Featured * :: new energy

Big Oil Claims Climate Bill Would Shift Jobs Offshore, But Completely Ignores Border Tariff

Bill Scher — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:53:22 -0700

At today's Senate hearing on the Kerry-Boxer clean energy jobs and climate protection bill, the oil refinery lobby claimed, "this legislation will export carbon dioxide emissions to other countries and take with it American jobs," proceeding to cite a discredited right-wing study projecting job losses of up to 11 million.

But sometimes one wonders if the special interest lobbyist are even trying.

The National Petrochemical and Refiners Association in their Senate testimony didn't even bother to mention, let alone critique, the Senate committee's intention to include a carbon tariff specifically to prevent industries from simply moving overseas, and exporting carbon-intensive goods back to us without penalty.

As my colleague Natasha Chart reported earlier: "Section 765 of the draft version I've been looking at says, 'It is the sense of the Senate that this Act will contain a trade title that will include a border measure that is consistent with our international obligations and designed to work in conjunction with provisions that allocate allowances to energy-intensive and trade-exposed industries.'"

The devil is always in the details. Until Senate negotiators come up with specific language we can't assess how well it might work.

But if Big OIl actually cared about resolving the issue, industry executives would get behind a carbon tariff version they believed would work.

Completely ignoring the fact that Senators are actively trying to come up with such language only shows that oil execs don't really care about creating jobs as we cap carbon. They have no interest in creating millions of green jobs and dramatically expanding our manufacturing base. They just want to kill the bill.

I know. Shocking.

There plenty of challenges in crafting an effective carbon cap bill. Senate leaders are working on them. Special interests are ignoring them.

Building a Smart Grid, Smartly

Eric Lotke — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:04:42 -0700

President Barack Obama announced today $3.4 billion in government grants to help build a "smart" electric grid. Like many Obama initiatives, it’s a smart first step. But much more is needed and one piece is rarely mentioned at all.

Start with the problem. America’s electric grid is aging and not keeping up with demand. Electricity demand has increased by 25% since 1990 while construction of transmission facilities decreased by about 30 percent. The results are higher costs and more blackouts. Carol Browner, the president's top adviser on energy and climate change, called the grid “outdated” and “dilapidated."

Our discussion of energy is dominated by wind farms and solar panels. They’re important, of course. But they leave open the question of moving the energy from the where it’s made (offshore wind farms or sunny deserts) to where it’s used (cities and factories). That’s the grid. It’s called smart because it can re-route electricity in accordance with demand or around trouble spots.

In the end, we want it all. Wind farms, solar panels and a smart grid to bring the energy from point A to point B. That’s our clean energy future.

But we want something else with consequences we don’t always recognize. We want to be self-sufficient. We don’t want to replace our dependence on foreign oil with a dependence on foreign manufacturing. And we want those clean energy jobs to be located at home. Especially if we’re funding them with our own tax dollars. As Campaign for America's Future co-director Robert Borosage puts it:

“Not simply a timid buy America policy satisfied with the final assembly of parts and technologies made elsewhere, but moving entire supply chains so that our workers and engineers and entrepreneurs are familiar with cutting edge technologies that our inventors can soon surpass.”

Right now, half of our wind turbines are imported from overseas. Ninety percent of our solar cells are manufactured in China — which requires that its own solar installations use domestic (Chinese) content.

This isn’t about protectionism or neanderthal rejection of global trade. It’s about thriving in a competitive global economy. America needs to think strategically. Move away from asset bubbles and debt-driven consumer spending. Rebuild our real economy of production and manufacture.

Public investment in infrastructure is a crucial step in that direction. It creates jobs now and increases our competitiveness in the future. A new smart grid is part of it — and it’s even smarter if the transformers aren’t imported from China.

If you’re near DC, please come to our conference Thursday October 29, building the new economy. It’s free, and Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) will share his ideas over lunch. It’s time to pop the bubble economy.

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UPDATE: After this post was published, the White House released additional detail. Most important: The smart grid program includes $25 million to expand the necessary manufacturing base. It's a small amount and nowhere near the top of the release -- but the White House calls it "a significant and growing export opportunity for our country and new jobs for American workers." It's nice to see details trending in that direction.

Senate Climate Bill To Protect Trade-Exposed Industries

Natasha Chart — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 09:18:05 -0700

This past Saturday, 350.org kicked off the largest, most diverse, international day of action in the history of the environmental movement. They were drawing attention to the 350 parts per million concentration of CO2 many scientists are coming to believe is the safe maximum limit. In spite of the fact that official US government economic modeling underestimates the costs of doing nothing and underestimate the benefits of acting, the U.S. Senate is at least trying to keep up with the times.

