deforestation.

“We must stay alert so that this falling trend becomes consolidated and allows us to achieve the dream of zero deforestation in the Amazon,” said Paulo Adario, Greenpeace’s Amazon director. “It is an important drop — but a lot of forest is still coming down”

Russia’s Medvedev warns of climate catastrophe

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned on Monday that climate change posed a “catastrophic” threat in some of the sharpest comments yet on a subject the Kremlin has often seemed reluctant to confront.

Although the United States said that the consensus amongst the 19 leaders at the weekend Asia Pacific summit in Singapore was that a climate change deal this December was unlikely, Medvedev made clear he felt it was a top priority.

“If we don’t take joint action, the consequences for the planet may be very distressing to the point that the Arctic and Antarctic ice can melt and change ocean levels,” he said shortly before leaving Singapore.

“All of this will have catastrophic consequences.”

Russia signed up the Kyoto protocol after years of haggling about its implementation, but has been criticized by environmental groups for not offering more ambitious emissions cuts ahead of December’s Copenhagen summit.

In the past, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had appeared to shrug off the threat from climate change, joking that Russians would welcome warmer weather and would need to buy fewer fur coats.

Some prominent Russian scientists argue that climate change is a natural phenomenon.

Is solar power expensive, or competitive?

“Solar is cheaper than coal today,” asserts Jigar Shah, the founder of Sun Edison who now heads the Carbon War Room, a new nonprofit group.

This is a provocative statement, given that — as my colleague Matthew L. Wald reported this year — studies by the Electric Power Research Institute and elsewhere show that solar thermal technologies are far more expensive than coal, and photovoltaic rooftop solar panels, in turn, generally produce more expensive electricity than solar thermal.

Mr. Shah’s argument in fact relies on combining solar with several other technologies: smart grid, energy efficiency and energy storage.

Together, he argues, those four technologies can substitute for a large, base-load coal plant that provides power around the clock — at a lower cost.

“All of the four technologies can be employed in small bits and chunks, it can be done on a scalable basis to meet exactly the need but not more than we need,” Mr. Shah said.

Technologies like energy efficiency, solar and wind, Mr. Shah noted, may have high up-front costs but their running costs are low, because (in the case of solar and wind) the fuel — the air or the sun — is free.

However, “we insist on continuing to invest in technologies that are exactly the opposite — high capital costs, subject to volatile fuel prices,” Mr. Shah said.

(Of course, if coal plants are subject to carbon pricing in the coming years as part of the nation’s effort to combat global warming, their costs will go up, too.)

Mark Pinto, the chief technology officer of Applied Materials, a company that makes equipment for solar projects, offered another vision of the price of solar.

“Solar competes against peaking,” Mr. Pinto said. In other words, because the sun shines during the day, when air conditioners and lights are cranked up and demand on the grid is heavy, solar power competes directly against natural gas plants that only get turned on to meet that peak demand.

“When you compare solar costs to other peaking electricity costs,” in some cases solar is ahead of gas, Mr. Pinto said.

But Mr. Shah argued that the solar-is-good-for-peaking argument “just pigeonholes us” as meeting only a particular need. Solar power, he said, can be positioned as part of a broader solution.

Shell calls for global expansion of cap-and-trade system

Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Europe’s largest oil producer, said regional mechanisms to reduce carbon dioxide output should be expanded into a global cap-and-trade system to ensure more companies are forced to curb emissions.

“We need cap-and-trade mechanisms to come up in more parts of the world; we need these mechanisms to be linked to each other,” Ranjit Prasad, global head of CO2 trading at Shell International Transport & Trading, said in a video posted on the company’s Web site. “We need project-based mechanisms for those parts of the world where we don’t have mandatory caps.”

Under cap-and-trade programs, emitters are permitted to release a certain quantity of polluting gases and are allotted permits for that amount, which can be bought and sold as required. The European Trading Scheme, mandatory for heavy industry and power generators, is the world’s largest such system. There are also voluntary cap-and-trade programs such as the one operated by the Chicago Climate Exchange.

Shell and BP Plc are among companies supporting cap-and- trade. Industries that aren’t subject to obligatory emissions limits must commit to curbing their carbon output, Prasad said.

On the Copenhagen agenda, saving forests may still work

This month, the journal Nature Geoscience published a study calculating that deforestation is responsible for about 15% of global carbon emissions, down from earlier estimates of 20% or more. Most of the world’s deforestation is concentrated in a few tropical nations, like Brazil and Indonesia where trees are disappearing fast — when these trees die or are burned, they release into the atmosphere all the carbon they’ve sucked up while they were alive. According to the Nature Geoscience study, the problem of deforestation is becoming a lot less dire than previously thought.

Unfortunately, the study’s findings couldn’t be further from the truth. The authors’ recalculation had less to do with a reduction in deforestation than with an unexpected increase in emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. Indeed trees are still being lost at an alarming rate, at about 13 million hectares per year as of 2005, according to the U.N. Exacerbating the deforestation problem is that there is no global system in place to discourage it. (The global carbon market created by the Kyoto Protocol, by contrast, offers carbon cap and trading as a way to begin reducing carbon emissions from energy or transportation.) “Forests are worth more dead than alive,” says Russell Mittermeier, the president of the green group Conservation International.

There is some hope that valuation will shift, as the world stumbles toward the U.N. climate change summit in Copenhagen next month. Negotiators are trying to include a system to protect forests — called Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) — in the international treaty that is meant to be hammered out at the summit. Broadly speaking, REDD would allow countries to trade on the carbon value of their forests. If successful, it could be a relatively inexpensive way to quickly reduce deforestation, cut emissions and preserve the habitats of some of the most endangered species on the planet. “Forests are a part of the climate problem, so they need to be part of the solution,” says Kevin Conrad, the lead climate negotiator for Papua New Guinea and a major advocate of the REDD process.

Here’s how it would work in detail: developing nations would accept some kind of limit on deforestation rates, and in exchange for preserving those forests, they would receive compensation from developed countries, which would then be able to use the carbon they’re saving to meet their own carbon caps. It’s as simple as that, a recognition that rich nations will have to provide developing countries an economic rationale to stop cutting down trees. The benefits would be global (reducing climate change) and local (helping conservation efforts). Loss of habitat is the No. 1 cause of extinction, and the tropical rain forests that hold the most carbon are also home to the most diverse collection of species. “REDD is a new, exciting opportunity in conservation,” says Brett Jenks, the CEO of RARE Conservation.

But it’s not an easy opportunity. Tropical forests are vast, so it might be expensive and time-consuming to accurately track which trees are being cut down and which are being saved, although better satellite technology is making that easier. If REDD is implemented on a project-by-project basis, rather than across entire nations, there’s a real risk of leakage; deforestation would be stopped in one area, only to bleed somewhere else, and carbon emissions wouldn’t be reduced. Activists for indigenous groups — the native people who actually live in tropical forests — worry that they won’t benefit financially from the REDD process, or even be forced to move off their land. If the preserved trees are burned or cut down later, the carbon would be lost. And it doesn’t help that countries with high rates of deforestation aren’t exactly well governed, which could make the implementation of REDD on the ground a real headache. “The cost is not going to be cheap to do,” says Nigel Sizer, RARE’s vice president for Pacific and Asia operations. “There is legal uncertainty at every level of this.”

