RSS Feed MenuWith a blizzard of numbers, Vice President Joe Biden and his boss put out a report Tuesday arguing that thanks to the stimulus bill, a clean energy revolution is at hand.
Put away the party hats and champagne. Behind the self-congratulatory hosannas about solar power loan guarantees, wind power tax credits, battery factories, and high-speed rail lines, there is a very large elephant lounging in the living room upstairs from the Oval Office.
The Obama administration failed to convince a Congress run by large majorities of the president’s own party to put a price on carbon dioxide emissions, the pollution thumb on the scale that reinforces the oil and coal incumbency in America’s energy economy.
A price on carbon would provide investment certainty and a price signal that would goose the market for low-carbon energy technologies that could give oil and coal a run for their money.
Right now, however, America’s energy policy is uncertainty. Uncertainty about a carbon price. Uncertainty about EPA carbon regulations. Uncertainty that the federal government is capable of adopting any coherent policy that can tame the wasp’s nest of security risks, economic vulnerabilities, and environmental hazards tied to energy.
President Obama has excelled at inspiring rhetoric about the promise of cleaner energy, but when it came to the grimy work of drafting legislative proposals, building a bipartisan coalition around a carbon price mechanism, and, when necessary, knocking recalcitrant Capitol Hill heads together, Obama didn’t do much of anything.
Can anyone picture the professorial Obama giving Harry Reid a dose of Lyndon Johnson’s famous “treatment?” No, neither can we.
The president should understand that no matter how much of our hard-earned tax dollars that he and Congress throw at clean energy, the investment will be largely wasted unless there is a price on carbon to level the playing field with fossil fuels and help cleaner energy sources and efficiency technologies advance in the marketplace.
Utilities and other energy-related companies are sitting on billions of private investment dollars waiting for a clear signal that dumping carbon pollution into our atmosphere will no longer be free. They are understandably reluctant to stick their necks out on clean energy as long as the guillotine of low-cost fossil fuels remains in place.
Obama and Biden can crow all they like, but until a price is imputed to CO2 emissions, either through a statutory cap or a carbon tax, the ways that Americans produce and use energy today will carry forward, largely unchanged except at the margins.
That is…until oil price shocks and/or a more volatile climate shake us from our torpor. Then, we will find ourselves sending more dollars overseas to buy cleaner energy technologies from China, which by then will have taken full advantage of our lack of political will and foresight.
forgetn // Aug 26, 2010 at 5:20 pm
Well said, the U.S. has no energy policy — the “free market” gets in the way. Since 90% of the republicans believe that global warming is a bunch of baloney that’s not about to start. Afterall, Americans have a right to cheap gas!
However, Europe has an energy policy, and frankly we’re not seeing that many bright ideas coming from Europe either. That’s the scary part, what if we cannot, in a reasonable amount of time, find a replacement for gas?
balconesfault // Aug 26, 2010 at 5:38 pm
The Obama administration failed to convince a Congress run by large majorities of the president’s own party to put a price on carbon dioxide emissions, the pollution thumb on the scale that reinforces the oil and coal incumbency in America’s energy economy.
Make it clear – the Obama administration failed to convince any Republican Senators, and a small handful of Democratic Senators, to put a price on CO2 emissions.
The Democratic led House of Representatives passed a Cap and Trade bill back in June 2009. The Senate has been unable to get past the fact that a unanimous Republican opposition to any serious climate change legislation, combined with a couple blue dogs, can block legislation that would probably have passed with a 55 or 56 vote majority had it been able to make the Senate floor.
President Obama has excelled at inspiring rhetoric about the promise of cleaner energy, but when it came to the grimy work of drafting legislative proposals, building a bipartisan coalition around a carbon price mechanism, and, when necessary, knocking recalcitrant Capitol Hill heads together, Obama didn’t do much of anything.
There is no room for a bipartisan coalition here. The Republicans do not want any form of carbon tax, period. The Republicans in Congress will be using gondolas to travel from Arlington to the Capitol and voting on new oil leases on the OCS off of Northern Alaska and they still will deny any need for climate change legislation. Bipartisanship is possible only if the other party has an interest in dealmaking, and there’s simply no interest.
