Obama would classify carbon dioxide as a pollutant
October 16, 2008
Ganked from Climateer, this Bloomberg article (reprinted pretty much in full):
Oct. 16 (Bloomberg) — Barack Obama will classify carbon dioxide as a dangerous pollutant that can be regulated should he win the presidential election on Nov. 4, opening the way for new rules on greenhouse gas emissions.
The Democratic senator from Illinois will tell the Environmental Protection Agency that it may use the 1990 Clean Air Act to set emissions limits on power plants and manufacturers, his energy adviser, Jason Grumet, said in an interview. President George W. Bush declined to curb CO2 emissions under the law even after the Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that the government may do so.
If elected, Obama would be the first president to group emissions blamed for global warming into a category of pollutants that includes lead and carbon monoxide. Obama’s rival in the presidential race, Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, has not said how he would treat CO2 under the act.
Obama “would initiate those rulemakings,” Grumet said in an Oct. 6 interview in Boston. “He’s not going to insert political judgments to interrupt the recommendations of the scientific efforts.”
Placing heat-trapping pollutants in the same category as ozone may lead to caps on power-plant emissions and force utilities to use the most expensive systems to curb pollution. The move may halt construction plans on as many as half of the 130 proposed new U.S. coal plants.
The president may take action on new rules immediately upon taking office, said David Bookbinder, chief climate counsel for the Sierra Club. Environment groups including the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council will issue a regulatory agenda for the next president that calls for limits on CO2 from industry.
`Hit Ground Running’
“This is what they should do to hit the ground running,” Bookbinder said in an Oct. 10 telephone interview.
Separately, Congress is debating legislation to create an emissions market to address global warming, a solution endorsed by both candidates and utilities such as American Electric Power Co., the biggest U.S. producer of electricity from coal. Congress failed to pass a global-warming bill in June and how long it may take lawmakers to agree on a plan isn’t known.
“We need federal legislation to deal with greenhouse-gas emissions,” said Vicki Arroyo, general counsel for the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in Arlington, Virginia. “In the meantime, there is this vacuum. People are eager to get started on this.”
An Obama victory would help clear the deadlock in talks on an international agreement to slow global warming, Rajendra Pachauri, head of a United Nation panel of climate-change scientists, said today in Berlin. Negotiators from almost 200 countries will meet in December in Poznan, Poland, to discuss ways to limit CO2.
`Back in the Game’
“The U.S. has to move quickly domestically so we can get back in the game internationally,” Grumet said. “We cannot have a meaningful impact in the international discussion until we develop a meaningful domestic consensus. So he’ll move quickly.”
Burning coal to generate electricity produces more than a third of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions and half the U.S. power supply, according to the Energy Department. Every hour, fossil-fuel combustion generates 3.5 million tons of emissions worldwide, helping create a warming effect that “already threatens our climate,” the Paris-based International Energy Agency said.
The EPA under Bush fought the notion that the Clean Air Act applies to CO2 all the way to the Supreme Court. The law has been used successfully to regulate six pollutants, including sulfur dioxide and ozone. Regulation under the act “could result in an unprecedented expansion of EPA authority,” EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson said in July. The law “is the wrong tool for the job.”
Proponents of regulation are hoping for better results under a new president. Obama adviser Grumet, executive director of the National Commission on Energy Policy, said if Congress hasn’t acted in 18 months, about the time it would take to draft rules, the president should.
EPA Authority
“The EPA is obligated to move forward in the absence of Congressional action,” Grumet said. “If there’s no action by Congress in those 18 months, I think any responsible president would want to have the regulatory approach.”
States where coal-fired plants may be affected include Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Texas, Montana, Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Georgia and Florida.
The alternative, a national cap-and-trade program created by Congress, offers industry more options, said Bruce Braine, a vice president at Columbus, Ohio-based American Electric. The world’s largest cap-and-trade plan for greenhouse gases opened in Europe in 2005.
Under a cap-and-trade program, polluters may keep less- efficient plants running if they offset those emissions with investments in projects that lower pollution, such as wind-energy turbines or systems that destroy methane gas from landfills.
McCain `Not a Fan’
“Those options may still allow me to build new efficient power plants that might not meet a higher standard,” Braine said in an Oct. 9 interview. “That might be a more cost-effective way to approach it.”
McCain hasn’t said how he would approach CO2 regulation under the Clean Air Act. McCain adviser and former Central Intelligence Agency director James Woolsey said Oct. 6 that new rules may conflict with Congressional efforts. Policy adviser Rebecca Jensen Tallent said in August that McCain prefers a bill debated by Congress rather than regulations “established through one agency where one secretary is getting to make a lot of decisions.”
“He is not as big of a fan of standards-based approaches,” Arroyo said. “The Supreme Court thinks it’s clear that there is greenhouse-gas authority under the Clean Air Act. To take that off the table probably wouldn’t be very wise.”