The upcoming Copenhagen summit is meant to clear up that uncertainty, and there is real hope that REDD could be a bright spot in a meeting that might otherwise be considered a failure. While the larger negotiations remain deadlocked between developed and developing countries over future carbon-emission cuts, both sides have an interest — environmentally and financially — in reducing forest loss. There’s already progress being made: on Nov. 12 provincial governors from Indonesia, Laos and the Philippines agreed to back REDD. In Brazil, new statistics show the country has cut deforestation rates in half, signs that the government is finally taking the problem seriously. The South American nation stands to be a major beneficiary of REDD — the head of the Brazilian Carbon Markets Association estimated that the country could earn $16 billion a year from REDD.

For that to happen, some version of REDD must become a part of a new global climate deal — and, of course, there must actually be a new global carbon deal. Although preventing deforestation won’t be the solution to climate change, it’s a necessary start.

Britain urges neighbors to adopt UK-style climate law

The British government has teamed up with a number of green groups to promote the UK’s Climate Change Act across Europe as part of a campaign to get other countries to introduce similar legislation.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office is working closely with Friends of the Earth, which masterminded the original campaign for a UK climate change act, to stage a series of workshops at Embassies across Europe to provide civil servants and business execs with an introduction to the legislation.

Events have already taken place in Budapest, Madrid and last week Berlin, while a workshop is also scheduled for Dublin later this week, with further meetings planned for Poland, The Hague and several other European capitals (full disclosure: BusinessGreen.com presented at the Berlin event).

Officials said that the workshops have been well received, and growing numbers of countries are continuing to emulate the UK’s approach and passing carbon emission targets and budgets into law.

The UK Climate Change Act was passed in 2008 and binds successive governments to delivering against the target of cutting emissions 80 per cent by 2050. It also enabled the formation of the independent Committee on Climate Change, and requires governments to set five-year carbon budgets, which they are required to comply with.

Speaking at the Berlin event, Mike Childs, head of climate campaigns at Friends of the Earth, said that versions of the successful Big Ask campaign that preceded the UK Climate Change Act were now up and running in 16 EU countries and Japan. He added that the campaigns were being well received and that support for the wider rollout of climate change bills was building.

“It is very difficult for reasonable people to oppose the introduction of a climate bill,” he said. “We know climate change is happening, the bill is structured in a way so that it is not draconian, and it gives businesses the certainty they need to invest in low carbon.”

Germany in particular is seriously considering developing a climate change bill, with WWF leading a campaign to see the country’s voluntary target of cutting emissions by 40 per cent by 2020 placed on the statute book.

So you want a green career?

Although the recession has emptied shopping malls and filled jobless centers, the call has only gotten louder for renewable energy, environmentally gentle products and eco-friendly practices — and for people to make all of that happen.

President Obama has said that he hopes to create 5 million green jobs within a decade. The U.S. Conference of Mayors estimates that the “green economy” could account for as much as 10% of job growth over the next 30 years.

The job description casts a wide net. The green ranks can include autoworkers making hybrid cars, building consultants, home energy auditors, environmental studies professors, wind turbine engineers, lawyers for biofuel companies and many more.

Some will be new positions; others will involve workers from traditional industries tweaking their former skills.

So here’s a look at where to find green jobs, how to prepare for them and how to land a spot.

The rundown

Even before the recession, the green-jobs market was growing at a faster pace than overall employment in most states, with California leading the trend, experts say. The growth rate of green jobs nationwide was 9.1% from 1998 to 2007, compared with a 3.7% increase for all jobs during the same period, according to a recent report from the Pew Charitable Trusts.

A UC Berkeley study concluded that “the renewable energy sector generates more jobs per megawatt of power installed, per unit of energy produced and per dollar of investment, than the fossil fuel-based energy sector.”

Even bastions of traditional industries, including the United Steelworkers union, support teaching green skills to preserve manufacturing and combat outsourcing.

Billions of dollars from clean-tech venture capitalists have poured into California — $3.3 billion in 2008, more than double the amount in 2007, according to Palo Alto research group Next 10.

There’s room for workers of all backgrounds and income brackets on that rising tide. In 2007, the nearly 125,500 clean-energy workers in California were pulling in $21,000 to $111,000, Pew found.

Daniel Morabito, 29, who was recently hired as a solar panel installer, said his salary at SolarCity is competitive with and far more stable than his paycheck from his previous commission-based job closing film deals. Now he has full benefits, stock options and more potential for long-term growth, he said.

After spending three years wearing a suit and tie in a downtown Los Angeles office, the Hermosa Beach resident recently toiled with two co-workers on top of a Westwood home.

Since June, the Foster City, Calif., company has hired 120 people, 41 of them in Southern California. An additional 180 hirings are expected in the next three months.

Morabito had no experience working with electrical wiring, but he researched the company and marched into the SolarCity warehouse with his resume, he said.

“Everyone’s talking about solar these days,” he said. “I missed being outside and really wanted to work with my hands. But I didn’t know what to expect.”

Faith-based group plugs pulpit power into climate activism

Christians, Muslims, Buddhists and Jews may have their religious differences, but climate change is a cause they can all get behind.

Members of a dozen California religious groups congregated at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral last week for a friendly competition. Held to highlight congregations’ efforts in green building, education, energy efficiency and advocacy, it also served to showcase several leaders who are making inroads in the political arena.

Advocating for climate action is a natural arena for the religious movement, said the Rev. Canon Sally Bingham, environmental minister at Grace Cathedral and founder of Interfaith Power and Light, an environmental movement that has drawn 10,000 congregations in 28 states since it began in 1998.

“Every major faith tradition calls on its followers to be faithful stewards of creation, the web of life that surrounds us and binds us to each other and to our planet,” she said. “It’s amazing how it brings together religious beliefs that are sometimes at odds.”

Now in its third year, the contest — known as the “Energy Oscars” — drew almost 200 applicants, up from about 60 last year. The finalists this year represented several major faiths, including Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Unitarian Universalism.

Camp Stevens, an Episcopal camp and retreat center north of San Diego, won in the education category for its sustainable farming and gardening classes, while Congregation Emanu-el in San Francisco won an energy efficiency award for retrofitting its synagogue lighting to save up to 10 tons of emissions and $4,000 per year.

‘Interfaith Power and Light’ connects with 30 states

IPL has chapters in 30 states, but only one — Georgia — has an energy competition similar to California’s.

Sponsors include Pacific Gas & Electric, New Resource Bank, SunPower, and SolarCity, which has installed solar panels on at least two churches in San Francisco.

Bingham said she had just returned from a climate meeting at England’s Windsor Castle, hosted by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. Alongside U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and other world leaders from nine major religions, she pledged to spread the message that climate change is a moral issue.

“You can establish green religious buildings, invest ethically in sustainable products, purchase only environmentally friendly goods. You can set an example for the lifestyles of billions of people,” Ban told religious leaders, stressing the need to protect poorer and more vulnerable countries. “Your actions can encourage political leaders to act more boldly in protecting our planet Earth.”

Bingham is a member of a task force that is advising the Obama administration on faith- and neighborhood-based partnerships that can promote awareness of energy and climate change. The group’s recommendations, due to the administration by February, include creating a Web site to show people how to go about retrofitting their buildings, as well as a program to connect low-income people to churches looking to retrofit their facilities.

She also published a book earlier this year, “Love God, Heal Earth,” that is a collection of essays by Muslim, Christian, Buddhist and Jewish leaders on protecting the Earth by acknowledging the interconnectedness of all life.