Knocking heads together? Obama is wise enough to realize that if he plays any form of hardball politics GOPers will run whining to Fox News about the Chicago Thug faster than Harry Reid can cave on a filibuster. The man knows his ability to get re-elected in 2012 hinges wholly on staying above the fray – if he gets too much into the middle of it he becomes the scary n***** overnight.
sinz54 // Aug 26, 2010 at 8:27 pm
Dipeso: The president should understand that no matter how much of our hard-earned tax dollars that he and Congress throw at clean energy, the investment will be largely wasted unless there is a price on carbon
Obama definitely understands that.
But he also has reluctantly come to understand that a carbon tax has zero chance of getting through Congress in the face of staunch opposition from both Republicans and those Democrats from coal- and oil- producing states, such as Jay Rockefeller.
I used to be in favor of a carbon tax myself. But I now see that there is just too much uncertainty in the scalability of alternative fuels (except nuclear) to make forcing a transaction either politically feasible or economically practical.
So instead, I suggest that the governors of the 50 states should be invited to volunteer to make their state the first one to adopt large-scale alternative energy. Let’s see if alternative energy can be made to work on a state-wide scale in at least one state as an experiment, before we start trying to mandate its use nationwide.
If Vermont, the most liberal state in the nation, refuses to step up to the plate and convert to alternative energy, then the Federal government shouldn’t force it down the rest of our throats either.
sdspringy // Aug 26, 2010 at 9:15 pm
“The president should understand that no matter how much of our hard-earned tax dollars that he and Congress throw at clean energy, the investment will be largely wasted unless there is a price on carbon to level the playing field with fossil fuels and help cleaner energy sources and efficiency technologies advance in the marketplace.”
The MYTH, that tax dollars will create a alternative energy. We have subsidized Wind Energy for 20 years, now they won’t allow additional permits in CA. Why, wind turbines KILL massive amounts of birds, great clean bloody green energy.
The LIE, that taxing carbon emission will lower carbon emissions. Europe ws a signer of Kyoto Accord, did they reduce emissions, NO. Did they tax carbon YES, did it reduce carbon emissions, NO.
The ECONOMIC FACT, tax payer subsidized anything FAILS in the market place. Ethonal cannot compete and will always rely on tax subsidies, factor that into the price per gallon, you would be better off burning regular unleaded. The Chevy Volt, a $40,000.00 car, with tax payer bailout of GM, and taxpayer subsidies to the battery manufacture the actual price to the American citizen is closer to $55,000.00. Really a great deal.
Global warming is a joke, poor science, questionable data, and the worst part of the whole process, its now political, can and should you trust that.
JeninCT // Aug 26, 2010 at 11:21 pm
Sinz wrote:
“So instead, I suggest that the governors of the 50 states should be invited to volunteer to make their state the first one to adopt large-scale alternative energy. Let’s see if alternative energy can be made to work on a state-wide scale in at least one state as an experiment, before we start trying to mandate its use nationwide.”
Substitute ‘healthcare reform’ for ‘alternative energy’ and it’s a brilliant idea both ways.
sdspringy wrote:
“The Chevy Volt, a $40,000.00 car, with tax payer bailout of GM, and taxpayer subsidies to the battery manufacture the actual price to the American citizen is closer to $55,000.00. Really a great deal.”
I read somewhere (can’t remember) that the actual production cost is $81,000, so a $40,000 car that will be sold for $32,000 is going to lose $49,000 per vehicle. Such a bargain.
ktward // Aug 27, 2010 at 1:07 am
Mr. Dipeso.
You’re the go-to enviro org with the GOP brand, right?
Why didn’t you get a handful of your Senators on board? I mean, it’s not like you had to lobby any Dems, right? Just ‘Pubs. Easy peasy.
You’re all talk and no walk.
Without the walk, your partisan rhetoric and cherry-picked facts simply discredit your organization.
Rabiner // Aug 27, 2010 at 2:31 am
sdspringy:
“The MYTH, that tax dollars will create a alternative energy. We have subsidized Wind Energy for 20 years, now they won’t allow additional permits in CA. Why, wind turbines KILL massive amounts of birds, great clean bloody green energy.”
Wind power has come a long way over the last 20 years and is pretty competitive on price with other sources of energy. The issue is as Sinz54 stated, scaling it to the point it can produce a large quantity of power instead of the 3-5% it seems to produce currently.
“The LIE, that taxing carbon emission will lower carbon emissions. Europe ws a signer of Kyoto Accord, did they reduce emissions, NO. Did they tax carbon YES, did it reduce carbon emissions, NO.”
Not all European Countries have enacted carbon taxes, but care to provide documentation of current carbon emissions versus before the tax was implemented?
