Climate Change Summary Newsletter and Commentary
December 7, 2009
Steven L. Hoch
Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, LLP
Hypocrisy 101
BBC stands for Bulging British Carbon.
The BBC’s entourage to Copenhagen purportedly will create as much carbon dioxide as an African village does in a whole year. (Around six or seven tons of carbon dioxide.) Conservative MP Philip Davies said: “It’s absolutely staggering. It’s yet another example of how wasteful the BBC is. On the subject of climate change, the BBC seems to lose all its critical faculties and it will probably be just a fawning exercise over these environmentalists anyway. It would be nice if one of these 35 people asked some pertinent and critical questions about climate change. But I suspect they will all be subscribers to the extreme environmental agenda. ” The BBC responded that: “The Copenhagen conference is a major global news story and we will deploy 12 on-air presenters and reporters, supported by 23 producers, camera operators, engineers in total.” Greenpeace is sending two reporters.
See: http://www.thefreelibrary.com/BBC+dispatches+35+staff+to+climate+talks+-+creating+as+much+carbon+as...-a0212593251
The Timesonline.UK Lists Climate Change Hypocrites
You gotta love the Hollywood crowd!!!! Just like your parents said: “Do as I say, not as I do.”
The Timesonline state: “Nothing piques our interest more than eco-hypocrisy as practiced by the “green” celebrities who have been spouting green virtue but spewing out hundreds of tons of carbon from their private jets or multiple holiday homes around the globe.” Here’s who made the list:
Sheryl Crow - who had called upon the public to refrain from using more than one square of toilet paper per visit (“except on those pesky occasions when two or three are required”) travels in a biodiesel tour bus, but her 30-person entourage followed in a fleet of 13 gas-guzzling vehicles;
John Travolta - notoriously encouraged the British public to do its bit to fight global warming — after flying into London on one of his five private jets. In 2006 his piloting hobby produced an estimated 800 tons of carbon emissions, more than a hundred times the output of the average Briton;
Tom Cruise - who has campaigned for the LA-based environmental group Earth Communications Office — also has an air fleet and a license to pilot his five planes, including a top-of-the-line customized Gulfstream jet he bought for his wife, Katie Holmes;
Oprah Winfrey - who preaches eco-virtue from her TV pulpit, travelled in a 13-seat Gulfstream IV private jet for years;Dame Trudie Styler - film financier and wife of Sting. Not only do she and her husband run seven homes and travel between them in private jets and a fleet of cars, but in 2007 an employment tribunal revealed Styler was furious when her pregnant chef refused to travel 100 miles to prepare some soup and salad;
U2 - their latest world tour features three stages and a giant claw that ensures as many spectators as possible get a decent view. Alas, transporting the whole shebang around the world is estimated by carbonfootprint.com to produce the carbon equivalent of the annual emissions of 6,500 British homes — or a rocket trip to Mars and back;
Al Gore - who at the end of the film An Inconvenient Truth asked his audience: “Are you ready to change the way you live?” His own huge Nashville mansion consumed over 20 times the electricity of an average American home. Indeed, according to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, it burnt twice as much power in the month of August 2006 than most American homes do in an entire year. Another inconvenient truth revealed that the former senator spent $500 a month just to heat the indoor swimming pool in his lavish domestic establishment. The 100’ houseboat he bought in 2008, on the other hand, was said to be powered by biodiesel. See:
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/celebrity/article6931572.ece Carbon Financial Issues
Deloitte Publishes Carbon Accounting Report
You take one carbon and you add it to two carbons you get six dollars and fourteen cents?
Deloitte has issued a report the accounting undertaken to measure the amount of carbon dioxide equivalents that will not be released into the atmosphere as a result of Flexible Mechanisms projects under the Kyoto Treaty. In the report, Deloitte addresses several commonly asked questions and also address addresses different carbon accounting results that can exist as companies develop accounting policies individually in the absence specific carbon accounting guidelines to follow. See:
http://www.deloitte.com/view/en_US/us/Services/additional-services/Corporate-Responsibility-Sustainability/article/3750ec3b965a4210VgnVCM200000bb42f00aRCRD.htm Fears of Cap-and-Trade Gaming
We have nothing to fear but human nature!