Another spiritual leader at last week’s awards made the case that to get a viable solution to climate change, one must first change one’s own morals — and then change the political system.

Oil and gas companies and electric utilities over the past two decades have poured $8 million into the campaign coffers of lawmakers on the Senate Finance Committee who could now look to shape climate legislation.

Senators on the committee also have received campaign money from other segments of the energy industry that would be affected by a sweeping climate and energy bill, including wind, solar, coal, nuclear power, steel manufacturing and the forest and paper industry.

All told, those likely to be affected by climate and energy legislation for the current election cycle have given nearly $390,000 to Democrats on the Finance Committee and nearly $251,000 to Republican members, an E&E analysis of campaign contributions shows.

Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) has indicated the panel will likely rewrite and vote on the portion of the climate bill that caps carbon emissions and lets businesses buy and sell emissions permits. Any rewrite would affect a broad cross-section of businesses now giving contributions.

“Companies have a lot to win or lose with legislative outcomes, and they are clearly positioning themselves to be winners,” said Tyson Slocum, director of watchdog group Public Citizen’s energy program.

“It’s all an effort to get access,” Slocum added. “That’s what making campaign contributions provides you, is enhanced access with members of Congress. It doesn’t guarantee outcomes but it increases your odds of being able to influence the outcomes.”

The Finance Committee has jurisdiction over much of the structure of a cap-and-trade program including how much companies will be able to bank emissions permits in one year and use in another, and whether free permits given to companies could be turned into a kind of security that could be bundled and sold like mortgages, said Kenneth Green, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Baucus has said he might want to look at how any free greenhouse gas emission allowances would be doled out to regulated industries.

“There are two reasons for a company to donate,” to a political campaign, Green said. “One, they are hoping to make a profit either selling carbon credits, or having their competitor disadvantaged. Or, two, they are staring high costs in the face and they want to get something in the bill to reduce the costs.”

The Finance panel is one of the most powerful on Capitol Hill, and a good portion of those on the committee have been in the Senate at least 20 years, the time period over which the oil and gas industry has given a combined total of at least $5.6 million to those now on the committee, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Electric utilities gave at least $2.4 million during that same period.

Lincoln, Grassley are tops

Of all those on the Finance Committee, Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) has received the most money from companies and trade groups with an interest in climate legislation in this campaign cycle. A third-term senator who this summer became chairwoman of the Agriculture Committee, Lincoln is one of five committee members up for re-election. A moderate Democrat, she is also considered a key swing vote on the climate bill.

For the 2010 campaign, Lincoln has taken in $195,796 from 72 different energy interests. In comparison, she has received $242,250 from companies and groups with stakes in health care legislation — another major issue that goes through the Finance panel.

The energy contributions came from diverse sources. Southwestern Energy Co., an oil and gas exploration company, gave $10,000, as did Koch Industries Inc., which has an oil refining arm and a paper mill business among others businesses. Lincoln also received $6,444 from the American Wind Industries Association, a trade group for wind energy businesses.

“Senator Lincoln is aggressively preparing for a competitive election cycle so it is not too surprising that she ranks No. 1,” said Steve Patterson, Lincoln’s re-election campaign manager. “All campaign contributions aside, the senator knows that she will be accountable to Arkansas voters come Election Day.

“That means that as she considers climate change legislation, she must merge the interests of traditional energy sources in Arkansas like oil and natural gas with emerging new energy industries in the state like wind and biofuels,” Patterson added. “Also, she will weigh the impact of climate change policy on significant agricultural sectors in Arkansas such as rice, cotton and livestock. Nearly 25 percent of the state’s economy is dependent on agriculture. Her primary objective will be to help develop a clean energy policy that creates economic opportunity for Arkansas.”

Of the Republicans, ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) received the most, with $128,500 in contributions from 52 different sources. During the same period, he received far more from health interests, a total of $228,800.

Grassley’s biggest energy contribution came from Koch Industries, which gave $15,000. Oil and gas refining company Valero Energy Corp. gave $10,000. Atlanta-based utility Southern Co. and International Paper Co., the largest pulp and paper company, each gave $8,500.

“Senator Grassley accepts contributions that are legal and that come with no strings attached,” said Grassley spokeswoman Jill Kozeny.

Grassley has shown some reticence about cap and trade, at least as it appeared in the House bill, and this summer said that he would prefer a much broader international response to the climate issue.

“You’ve heard me say that I’m very cautious on cap and trade unless it comes — or, let’s put it this way, not use the term cap and trade, but use the term global warming, I’m very much thinking that needs to be done on international treaty so that it levels the playing field between the United States and China,” Grassley said.

Utilities give big

Electric utilities, though happier than oil and gas companies about the Kerry-Boxer bill, still are lobbying for changes in the cap-and-trade language.

Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) included identical language to the House version in her chairman’s mark that gave 30 percent of free pollution permits to state-regulated local electric-distribution companies, although from a smaller overall pie (E&E Daily, Oct. 29).

Those allowances must be used to benefit consumers. Edison Electric Institute, the association representing electric utilities, in a recent interview said that it wants that share of free permits increased to 40 percent.

EEI also advocates having utilities receive those free permits for a longer period. Under the Kerry-Boxer bill, investor-owned utilities and smaller local distribution companies would see their free credits zero out in 2030.

As one of the biggest electric utilities, Southern Co. in this election cycle was one of the largest contributors to the campaigns of lawmakers on the Finance Committee. Southern Co. gave a combined $16,500. Of that, Grassley received $8,500, Lincoln took in $5,500 and Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) received $2,500. All three are up for re-election.

“Our objective is to support candidates who understand issues that are important to Southern Company’s customers, employees and shareholders,” said Jason Cuevas, a Southern Co. spokesman. “Contribution decisions are made by our employee-elected PAC board and are not are not based on party affiliation or incumbency.”

Southern Co., Cuevas said, wants the cap-and-trade program timetable to match up with available technology. It wants a limit on how high allowance prices can go and wants to ensure that companies can buy offsets for projects that reduce carbon, in lieu of paying for permits to cover carbon emissions.

“As the legislative process continues, we will communicate our views to policymakers working on this issue that climate legislation should contain provisions that help control costs in reasonable, effective ways to minimize impact to our customers, Cuevas said.

Gordon Brown to attend Copenhagen climate change conference

Gordon Brown confirmed today that he will attend the UN climate change summit in Copenhagen next month after the Danish prime minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, issued invitations to 191 world leaders.

Brown was the first world leader to announce in September that he was ready to go to Copenhagen to help secure a deal. He will be hoping that other prime ministers and presidents – particularly Barack Obama – follow his lead and go to the Danish capital.

The prime minister and other world leaders are expected to attend the final days of the two-week summit on 17 and 18 December, when he hopes that political agreement will be reached on a post-Kyoto framework for reducing the carbon emissions blamed for global warming.

Brown’s spokesman announced today that he had accepted Rasmussen’s invitation, adding: “Although there is much to be done in the next 30 days, clearly this is one of the issues which is top of the prime minister’s mind at the moment.”

He said Britain has accepted that it will not get the legal treaty on carbon cuts that Brown was initially hoping for at Copenhagen, but believes that a political agreement leading to a clear timetable on a legally binding deal would be “from our point of view, a result”.

Obama said on Monday that he will attend the summit if he believed “we are on the brink of a meaningful agreement and my presence in Copenhagen will make a difference in tipping us over the edge”.