“The ECONOMIC FACT, tax payer subsidized anything FAILS in the market place. Ethonal cannot compete and will always rely on tax subsidies, factor that into the price per gallon, you would be better off burning regular unleaded. The Chevy Volt, a $40,000.00 car, with tax payer bailout of GM, and taxpayer subsidies to the battery manufacture the actual price to the American citizen is closer to $55,000.00. Really a great deal.”
First off, this isn’t even true. Subsidies are used commonly for industries to induce investment in new technologies and R&D. The Chevy Volt may cost $55,000 to produce today but the next version will probably cost less as technology improves and they learn better methods of constructing the vehicle. Yes, ethanol is not the best fuel to use in cars and is only viable due to government subsidies. But pointing to a few cases where subsidies don’t help the private sector develop new technologies there are a range of other subsidies that have.
JeninCT:
”
I read somewhere (can’t remember) that the actual production cost is $81,000, so a $40,000 car that will be sold for $32,000 is going to lose $49,000 per vehicle. Such a bargain.”
Until you can provide your source I’m gonna go with the lower cost to the car. Perhaps the prototype cost that much but when it went to mass production the per unit costs probably decreased significantly. Also I find it humorous that you two scoff at the new technologies in the Volt which increases fuel efficiency significantly.
pnwguy // Aug 27, 2010 at 4:19 am
I’ve spent most of my professional life in the computer industry, and I’ve learned to fearfully respect Bill Gates as a shrewd and often ruthless businessman. But I’ve certainly been impressed by both his largess and vision when it comes to philanthropy. I also respect his intellectual brilliance and the community of world class scientists and managers he’s been able to attract to Microsoft.
One of the great changes in how he and other “new wave” philanthropists have approached things in the 21st century is using the venture capital/entrepreneurial approach to working in charity. He and others seed a wide variety of approaches to working on a social problem, knowing that perhaps 9 out of 10 will fail, but the one that succeeds will be a home run, that more than compensates for the other failures.
Anyway, he seems thoroughly convinced of the science issues of AGW, and he’s taking a similar approach with his personal wealth there, as well as involving his foundation. A lengthy interview is here, from the publication Technology Review.
http://www.technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_article.aspx?id=26112&channel=energy§ion=
sdspringy // Aug 27, 2010 at 6:46 am
I do not have access to WSJ but there was a oped piece concerning wind power by Robert Bryce.
Here is a piece on that oped;
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/wind-263900-power-energy.html
“Windmills’ soaring heights obscure views and shred birds on massive scales, which can attract hordes of vermin feasting on the sliced and diced fowl. Wind turbines are so noisy that an Oregon wind-generation company offered residents $5,000 each to sign a waiver promising not to complain.”
“A slew of recent studies show that wind-generated energy likely won’t result in any reduction in carbon emissions – or that they’ll be so small as to be almost meaningless”
“Nevertheless, wind power costs a lot. The U.S. Energy Industry Administration says tax subsidies for wind power are 200 times greater than for oil and gas, based on per-unit-of-energy produced.”
Wind power actually sucks, hard to believe there is more spin in the hype than in electrical production
sinz54 // Aug 27, 2010 at 9:03 am
JeninCT: Substitute ‘healthcare reform’ for ‘alternative energy’ and it’s a brilliant idea both ways.
We already did a state-wide experiment with healthcare reform: My own state of MA.
In principle, ObamaCare resembles RomneyCare: Universal coverage plus a mandate. The major difference is that RomneyCare has a public option, which all the liberals said was the way to restrain skyrocketing health care costs.
It hasn’t worked.
RomneyCare, with its public option and universal coverage, has failed to restrain costs. As I’ve posted before, I’ve gotten incredible increases in my premiums–Blue Cross raised my own premium by 44% this year alone.
That should have been a cautionary note to go slow on ObamaCare. Instead, the liberals pushed full speed ahead on it? Why?
Because they were lying about cost containment. The fact that RomneyCare’s public option failed to restrain costs didn’t matter to them. All they EVER cared about was achieving universal coverage, which they saw as a moral imperative. The cost containment propaganda was just to bamboozle moderate voters and moderate Congressmen into voting for it.
Other states have done state-wide experiments with health care reform, such as Tennessee with its TennCare program. Not a single one of these state-wide experiments has had a significant effect on restraining skyrocketing costs.