More Efficient Technologies
How new regulations would affect the proposed U.S. coal plants depends on how they are written, said Bill Fang, climate issue director for the Edison Electric Institute, a Washington-based lobbying group for utilities. About half of the proposed plants plan to use technologies that are 20 percent more efficient than conventional coal burners.
“Several states have denied the applicability of the Clean Air Act to coal permits,” Fang said in an Oct. 10 interview.
In June, a court in Georgia stopped construction of the 1,200- megawatt Longleaf power plant, a $2 billion project, because developer Dynegy Inc. failed to consider cleaner technology.
An appeals board within the EPA is considering a challenge from the Sierra Club to Deseret Power Electric Cooperative’s air permit for its 110-megawatt Bonanza coal plant in Utah on grounds that it failed to require controls on CO2. One megawatt is enough to power about 800 typical U.S. homes.
“Industry has woken up to the fact that a new progressive administration could move quickly to make the United States a leader rather than a laggard,” said Bruce Nilles, director of the group’s national coal campaign.
Energy council formed; initial focus on research, industry, biofuels
October 16, 2008
NOTE from the conference operators: If you have already registered thank you. Unfortunately due to recent technical difficulties we are double checking our RSVP list. If you have already registered, please take a moment and re-register to ensure your spot at the event.
(Reprinted in full from press release)
The KU Energy Council, a recently formed collaboration of energy-related research units on the Lawrence campus, will make its official launch with a conference from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Nov. 5 at the Adams Alumni Center. The theme of the conference is “Energy, Innovation and the Kansas Economy.”
The primary focus of the conference – biofuels – will be addressed from four angles: research, development, trends in innovation and the future growth of the industry. Presenters will include state and federal officials, as well as KU leaders in all areas of energy-related research.
The event is free and open to the public.
The federal vision of the future of energy research and how it will affect industry will be presented by Valri Lightner of the Department of Energy Biomass Program; William Hagy, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s deputy administrator for rural development; and Bob Noun of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
State perspectives on how energy research will affect Kansas will be offered by Adrian Polansky, secretary of agriculture; Bret Healy, director of bioenergy for the Kansas Bioscience Authority; and Doug Rivers, vice president of research development for ICM, a bioenergy company headquartered in Colwich.
Laurence Weatherley, chair of the KU Energy Council, will be joined on a discussion panel by Bob Honea, director of the KU Transportation Research Institute, and Bala Subramaniam, director of the Center for Environmentally Beneficial Catalysis. The panel will present the KU perspective on energy research, specifics about biofuels research efforts at KU and collaboration with industry.
“This first conference is designed specifically for Kansas companies, university researchers, government agencies and elected officials,” Weatherly said. “All of us have a common interest: advancing the energy industry via research and development and innovation.”
The conference is unique, he added, in that the topics provide an opportunity to better understand national research and development initiatives and how they can translate into innovation in the energy industry and growth in the Kansas economy.
For more information about the conference and the council, or to RSVP, visit www.kuenergycouncil.ku.edu.
From Nebraska – Wind leases raise questions
October 16, 2008
Along the lines of what CEP personnel find themselves saying quite often – don’t rush into a wind lease. Find a good natural resources lawyer. Take your time.
Looks like Nebraska politicians are interested in figuring out how to protect wind rights under law.
Reprinted in full from the Omaha World-Herald:
Wind-farm contracts stir up lots of questions
BY ELIZABETH AHLIN
HAMBURG, Iowa – The sight of 40-ton blades turning in the wind means different things to different people.
To some, wind farms are a boon for rural economic development. For others, they are a sign of hope for renewable energy. And, as area farmers are finding out, they can mean thousands of dollars in the pockets of rural landowners each year.
But, experts say, read the fine print. Under some contracts with wind developers – contracts ranging from 30 to 180 years – rural lands could be affected for generations to come.
Wind farms are relatively new in Nebraska and southwest Iowa. As the industry grows, more and more landowners in the region are being asked to lease their land and wind rights to wind energy companies.
Susan Williams Sloan, outreach manger for the American Wind Energy Association, said there is great opportunity for landowners.
“I know there are quite a number of landowners who are very happy with what they have done, because they’re making new revenues they haven’t had before,” she said. “It frees them up to do other things with that money.”
Indeed, there is big money at stake – from $2,000 to $5,000 per wind turbine per year, on average, although some landowners report getting as much as $10,000 per turbine.
But, without an accepted industry standard, farmers wonder: When is a contract a good contract?
About 20 times each week, that question is asked of John Hansen, president of the Nebraska Farmers Union. And it’s what Iowa farm officials were trying to address at a community meeting in Hamburg, Iowa, last week.
More than 170 people from southwest Iowa went to Hamburg High School looking for answers from a two-hour meeting, sponsored by the Iowa State University Extension and the Iowa Farm Bureau offices in Fremont County.
Rural advocates and farmers groups have hosted other informational meetings around Nebraska and Iowa this year. Wind energy contracts will be discussed at the 2008 Wind Power Conference in Kearney, Neb., Nov. 11-12.