In his letters, sent out to heads of state and governments around the world by diplomatic channels today, Rasmussen said their attendance “is a pivotal contribution to a successful outcome” to the December conference.

At least 40 leaders have said they plan to attend the conference, including the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and the Dutch prime minister, Jan Peter Balkenende.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil has indicated he might come to the conference, and a spokesman for the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, said she is keeping the date open.

Brown wrote to Lula today to congratulate him on announcing an ambitious target to cut Brazil’s greenhouse gas emissions by 38%-42% by 2020.

The prime minister has been “hitting the phones” in recent days, speaking to Rasmussen and leaders of a range of countries to push for agreement at Copenhagen, as well as meeting the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said Downing Street.

Obama’s trip to China: a new interest in clean energy and a new spirit of cooperation

As President Obama heads to China, it is important to recognize just how much has changed in the past year. For the first time ever, an American president is traveling to Beijing with the issue of climate change at the top of his agenda. This kind of focus would have been unthinkable during the Bush administration, but in the past 10 months, Obama has directed federal agencies and urged Congress to take real action on climate.

But that is only half of the story. The long-held belief that China isn’t doing much to confront climate change has now become on old news too.

Under the leadership of President Hu Jintao, China has taken bold steps to reduce its energy use. Yet one of the most interesting threads in this new China narrative is rarely told on this side of the Pacific: China’s private sector is as eager to make these changes as China’s government.

I saw it for myself when I went to China in September. Clean energy innovation was at the center of every conversation I had with Chinese business executives and the media, not to mention government officials.

While I was in Shanghai, I attended a clean tech conference. It was co-sponsored by the local American Chamber of Commerce, so about two-thirds of the participants were Westerners, and the rest were Chinese. At the end, someone asked me, “Did you notice that the Chinese business people were here at the beginning of the conference, but they didn’t stay? They are more focused on action than on talking.”

The reason is obvious: there is enormous market potential here. A recent report estimated that the potential clean technology market in China in 2013 could be between $500 billion to $1 trillion. Meanwhile, China is set to become the world’s leading manufacturer of wind turbines this year, and is already the top producer of photovoltaic cells for solar energy.

This explosive private growth is no doubt inspired by government policy. China has set renewables targets of 10 percent for 2010 and 15 percent by 2020. It is also reportedly preparing plans to invest between $440 billion and $660 billion in the next 10 years on alternative energy development in what could be the largest government renewables program in the world–part of its effort to boost China’s clean energy industry.

America can no longer say we are waiting for China to move first before we act on climate solutions. The train has already left the station.

We need to set our own clean energy innovators in motion now if we want to keep the pace. We need to put our own clean energy policies in place, such as the climate legislation now before the Senate. As I explain in my new book, Clean Energy Common Sense, this will not only put us at the forefront of a global market, but it will also put millions of Americans to work.

Yet the truth is if China and America both work to expand clean energy technologies, this isn’t a competition. This is an opportunity where we can all win.

Texas Curb ‘Em: How the Lone Star State Slashed Emissions

Famously oil-friendly–and laissez-faire–Texas may be the biggest, baddest greenhouse gas hog in the Union.

But according to a report by a local environmental group, it’s also one of the states that saw its absolute carbon-dioxide emissions drop the most in recent times.

The report, by Environment Texas, says that the Lone Star state’s carbon-dioxide output from fossil fuels fell by 10 million metric tons between 2004 and 2007–more than any other state except New York.

That was before the economic downturn, of course—the main driver behind global reductions in emissions recently. The reductions are due to lower industrial use of natural gas and a burst of clean-energy development in the state.

Those were the years that Texas became the wind-power leader in the U.S. At the same time, many electricity providers switched from coal to natural gas, which burns a lot cleaner. The report says that on a per-capita basis, emissions from Texas electric generators fell 4% between 2004 and 2007.

The findings underscore the paradoxical role Texas plays in the energy world. As home to ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips, it spews more carbon dioxide than any other state in the U.S., and more even than all of Canada. That’s one reason the state’s political leadership is at war with the Obama administration over cap-and-trade plans—-jobs in the oil patch could suffer mightily.

On the other hand, Texas’ unusual combination of windy prairies, available transmission lines and a wide-open attitude toward energy investment helped the western part of the state become the wind-power capital of the country in less than a decade, further helping reduce emissions.

U.S., Japan to expand clean energy cooperation

The United States and Japan said they had agreed at a summit on Friday to expand cooperation in clean energy technologies in an effort to tackle climate change.

The two sides would work together in areas such smart grids, carbon capture and storage and nuclear energy, the two governments said in a joint statement after talks between U.S. President Barack Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama in Tokyo.

Tokyo and Washington will aim to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050 and back a global goal to halve emissions by mid-century, they said.

India joins China in plans to increase solar power

India is targeting generation of 20,000 megawatts of solar power by 2022, joining China as the two Asian nations that resist emission caps draft plans to boost renewable energy before next month’s global climate change talks.

India, Asia’s third-biggest energy consumer, is set to unveil its national solar energy plan “in about a week,” Minister for New and Renewable Energy Farooq Abdullah said in Mumbai today.

China and India have opposed legally binding caps as industrialized nations seek commitments for programs that will curb the output of gases blamed for global warming. The two fastest-growing major economies balk at emission targets because their energy usage is projected to rise as more people are lifted out of poverty.

“It’s not a big challenge in terms of technology or engineering,” said Shirish Garud of the Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi. “The major challenge will be in mobilizing the financing.”

Solar capacity costs anywhere from 160 million rupees to 200 million rupees per megawatt to install, Garud said. Abdullah didn’t give details of spending, saying only that the amount would be “huge.”

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh plans to discuss India’s solar plan at talks with U.S. President Barack Obama, Abdullah said. Obama will host Singh at the first state dinner of his presidency on Nov. 24.

Copenhagen Talks

The plan will be presented at next month’s climate talks in Copenhagen, where nations will see it as a sign of India’s commitment to curb emissions. Delegates from 192 nations will try to reach agreement on a global accord in the Danish capital to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

The South Asian nation currently generates about three megawatts of solar power, Abdullah told reporters. China, which is preparing to more than double its output of alternative energy, may increase its solar capacity to 20,000 megawatts by 2020, according to Cui Rongqiang, head of the Shanghai Solar Energy Society.

“If India is able to produce enough energy that is not polluting, the whole world will welcome this,” Adbdullah said. India won’t commit to anything that would “stop our development, our progress at any cost,” he said.

The U.S. has urged India to “leap-frog” past developed countries and create a more energy-efficient infrastructure to become a world leader in clean technology industries.

NAM speaks softly on climate – does it carry a big stick?

The biggest U.S. manufacturers’ alliance has gone from being a ferocious critic of global warming legislation to being a quiet observer in recent months, even as debate about Senate climate legislation increasingly focuses on global trade issues and jobs.

The National Association of Manufacturers has largely stood on the sidelines since September. That month, environmental groups and the Obama administration launched a campaign against the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that sought to weaken its considerable lobbying might. The public attention and the loss of a handful of large companies upset about the chamber’s opposition to a House-passed climate bill forced its president, Thomas Donohue, to recant some chamber rhetoric and soften its position.

During that period, environmental groups were trying to paint NAM’s opposition to the House bill with the same broad brush.

Like the chamber, NAM was an outspoken critic of legislation that would cap carbon dioxide emissions and establish a national program for trading pollution allowances. Both spent millions of dollars in the summer on lobbying, advertising campaigns and position papers opposing climate legislation, saying it would be too costly for the nation’s industrial sector and would mean millions of job losses. NAM spent $6 million in the third quarter, and the chamber spent $34 million in the same period.