And neither will ObamaCare, with or without a public option.
sinz54 // Aug 27, 2010 at 9:11 am
Rabiner: First off, this isn’t even true. Subsidies are used commonly for industries to induce investment in new technologies and R&D.
The history of public-private partnerships in America is largely unknown to most Americans, regardless of their political persuasion. (What the heck ARE they teaching in history class in school these days???)
Some examples I’m familiar with from my own field of engineering:
Interchangeable parts wasn’t invented by Henry Ford. It was invented by the United States Army to maximize production of rifles from multiple sources.
When Marconi invented the radio, he started his own company to manufacture them. But the U.S. Navy balked about depending on a foreign (Italian) supplier for this new technology. Instead, they worked with General Electric to spin off a brand-new American company to sell radios to the Navy–the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). And RCA went on to become an American electronics giant.
For years after the invention of the airplane, fledgling airlines depended on one customer–the U.S. Post Office–to carry airmail. Without this guaranteed market, they would have gone bankrupt. This continued until the technology matured to the point that domestic passenger airline service became profitable.
The first stored program computers were built by the Government to compute solutions to problems in the Manhattan Project in World War II, and (I believe) to calculate the mathematics of operations research to maximize the effectiveness of bombing campaigns.
The basic protocols for the Internet were first developed by the Pentagon’s Advanced Research Projects Agency as research into survivable networks. Then the technology became commercialized into the Internet.
Object-oriented programming, the software technology that’s the heart of the modern Graphical User Interface and the Java programming language, was originally funded by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as a project to give CIA analysts the most modern tools for integrating and analyzing intelligence data. The Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) was really a CIA front for years–Xerox’s management didn’t see the use of such technology for a company that made copiers, and would have cancelled it without a guarantee of CIA funding. Once the technology had matured, along came a fellow named Steve Jobs who visited Xerox PARC, and put that technology into his new Macintosh computer.
sweatyb // Aug 27, 2010 at 9:43 am
Sdspringy:
“Windmills’ soaring heights obscure views and shred birds on massive scales, which can attract hordes of vermin feasting on the sliced and diced fowl.”
Massive scales?
http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/wind-turbine-kill-birds.htm
“The vast majority of research shows that wind turbines kill relatively few birds, at least compared with other man-made structures.”
While I am confident that facts wont change your perception of wind turbines as terribly dangerous bird killers, hopefully other, reasonable people will understand that you’re just spreading FUD.
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abj // Aug 27, 2010 at 10:13 am
The Senate has been unable to get past the fact that a unanimous Republican opposition to any serious climate change legislation, combined with a couple blue dogs, can block legislation that would probably have passed with a 55 or 56 vote majority had it been able to make the Senate floor.
It’s not just a “couple” blue dogs – it’s about 6-10 Democratic senators. I’m not convinced cap and trade even has 51 votes in the Senate, much less 60.
The Murkowski resolution that would have stripped the EPA of authority to regulate greenhouse gases got 47 votes. Six Dems voted in favor of it: Mark Pryor, Evan Bayh, Ben Nelson, Jay Rockefeller, Blanche Lincoln and Mary Landrieu. We can safely assume those six are hard “no’s.”
Other Democrats who would likely oppose a cap and trade regime would also include Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan of ND and Tim Johnson of SD (coal far and away produces the majority of electricity in both Dakotas), and WV’s appointed Senator, Carte Goodwin (who has expressed opposition to carbon caps). I suspect that Johnson, Dorgan and Conrad voted against Murkowski because they didn’t want to poke the administration in the eye, and they knew the resolution would never become law because the president would veto it. Webb and Warner of VA also may balk if it appears cap and trade legislation is close to becoming a legislative reality, rather than a hypothetical.
So opposition is bipartisan.
balconesfault // Aug 27, 2010 at 11:14 am
While I am confident that facts wont change your perception of wind turbines as terribly dangerous bird killers, hopefully other, reasonable people will understand that you’re just spreading FUD.
The problem is that one of the first major wind turbine farms, set up at Altamont Pass in California, used far different technology than today.
First, siting took place with no attention to raptor movements and nesting. Second, the older designs of turbines were shorter, had lesser power output (which meant you had about 4-5 turbines in place for every one you’d have in a current wind farm), and used lattace structures for supports which gave raptors a lot of places to perch.
Third, they built the windfarm over an prairie dog colony, and did nothing to discourage the prairie dogs from burrowing there.