It’s a hot topic because both Nebraska and Iowa have a lot of wind. Nebraska ranks No. 6 and Iowa No. 10 nationally in the potential to generate electricity from wind, according to the American Wind Energy Association.
Norma and Tom Troxel, of rural Farragut, Iowa, farm about 1,200 acres of corn and soybeans. A wind energy company approached Tom’s father, who owns much of the land they farm.
They came to Hamburg to find out if selling the wind rights is a good option for the family and how it could affect the farm.
Agricultural attorney Roger McEowen covered a myriad of problems common among some wind energy contracts offered to farmers. But the answer boils down to this: Read the fine print and hire a knowledgeable lawyer, said McEowen, director of the Iowa State University Center for Agricultural Law and Taxation.
Too often, landowners hear a sales pitch and sign a contract without reading it.
“If the wind blew at your place yesterday and it blew there today, it’s probably going to blow there tomorrow,” said Hansen, who urges farmers not to let wind developers rush them.
Iberdrola Renewables, a Spanish energy company, has planned a 73-turbine wind farm near Tarkio, Mo., just across the border from Fremont County, Iowa. Many farmers being contacted in southwest Iowa have been approached by Iberdrola.
“Certainly we feel like the leases that we offer are, in all cases, fair,” said Paul Copleman, Iberdrola spokesman. “We don’t feel like we have anything to hide in these leases we’ve signed.”
The company, which has leased wind rights from thousands of landowners all over the country, doesn’t try to dissuade landowners from getting more information or legal counsel, Copleman said.
But that can be difficult. The newness of the industry in Nebraska and southwest Iowa means most area lawyers don’t have extensive knowledge of wind rights contracts.
Nebraska Sen. Annette Dubas said she has heard from Nebraskans on this issue in recent years.
She sponsored legislation last year that would have put parameters on wind rights contracts, limiting the length of leases, among other things. It was similar to a South Dakota law that limits the duration of wind rights leases to 50 years and requires the wind energy company to begin operation of wind turbines within five years of signing.
The Nebraska legislation was put on hold, but Dubas is working on a version she could introduce in the 2009 session.
“I just want to make sure we have protections in place, so people won’t be taken advantage of,” Dubas said.
A wind energy company approached Greenfield, Iowa, farmer Clark BreDahl and his neighbors in Adair and Union Counties last year. They initially were offered 50-year contracts with a 2 percent annual increase in the lease payments – less than the average inflation rate. The lease could be terminated by the wind company with three months’ notice but not by the landowner.
And, to top it off, the contract contained a confidentiality clause, ensuring that neighbors couldn’t compare offers.
“We had no bargaining power,” said BreDahl, who opted not to take that offer.
Confidentiality clauses have kept many wind farm contracts under the radar, but both Hansen and McEowen have seen their fair share of offers.
Farmers and landowners need to spend time researching what they could lose by signing.
Landowners can be asked to sign over more than a little land for a wind turbine. The company will need roads to get on and off the land to maintain the turbine. And the company could propose other conditions.
Because of potential damage to turbines, hunting on farmland could be prohibited, causing farmers to lose out on money earned through eco-tourism, and landowners could be prohibited from erecting new buildings that could disturb the wind in the area.
Roads to access the turbine sites could cause erosion or other problems that could jeopardize participation in federal farm programs that have environmental requirements.
Landowners should anticipate those possibilities and ask for compensation in their contracts, McEowen said.
The questions seem endless.
How and when will payments be made? Is the amount fair? What are the tax consequences? Can the wind developer sell or transfer the lease? Who is responsible for dismantling and removing the turbine? (It takes a semi to haul just one blade.)
“People get excited about these things, and they’ll sign them before realizing the rights they’ve given up and what they’ve agreed to,” McEowen said.
BreDahl eventually decided to form a collective with his neighbors and hire an attorney to negotiate with the wind companies. Some neighbors were worried about losing the opportunity and signed contracts. Most did not, and after negotiating with three different companies, the group of almost 60 landowners found a contract they thought was fair.
“They (wind developers) are not doing anything illegal. They’re not doing anything unethical,” BreDahl said. “They’re protecting and looking out for their own interests. They’re not going to protect and look out for yours. If you want that done, you’ll have to do it yourself.”
Testing, testing… an unofficial CEP poll
October 16, 2008
As some of you may know, blogs are usually hosted by blog providers, which all have their own back end systems – and I might be blind and just haven’t noticed this feature before, but a poll-builder feature all of a sudden popped up in wordpress. You can of course build polls through other websites and then just clip in the html, but life is often way too busy for that.
But. Since we now appear to have the power right here in our hands… let’s run a test poll. To find out: (1) Does this work? and (2) Do CEP blog readers care about a poll feature at all? Because if not, why mess with it.
— Maril Hazlett, www.climateandenergy.org