“It’s a fringe position,” said David Yarnold, executive director of the Environmental Defense Action Fund, describing his view of NAM’s opposition.

In August, NAM and the National Federation of Independent Business launched a national advertising campaign opposing the House-passed bill sponsored by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.). “Our message to senators is that the Waxman-Markey bill is an anti-jobs and anti-energy piece of legislation,” NAM Executive Vice President Jay Timmons said at the time.

That same month, NAM and the American Council for Capital Formation released a study predicting that 2.4 million jobs would be lost, total loss of gross domestic product through 2030 would be $3.1 trillion, and residential electricity prices would increase by up to 50 percent by 2030 if the Senate were to pass the House bill.

The Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council and a tightly bound network of environmental investor groups called on companies to leave the chamber and NAM. Three major utilities Exelon Corp., Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and PNM Resources Inc. defected from the chamber. Apple and Nike also announced plans to quit the chamber’s board and leave the organization. Duke Energy Corp. had already left NAM, but no companies followed Duke in that decision. For the most part, NAM’s reputation has remained intact as critics have pummeled the chamber, sources said.

“It’s appropriate to challenge them on spreading half-truths, and then pushing others to have discussions in the trade associations about their position on climate change,” said Timothy Smith of Walden Asset Management.

Still, some major manufacturers, including Whirlpool and Dow Chemical, have said they don’t agree with NAM’s staunch opposition to the House bill, but are staying in the organization.

“Obviously our position is different than theirs,” said Peter Molinaro, vice president for government affairs at Dow Chemical.

Germany to Help Develop Moroccan Solar-Thermal Energy Projects

Germany plans to help Morocco develop a water-desalination plant and electricity generators using solar power as part of a larger program to expand the use of renewable energy in the North African nation.

Funding and specifics of the solar accord will be discussed at talks next week in Rabat between the two governments, Sabine Brickenkamp, a spokeswoman for the German economic cooperation and development ministry, said in an interview.

Morocco, the only country in the region with a power cable to Europe, imports 97 percent of its energy. The nation is vying with Algeria, Tunisia and Libya for 400 billion euros ($596 billion) of investments in solar-energy systems over the coming decades as the EU seeks to trim emissions from coal and natural gas power plants by importing clean power from the Sahara.

The nation of 36 million people this week announced a plan to invest $9 billion to install 2,000 megawatts of solar power through 2020, the equivalent of about two nuclear power plants and about 20 percent of Morocco’s electricity consumption.

German companies including Munich Re, Siemens AG and RWE AG in July announced a plan called Desertec to probe the potential to generate electricity in North Africa using solar-thermal systems to pipe power in cables under the Mediterranean Sea to provide 15 percent of Europe’s electrical needs by mid-century.

Solar-thermal systems heat a fluid by concentrating the sun’s rays on a tube. The liquid produces steam that turns turbines. The world’s largest solar-thermal system is in California’s Mojave Desert, operated by a group of U.S. companies.

Details of the desalination plant, which will use energy from the sun to extract salt from sea water, will be worked out next week, Brickenkamp said.

Clinton calls Copenhagen ’steppingstone,’ outlines U.S. priorities

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton today called U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen a “steppingstone” toward a global, legally binding climate agreement, and spelled out U.S. priorities for the talks.

Her comments at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Singapore are an acknowledgement from the nation’s top diplomat that next month’s talks will not result in a final international deal to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

But Clinton also said the meeting would be pivotal and declared that the United States — the world’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases behind China — is “prepared to assume our share of responsibility” to address climate change.

“If we all exert maximum effort and embrace the right blend of pragmatism and principle, I believe we can secure a strong outcome at Copenhagen, and that would be a steppingstone toward full legal agreement,” she said.

Clinton warned against allowing the “pursuit of perfection” to block progress, but added that there are nonetheless metrics the United States will use to judge the outcome of the talks, which run Dec. 7-18.

The first, she said, is that all countries do their fair share. The next, she said, is that a deal should cover all major issues, which she said include adaptation, financing, technology cooperation, dissemination of technology and forest preservation.

Clinton also said the talks should address funding mechanisms to help developing nations.

“We are prepared to support a global climate fund that will support adaptation and mitigation efforts and a matching entity to help developing countries match needs with available resources,” Clinton said.

“Funding through the new global climate fund and a technology mechanism will help developing countries identify what they need, where to get it, and how to finance, operate and maintain it,” she said.

Clinton’s view that Copenhagen won’t result in a final deal reflects the views of other key negotiators.

“I don’t think we can get a legally binding agreement by Copenhagen,” U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer said earlier this month in Barcelona, Spain (Greenwire, Nov. 6).

“I think that we can get that within a year after Copenhagen,” he said.

Military’s growing thirst for oil is costing lives — report

A significant portion of war casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan was taken by convoys providing oil to the military, according to a report released by a consulting firm yesterday.

Deloitte LLP’s study found a tenfold increase in the Defense Department’s oil consumption since the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is a 175 percent increase in oil use per day, per soldier, since the Vietnam War.

The number of trucks traveling rough roads in remote areas, whose primary cargo is fuel, has “skyrocketed” in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with the rate of exposure of military personnel to “improvised explosive devices (IEDs),” the report says. IEDs accounted for about 43 percent of U.S. casualties in Iraq between July 2003 and May 2009, the study found.

IEDs also accounted for 38 percent of fatalities in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2008 and will likely account for more than half of military personnel deaths in fiscal 2009, Deloitte reported.

“Energy security is essential to reduce war time casualties,” the report concludes. “With the significant numbers of U.S. soldiers supporting the transport, logistics, and deployment of fossil fuel to the front lines, there is a call to action to reduce dependence on oil in war.”

Along with military lives lost, DOD’s heavy reliance on oil incurs a significant financial cost, the study notes.

In 2008, the Pentagon spent $16 billion to purchase 120 million barrels of petroleum, 20 percent of which supplied vehicles, planes and other equipment in Iraq and Afghanistan, Deloitte said.

But in June of 2008 alone, the military lost 44 trucks and 220,000 gallons of fuel as long fuel convoys were waylaid by IEDs, weather, traffic and stealing, the study says. While the military purchases fuel at about $2 to $3 per gallon, the additional expense of air and ground protection and transportation pushes the price of each gallon to $45, Deloitte said.

“This study demonstrates that the development and use of alternative energy can be a direct cause for reductions in wartime casualties and may rank on par with the business cases for development of ever more effective offensive weapons, sophisticated fuel transport tankers, mine resistant armored vehicles and net-centric sensing technologies,” the report says.

While the Pentagon and Congress have made progress in including energy-related planning into military bureaucracy, “significant progress is still required in consolidating its energy-related bureaucracy and formulating an all inclusive energy policy,” the study says.

Major Asian cities face climate disaster: WWF

Low-lying and impoverished Asian coastal cities such as Dhaka, Manila and Jakarta are vulnerable to “brutal” damage from climate change without global action, environmental group WWF warned Thursday.

Energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions must be curtailed in “mega-cities” where global warming will affect everything from national security to health and water availability, the influential campaign group said.

“Climate change is already shattering cities across developing Asia and will be even more brutal in the future,” said Kim Carstensen, head of the WWF Global Climate Initiative.