Thus, you had raptors perching on the shorter lattace structures looking down at the ground waiting for food to come out. Every once in awhile a bird would swoop at an inopportune time and “splat”. Since there were so many turbines out there, and so many birds, and so much prey, there were a lot of splats.
Nobody in the industry would consider designing another windfarm like Altamont. And while turbines will always end up killing some number of birds and bats (just like tall buildings kill birds and bats, and cars and trucks on the highway kill birds and bats, etc …) the numbers have plummeted. Now the focus is on making sure the industry minimizes the impacts to threatened and endangered avian and bat species.
Which does limit a lot of the land availability – but is certainly not stopping development.
balconesfault // Aug 27, 2010 at 11:39 am
abj – you’re missing the point on cap and trade (versus straight carbon taxing schemes, or EPA regulating CO2 as a pollutant).
For existing sources, cap and trade considers existing technologies and infrastructure and what levels of CO2 reduction are achievable, and grants allocations based on that. The idea is to give existing facilities an economic incentive to improve (eg, for a coal plant by incorporating carbon sequestration, and coal syngas technologies) while not immediately pricing inherently high CO2 production technologies (like coal burning) out of the market.
This was a complaint that more green activists have about cap and trade – that it didn’t penalize big coal enough. Under cap and trade I’d imagine we’d see a long term gradual phase out of straight coal burning power plants, and via the marketplace coal would become a more consistent feedstock source for our petrochemical complexes.
Every congressman from a coal dominated state does have some reason to oppose EPA’s CO2 emission regs, or especially a straight carbon tax. There would be horse trading in coming up with the cap and trade levels, but it could be designed so that coal states didn’t suffer an immediate economic shock that makes it a political non-starter.
From an environmental standpoint, is that ideal? Hell no. The most rapid phase out of coal burning power plants would be. But given the range of possibilities, from status quo … to gradual phase out of our reliance on coal (partnered with financial incentive for a wealth of other efficiency, conservation, and non-CO2 emitting power generation technologies) … to rapid elimination of coal from our power combustion mix … gradual phase out is a helluva lot better than status quo.
So yeah, I think without the new reality that any legislation needs 60 senate votes to pass and not 51 (or 50 for the party with the VP) we’d already have a cap and trade bill signed by Obama. And industry would be ramping up a lot of new projects in response to the new legislation. Right now they’re sitting on their hands because nobody wants to invest in a project and then realize it needs to be redesigned to take best advantage of whatever regulatory system finally is passed.
abj // Aug 27, 2010 at 2:57 pm
balconesfault –
My comment was directed more toward the legislative process than the merits (or lack thereof) of a cap and trade regime. I understand how it (theoretically) would work, but political realities are a separate consideration. You can blame Republicans, but the consensus doesn’t exist to implement a carbon pricing regime right now.
It’s true that, as you say, it isn’t a direct carbon tax. If the Senate passed a bill similar to Waxman-Markey, the emissions caps would slowly decrease over a 50-year period. But, let’s be realistic here – look at how Waxman-Markey was demonized – “cap and tax.” In the teeth of a severe recession, in a brutal midterm election cycle, and after a bruising legislative battle vis-a-vis healthcare, there’s no way the political will would’ve existed to pass cap and trade, filibuster or no.
Granted, it’s impossible to prove a counterfactual. However, we can reasonably assume there are at least 48 hard “no” votes against any sort of cap and trade system. (47 Senators voted in favor of the Murkowski resolution, and Byrd’s replacement opposes carbon caps). In this toxic political environment, it really wouldn’t take much impetus to push any combination of Dorgan, Johnson, Webb, Warner, and possibly Bill Nelson into the “no” column.
I’m not convinced the political will is there.
Rabiner // Aug 27, 2010 at 4:13 pm
sinz54:
“The history of public-private partnerships in America is largely unknown to most Americans, regardless of their political persuasion. (What the heck ARE they teaching in history class in school these days???)”
And this is why I like you Sinz54. I may disagree with you most of the time but at least you’re using reality to back up your statements. Yea I knew about a few of your examples but I wanted to be more broad about what government does today which tends to be more indirect support of business innovation. Also another common public-private relationship has been where the government invents or develops new technology and coddles it until private industry can take over. The Internet and Computers fall into that category.
CTF // Aug 27, 2010 at 7:07 pm
“The president should understand that no matter how much of our hard-earned tax dollars that he and Congress throw at clean energy, the investment will be largely wasted unless there is a price on carbon…” Absolutely right.
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