The Chair's mark of the Senate global warming bill was released Friday, S. 1733, or the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, a k a the Kerry-Boxer bill. A preliminary Environmental Protection Agency economic analysis has also been released alongside it. Its impact is expected to be similar to the House version, H.R. 2454, or the American Clean Energy and Security Act, a k a the Waxman-Markey bill.

Of particular interest, the Senate version will provide emissions allowances to promote investment in the following sectors:

o Energy Intensive and Trade Exposed industries
o Small local distribution companies (including rural electric co-operatives)
o Transportation grants
o Agriculture and forestry
o Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
o Advanced energy research
o Credits for early action
o Energy efficiency and renewable energy worker training
o Nuclear worker training

It also includes money for states to boost all recycling-related programs, including manufacturing industries that use recycled inputs, and you can read a longer overview of the job protection provisions here.

On top of the research and development money in the stimulus package, whose effects President Obama highlighted last Friday in an address at MIT, this bill can add to the preservation of our "industrial commons: the valuable infrastructure of suppliers and skills that underpins them."

Considering the no-holds-barred regional competition to attract new businesses, states like Michigan could use a little federal help to back up their efforts.

As such, the bill will hopefully meet with Sen. Sherrod Brown's approval. The Ohio senator will be working with Senators Kerry and Boxer to make the final version that goes to the floor more friendly to manufacturing and to include a border-tariff accounting for the carbon intensity of imported goods.

On that last, Brown seems likely to get his wish. Section 765 of the draft version I've been looking at says, ‘‘It is the sense of the Senate that this Act will contain a trade title that will include a border measure that is consistent with our international obligations and designed to work in conjunction with provisions that allocate allowances to energy-intensive and trade-exposed industries.’’

Sen. Lindsey Graham Crosses The Climate Rubicon

Bill Scher — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 14:32:39 -0700

Last week, I struck a hopeful note after GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham expressed interest in a climate bill compromise that included a carbon cap in exchange for support for some nuclear power and coastal drilling. But my expectations it would really happen remained low.

Today, Graham made a deal all but inevitable.

Final compromise language is far from complete. But for the conservative South Carolinian to explicitly back "aggressive reductions in our emissions of the carbon gases that cause climate change" (!) in a joint op-ed with Massachusetts liberal Sen. John Kerry (!!) published in pages of New York Times (!!!), Graham has already done all he could to infuriate the conservative movement and many voters in his conservative state.

In other words, Graham has already assumed the political risks for doing a deal. And there's no point in taking those risks unless you actually do the deal. He has crossed the climate Rubicon.

(Though perhaps he can get away without anyone finding out. Amazingly, Sen. Graham appeared on NBC's Meet The Press today and failed to get a single question on the landmark op-ed. The long-standing Sunday show aversion to environmental issues remains stupefying.)

Climate Progress' Joe Romm predicts that Sen. Graham's support would bring along as many as six other Republican senators. While the Democratic caucus remain split along geographical lines, that level of Republican support would make it extremely likely 60 senators would at least vote to cut off any filibuster attempts.

(Note that the Senate earlier rejected any possibility of passing climate legislation through Senate budget rules that preclude filibusters. It is truly Sixty or Bust.)

Also striking, Sens. Graham and Kerry promote deal a "border tax" to pressure other exporting nations "that do not accept environmental standards" because "we cannot sacrifice another job to competitors overseas."

The House climate bill has that provision, but President Obama spoke out against the carbon tariff upon passage, I believe under the presumption the "free"-trade loving Senate would never go for it. Sen. Sherrod Brown earlier stated the opposite was true: a carbon tariff is politically necessary: "I don't think there's any way we get to even 50 votes if we don't deal with manufacturing in the climate change bill ... We need some sort of border equalization: temporary, not permanent...."

The Massachusetts and South Carolina senators have clearly reached the same conclusion.

Get Energy Smart Now understandably expresses caution that the devil is always in the details. But Romm enthuses: "I expect the final bill will have no deal-breakers for progressives." I would expect the latter to be true, as I said last week, as unpleasant as compromises on nuclear power and coastal drilling may be, they are unlikely to trump the power of a carbon cap.

Romm observes if Senate deal is forged before December's UN climate meeting in Copenhagen, even if the Senate can't quickly move to a formal vote, the US will have much stronger bargaining leverage to seal an international agreement. With Kerry and Graham in agreement on the basic outlines, reaching such a deal by mid-December looks very plausible.

What was that again, oh wise Washington Establishment purveyors of conventional wisdom, about being unable to handle health care and global warming at the same time?

Betraying the Planet

OurFuture.org Staff — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 08:21:27 -0700