Including their suburbs, Dhaka, Manila and Jakarta now have a combined population of about 49 million, according to WWF.

It said better-off cities such as Shanghai, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore also faced varying degrees of risk from climate change, such as rising sea levels, excessive rain, flooding and heatwaves.

Hong Kong could see dramatically fewer cold days per year while dengue fever appears to be spreading to previously unaffected parts of Singapore, it noted.

“Asia is the most populous and arguably the most vulnerable continent in the world because of the high risk of climate impacts and relatively low adaptive capacity,” the report said.

“Unfortunately, the full extent of climate change has likely not been fully realised,” it said, noting that temperatures in Asia have risen by one to three degrees Centigrade (two to five degrees Fahrenheit) in the last 100 years.

WWF issued its report to coincide with a weekend summit here to be attended by US President Barack Obama, Chinese President Hu Jintao and other Asia-Pacific leaders.

The summit takes place three weeks before crucial talks on a new world climate pact open in Copenhagen on December 7.

WWF said that on a “vulnerability” scale going up to 10, Dhaka rated nine points, and Manila and Jakarta eight each.

Calcutta and Phnom Penh received scores of seven each on the WWF danger scale, Ho Chi Minh City and Shanghai six each, Bangkok five, and Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong and Singapore four each.

Poorer Asian nations urgently need financial, technological and training support from industrialised countries to save lives, protect national assets and preserve the cities’ economic contributions, it said.

Mark Dia, the Manila-based deputy campaign director for Greenpeace in Southeast Asia, told AFP that the report showed “disaster management should be top of the agenda for the government.”

Tropical storm Ketsana dumped record amounts of rainfall over the Philippine capital in September, leaving more than 400 people dead and vast swathes of the city flooded for weeks.

WWF urged the leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum to use their summit to promote strategies to reduce carbon emissions across the 21-member organisation.

In a communique to be issued at the end of their annual meeting Sunday, the APEC leaders are expected to call for sweeping emissions cuts and declare their support for a global deal at next month’s Copenhagen climate gathering.

In the short term, APEC will seek to open up trade in environmental goods and services, known as green technology, as part of efforts to fight climate change and achieve sustainable economic growth.

The December 7-18 Copenhagen talks are aimed at achieving a global deal to slash greenhouse gas emissions and ease the impact of climate change before the 2012 expiry of the Kyoto Protocol, which excludes the United States.

China’s Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said Thursday that it would seek a “fair and reasonable” result at Copenhagen but reiterated that rich nations must bear most of the burden for redressing global warming.

Are U.S. solar jobs here to stay? Senators fight for a yes.

A trio of U.S. senators this week introduced a bill to spur solar manufacturing jobs in the United States.

Through additional tax credits, the legislation aims to encourage more U.S. companies to make solar equipment, creating jobs and building up the country’s clean energy economy.

Many — from politicians and environmentalists to investors – have pinned great hopes on green jobs. Clean energy could create 850,000 manufacturing jobs in the United States, according to recent research Reuters reported this week.

The latest proposal could create 315,000 U.S. jobs along, according to Solar Energy Industries Association, which is pushing for the bill.

But would the extra tax incentives be enough to keep solar power companies producing in the United States?

A decade ago, the United States produced more than 40 percent of the world’s solar photovoltaic cells that convert sunlight into electricity. In 2008, the United States made only 5 percent of the world’s solar cells, according to the solar group.

Those numbers seem bleak. But the solar jobs landscape is not so black and white.

Chinese companies Suntech and Yingli have plans to start manufacturing in the United States. At the same time, the largest U.S. solar company First Solar has announced plans to open a massive plant in China and U.S.-based Evergreen Solar is speeding up its strategy to outsource to China.

Last week Evergreen Solar’s executives had to answer questions from analysts about their plans to move panel assembly to China from Massachusetts.

“There is a lot of capacity going in the ground in Asia. But I think as companies do their own homework and do cost comparison it is compelling that the costs in China or low — low capital costs, low labor costs, low overhead costs,” said Evergreen Solar’s chief executive Richard Feldt on a conference call with analysts.

“And so I think it will be difficult to be a worldwide supplier of scale and not have some operations in
China.” Feldt added.

China should reduce carbon intensity: report

China should cut its carbon intensity every year by 4 or 5 percent if it wants to achieve a goal of low-carbon development by 2050, state media on Thursday cited a thinktank report as saying.

In September, Chinese President Hu Jintao promised to put a “notable” brake on the country’s rapidly rising carbon emissions, but dashed hopes he would unveil a hard target to kickstart stalled climate talks.

Hu, the leader of the world’s biggest emitter, told a U.N. summit China would pledge to cut “carbon intensity,” or the amount of carbon dioxide produced for each dollar of economic output, over the decade to 2020.

The official China Daily said the China Council of International Cooperation on Environment and Development would submit a report to the central government on cutting carbon intensity.

“If China is to meet the target of year-on-year emissions cuts of between 4 and 5 percent, it will need to reduce energy intensity by between 75 and 85 percent by 2050,” the newspaper wrote, paraphrasing the report.

“In addition, the proportion of manufacturing industry within the national economic structure would need to be cut from the current 50 percent to around 30 percent by the middle of the century,” it added.

Shell Gets Into the Other South American Offshore Oil Race

Ever since oil was discovered offshore Ghana in 2007, the world’s oil explorers have been eyeing Guyana. Non-geologists might find that a bit of a leap.

But for Big Oil, there’s a big connection. Africa and South America were once joined, but were separated tens of millions of years ago by continental shift. So many believe the oil-bearing structures in Ghana’s huge Jubilee field could be replicated on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, in places like Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana.

One company that has bet big on the theory is Tullow Oil PLC, a plucky UK-based explorer that is one of the partners in Jubilee.

Tullow says it has identiified “numerous” Jubilee-type leads offshore French Guiana. It began seismic testing over 3,000 square kilometers of its permit area in September and hopes to drill its first exploration well there by the end of next year. It also has interests in Suriname and Guyana.

Now the big guys are taking the trail blazed by Tullow. Royal Dutch Shell plc announced Wednesday it had acquired a 33% interest in Tullow’s Maritime permit in French Guiana and has an option to buy 12% more later. The purchase, Shell said, “adds quality acreage to our deep water portfolio in the Americas.”

Shell is not the first supermajor to dip its toes in the waters of northern South America. Exxon Mobil Corp. has exploration rights in the huge Stabroek block offshore Guyana, though it’s tight-lipped about what it’s found there. Smaller companies like Canadian independent CGX Energy are also present there.

But the area remains one of the most under-explored in the world. There’s some data from the 1970s, when Elf Aquitaine and Exxon drilled two dry wells. But from then on it was virtually ignored by the majors. That’s changed with the discovery of Jubilee.

The idea that areas on either side of oceans could have the same oil-bearing structures is now well-established. After billions of barrels of oil were found in the “pre-salt” areas offshore Brazil, many began to wonder whether the ultra-deep waters off the coast of Angola, directly across the Atlantic, might bring forth similar treasures.

Meanwhile, for Shell, the Tullow deal makes perfect sense. Like all the majors, it’s struggled to add reserves and increase production as it’s shut out from the more traditional oil-producing areas.

French Guiana might be a leap in the dark– but one that could yield rich returns for a company eager to beef up its exploration portfolio.

Study Shows Need for Climate Change Rules that Recognize Agricultural Contributions

A principle role undertaken by the 25x’25 Alliance is to explore opportunities for the agricultural and forestry sectors to participate in the new energy future that is emerging. With national attention focusing on initiatives that can stem climate change, the Alliance is facilitating a discussion on the role of the agricultural and forestry sectors in a reduced carbon economy, in which the use of fossil fuels is decreased and greenhouse gas emissions are reduced.

To further that discussion, 25x’25 today released a study conducted by the University of Tennessee’s Bio-Based Energy Analysis Group that projects how meeting several proposed energy/climate change policy scenarios might impact the U.S. agricultural sector. The policy scenarios that have been analyzed include a cap-and-trade regulatory system and varying treatments of agricultural offsets. The study’s results show impacts on economic returns, climate benefits, feedstock prices and land use impacts.

The study, entitled Analysis of the Implications of Climate Change and Energy Legislation to the Agricultural Sector, shows that net returns for U.S. agriculture are positive under a properly constructed cap-and-trade program. However, the study goes on to show that if carbon emissions are regulated by EPA as prescribed under a 2007 Supreme Court ruling, net farm income is projected to fall below USDA baseline projections.

The long-awaited and comprehensive assessment indicates that income from offsets and from market revenues under a properly constructed cap-and-trade program is higher than any potential increase in input costs, including energy and fertilizer.

A cap-and-trade system that allows multiple offsets, including those for bioenergy crop production, while restricting the removal of crop residues to acceptable, environmentally beneficial levels, would generate some $209 billion over baseline in net returns accumulated from 2010 to 2025. The number jumps to $364 billion over baseline if carbon regulation is left to EPA without legislative guidance.

Input costs will increase under any scenario, the study says. But EPA regulation subjects U.S. agriculture to higher input costs with no opportunity to be compensated for the greenhouse gas reduction services that farmers, ranchers and forestland owners can provide.

The study indicates that no major shifts in commodity cropland use are expected under a properly constructed cap-and-trade system. Furthermore, at a meaningful but moderate carbon price of up to $27 per metric ton of carbon equivalent (a price level projected by EPA), no cropland is expected to be converted to forests and grassland. However, under EPA regulation, carbon prices could go up to $160 per ton and lead to the conversion of as much as 60 million acres of cropland.

As Congress debates legislation that addresses climate change, lawmakers must establish a viable and equitable regulatory system that recognizes the contributions of farmers, ranchers and forestland owners. The University of Tennessee study shows that solutions from the land not only make good tools in the fight against climate change; they also benefit agriculture and forestry.

Montgomery County redefined the way it will grow in the next two decades when lawmakers endorsed a plan Tuesday that encourages development where residents can easily live a car-free lifestyle.

The County Council, after weeks of intense debate over the county’s growth policy, unanimously agreed to give developers discounts to build dense developments near transit stations as long as they also construct bike paths and walkways, put shops and other amenities nearby, and use environmentally friendly construction methods.

I don’t do a lot of local area reporting, but this front page (!) Washington Post story, “Montgomery draws a car-free blueprint for growth,” seemed newsworthy.  The picture above is of the Rockville Pike corridor, and anyone who has driven around Rockville knows it is as car-centric as anywhere in America.

The county is working to change that:

Most suburban growth plans — including Montgomery’s, until Tuesday — discourage development in congested areas, including those near public transit, and encourage construction in more sparsely populated communities, on the theory that new developments should arise where traffic is still tolerable.

But Montgomery’s new plan takes a different tack, one that smart-growth advocates say is long overdue. With the population nearing 1 million, the Washington suburb is substantially larger than the big city to its south but is still managing growth as if everyone can hop in a car and quickly get where they want to go.

The county’s growth policy is revisited every two years. The new plan could boost efforts to redevelop the jumbled White Flint area along Rockville Pike and provide new impetus to build a “science city” spearheaded by Johns Hopkins University west of Interstate 270 near Gaithersburg….

The council also endorsed a plan from County Council member Roger Berliner (D-Potomac-Bethesda), whose district is likely to be the epicenter of much of the urban-style growth, to use development fees to improve a transit system that commuters say is increasingly inadequate….

Planners predict that 200,000 people are likely to move to the county in the next 20 years, bumping the population to more than 1 million. To find a way to house the expected newcomers and get them to and from work, the Planning Board had recommended that developers get discounts and rewards if they are willing to idle their properties for a few years and to build denser development and taller buildings, up to 300 feet in some areas, near the county’s Metro stations.

The Planning Board has also tried to make improving transit an ironclad condition of much new development.

When the board approved the proposed science city in July, members were adamant that it could not be built unless the proposed Corridor Cities Transitway bus or rail system is funded and built. Funding transit, however, is up to federal, state and local lawmakers, all of whom are struggling with massive budget shortfalls, so the Planning Board can advocate for but not create it.

As the price of oil returns to and then exceeds its previous records, funding for bus or rail systems will become a bigger and bigger priority state and federal level, so it is important for local planners to start designing for that.

And while I’m not certain the phrase “car-free” is a fully accurate description of what Montgomery County is pursuing, they deserve kudos for this smart growth plan.

Related Post:

• Making Buses Cool Again

The world will have to spend an extra $500 billion to cut carbon emissions for each year it delays implementing a major assault on global warming, the International Energy Agency said on Tuesday.

At United Nations climate talks in Barcelona last week negotiators from developed countries said the world would need an extra six to 12 months to agree a legally binding, global deal to cut carbon emissions beyond a planned December deadline.

The IEA, energy adviser to 28 industrialized countries, said the world must act urgently to put greenhouse gases on a track to limit global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius.

Every year’s delay beyond 2010 would add another $500 billion to the extra investment of $10,500 billion needed from 2010-2030 to curb carbon emissions, for example to improve energy efficiency and boost low-carbon renewable energy.

“Much more needs to be done to get anywhere near an emissions path consistent with … limiting the rise in global temperature to 2 degrees,” said the IEA’s 2009 World Energy Outlook. “Countries attending the U.N. climate conference must not lose sight of this.”

What needs to be done?  See “Must-read IEA report explains what must be done to avoid 6°C warming” and “IEA report, Part 2: Climate Progress has the 450-ppm solution about right.”

Here’s more from today’s story:

U.N. talks meant to agree a deal in Copenhagen in December to extend or replace the existing Kyoto Protocol have struggled to overcome a rich-poor rift on how to split the cost of curbing carbon emissions, for example from burning fossil fuels.

Developed countries accept that they have to take the burden of cutting carbon emissions, but want developing nations to accept binding actions too under a new treaty.

Poor countries want financial help to implement carbon emissions cuts and prepare for unavoidable global warming, including droughts, floods and rising seas.

The IEA report estimated that the world needed to invest an extra $197 billion annually by 2020 to make the necessary emissions cuts in developing countries, compared with a global total of $430 billion by then.

“The Copenhagen conference will provide important pointers to the kind of energy future that awaits us,” it said.

To continue present trends of energy demand and burning of fossil fuels “would lead almost certainly to massive climatic change and irreparable damage to the planet,” it said.

To implement swinging carbon cuts, on the other hand, would require a huge shift in the world’s energy system.

That would raise, for example, the share of non-fossil fuels to 32 percent of total primary energy in 2030, from 19 percent in 2007. The share of the internal combustion engine in new car sales would fall to 40 percent by 2030 from more than 90 percent under current trends.

Report: Extreme weather will be seen on Yangtze

Increased droughts, floods and storms will hit China’s Yangtze River Basin over the next few decades, the result of rising temperatures globally, according to a report released Tuesday.

Climate change will trigger extreme weather conditions along the country’s longest river, but strategies can be taken to control it, said the report, issued by the environmental group WWF-China. The group was originally known as the World Wildlife Fund.

In the past two decades, the temperature in the river basin area has risen steadily, which has led to a spike in flooding, heat waves and droughts, the report said. It is the largest assessment yet on the impact of global warming on the Yangtze basin area, which is home to 400 million people.

Data collected from 147 monitoring stations along the 700,000-square-mile (1.8 million-square-kilometer) area showed temperatures rose by 0.59 degree Fahrenheit (0.33 degree Celsius) during the 1990s. Additional findings show that between 2001 and 2005, the basin’s temperature rose on average another 1.28 degrees Fahrenheit (0.71 degree Celsius).

“Extreme climate events such as storms and drought disasters will increase as climate change continues to alter our planet,” said Xu Ming, the lead researcher on the report, which included expert contributions from the China Academy of Sciences, the China Meteorological Administration and other academic institutions.

The report identifies key areas that will be affected: from agriculture to various ecosystems such as forests, grasslands, wetlands and coastal regions.

Crops such as corn, winter wheat and rice will see clear declines in production, with rice crops alone dropping between 9 percent to 41 percent by the end of the century, it said. Natural habitat such as grasslands and wetlands have receded steadily in recent years while rising sea levels triggered by global warming will make coastal cities such as Shanghai more vulnerable.

Countermeasures include strengthening existing infrastructure, such as river and dike reinforcements, transport and power supply systems, the report said. Other steps include adjusting cropping systems and switching to hardier strains.

“Adaptation is a must for large developing nations” such as China, which is particularly vulnerable to climate change because of its large population and relatively low economic development, said James Leape, director general of WWF-International.

“The report is a reminder that while the whole world rises to meet the challenge of climate change, we must prepare for impacts that are already inevitable,” he said.

Key oil figures were distorted by US pressure, says whistleblower

The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency who claims it has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying.

The senior official claims the US has played an influential role in encouraging the watchdog to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves.

The allegations raise serious questions about the accuracy of the organisation’s latest World Energy Outlook on oil demand and supply to be published tomorrow – which is used by the British and many other governments to help guide their wider energy and climate change policies.

In particular they question the prediction in the last World Economic Outlook, believed to be repeated again this year, that oil production can be raised from its current level of 83m barrels a day to 105m barrels. External critics have frequently argued that this cannot be substantiated by firm evidence and say the world has already passed its peak in oil production.

Now the “peak oil” theory is gaining support at the heart of the global energy establishment. “The IEA in 2005 was predicting oil supplies could rise as high as 120m barrels a day by 2030 although it was forced to reduce this gradually to 116m and then 105m last year,” said the IEA source, who was unwilling to be identified for fear of reprisals inside the industry. “The 120m figure always was nonsense but even today’s number is much higher than can be justified and the IEA knows this.

JR:  This is an odd story, since EIA joined the peak oil camp over a year ago:

U.S. eyes deal with China on climate change monitoring

The United States hopes to reach agreement with China during President Barack Obama’s visit on how to record and monitor countries’ efforts to fight global warming, a top State Department official said on Tuesday.

The comments by Robert Hormats, undersecretary for economic, energy and agricultural affairs, offered some insight into the types of deals Obama will be hoping to strike when he visits China next week.

Obama told Reuters in an interview on Monday that Washington and Beijing needed to work together on the big issues facing the globe, and that climate change would be a key part of his November 15-18 trip to Shanghai and Beijing.

Hormats held out the likelihood of concrete deals on energy cooperation and global warming, with an eye to ensuring the two powers have more common ground when they go into key global talks on the issue in Copenhagen next month.

“I think we need out of this visit real progress on climate change, … how we can record internationally the kind of things we’re doing domestically and how we can follow up and monitor one another for what we’re doing,” Hormats, the State Department’s top economic official, told university students in Beijing.

China is considered the world’s biggest annual emitter of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas from human activity.

Energy agency warns of falling investment

The global financial crisis has led to a dangerous drop in energy investment around the world which could choke off the nascent economic recovery, the International Energy Agency said Tuesday.

The warning from the Paris-based agency comes just a month ahead of the major UN climate conference in Copenhagen, where world leaders hope to agree on so-called climate finance to help developing countries cut emissions by switching from fossil fuels to cleaner energy such as wind and solar.

The EU has said that there should be a euro100 billion ($150 billion) annual package of public and private finance by 2020 to help poorer nations develop green industries and adapt to climate change.

The IEA, a policy adviser to 28 mostly industrialized oil-consuming nations, estimates that the financial and economic crisis is responsible for a $90 billion drop in global oil and gas investment this year, a 19 percent cut from 2008.

“Falling energy investment will have far-reaching and, depending on how governments respond, potentially serious consequences for energy security, climate change and energy poverty,” the IEA said in its annual World Energy Outlook report.

The resulting drop in oil and electricity supplies could “undermine the sustainability of the economic recovery,” the IEA warned.

Britain unveils nuclear energy expansion plans

Britain set out plans Monday to speed up the planning process for big wind farms and new nuclear power plants and named 10 sites where reactors could be built.

Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband said new nuclear plants, combined with cleaner coal plants and more renewable energy, would help Britain to secure its energy supplies and cut its greenhouse gas emissions.

About 20 percent of Britain’s electricity was generated from existing nuclear power reactors in the second quarter of 2009, but all except one of them is due to shut by 2025.

Previous attempts to build new nuclear plants have been delayed by the exhaustive planning process. It took six years and cost 30 millions pounds ($50.33 million) to secure planning consent to build the Sizewell B reactor in southern England.

Under the new proposals, decisions on plants bigger than 50 megawatts, or 100 megawatts for offshore wind, will be cut to one year.

“The current planning system is a barrier to this shift (to low carbon),” Miliband said.

“It serves neither the interests of energy security, the interests of the low carbon transition, nor the interests of people living in areas where infrastructure may be built, for the planning process to take years to come to a decision.”

The list of possible new nuclear power stations includes Kirksanton, a site in Cumbria, northern England, proposed by German utility RWE which is not close to any existing nuclear facilities and overlaps a small wind farm.

The government rejected EDF Energy’s Dungeness power station on the south coast of England as a possible site for new reactors because of environmental and flooding concerns.

But it approved EDF sites at Hinkley Point in Somerset and Sizewell in Suffolk where the French energy giant plans to build four reactors.

“It means we can prepare to take the next steps in our plan for a multi-billion pound investment in the UK,” EDF Energy Chief Executive Vincent de Rivaz said in a statement.

“It is in the public interest for the UK to build at least 15 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity which would be sufficient to meet at least 30 percent of our electricity demand by 2030.

Merkel wants climate action from US, China, India

German Chancellor Angela Merkel called Tuesday for the U.S., China and India to make substantive pledges of action against global warming in order to prevent the failure of next month’s climate summit in Copenhagen.

“A failure of the world climate conference in Copenhagen would set back international climate policy by years,” Merkel said in a speech to parliament outlining her new government’s agenda. “We cannot afford that.”

Merkel said the European Union has put forward a clear position on fighting climate change, and “we now expect contributions from the USA and countries such as China and India.”

“A substantial political agreement is essential and the condition for an internationally binding … protocol for the time after 2013,” she said.