Two key House Republicans are asking a federal district court to release sealed documents in a years-old criminal fraud case over the sale of counterfeit pollution credits arguing the case illustrates the potential to game the system under a federal cap-and-trade program for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Reps. Joe Barton and Greg Walden ranking members of the House Energy & Commerce Committee and the panel’s oversight and investigations subcommittee, respectively, are seeking documents related to the past charges against Anne Sholtz, who ran a company called Automated Credit Exchange (ACE). ACE helped companies buy and sell credits under the Regional Clean Air Incentives Market (RECLAIM), an EPA-approved regional cap-and-trade program meant to reduce smog and air pollution. Sholtz had a hand in creating the program, which began in 1994. Sholtz pleaded guilty in 2005 to one of six counts of wire fraud involving fraudulent emission credits and received five years probation with one year of home detention. See
http://republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/default.aspx Financial Reform Debate May Influence Future of Cap and Trade
Actually, dealing with jobs first, seems like the smart thing. If this come out of the Senate it would be a miracle.
The decision to take up financial regulatory reform before a climate bill in the Senate could have significant implications for the choice of a "trade" mechanism as the vehicle of choice to meet emission targets. As lawmakers delve into the uncertain details of how far new regulations should go and the balance between systemic risk and market innovation, questions surrounding the effectiveness of the market to regulate carbon emissions may swing momentum in the opposite direction. The financial regulatory reform legislation not only affects the content of the climate bill, but its complicated issues are certain to take up a significant amount of the Senate's time. This leaves fewer and fewer legislative days for a climate and energy bill as health care looks likely to go through January and Reid wants to take a "jobs bill" before the financial regulatory reform bill. Some senators who support climate and energy legislation say the extra time will benefit a climate bill. See:
http://www.eenews.net/public/EEDaily/2009/12/02/1 RGGI Allowance Prices Continue Slide in Sixth Auction
Blue light special on Aisle 3! Get your red hot credits!
Prices slid again in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative's (RGGI) sixth auction for 2009 emissions allowances to $2.05 per short ton of carbon dioxide equivalent, the Northeast pact announced here today. The previous auction netted $2.19 per ton in September. But 2012 allowances fell slightly in the Wednesday auction, to $1.86 per ton, from $1.87 in September. In the June auction, 2009 allowances sold for $3.23 per ton CO2 equivalent. To date, the auctions have generated $500 million for the 10 RGGI states. Almost 100 percent of emission allowances are distributed through auctions in the nascent carbon-trading scheme, but the steep, recession-spurred drop in industrial activity has caused RGGI administrators to issue far more allowances than necessary, resulting in very weak demand and some of the lowest prices of any carbon-linked tradable instrument. The seventh RGGI auction is scheduled for March 10, 2010. See: http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/12/04/04greenwire-rggi-allowance-prices-continue-slide-in-sixth-48850.html
New Report Bolsters Analysis of Climate Law's Economic Impact
It’s hard to fathom that changing a whole economy and culture will not have a big economic impact.
California's modeling of the economic effects of its global warming policies is on track, according to a new study comparing the different models used to estimate the economic effects of A.B. 32. Estimates by the CARB, the Electric Power Research Institute and a University of California at Berkeley, all found slight increases or decreases in gross state product by 2020. The CARB study found a $4 million increase to $2.59 trillion, compared to $2.586 trillion if no emissions reductions were undertaken. The report also found similarities between projections for California and the United States, citing modeling presented at Stanford University's Energy Modeling Forum in June. Four different modeling techniques, including two that U.S. EPA is using to predict the effects of national climate legislation, found that capping U.S. emissions at 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 would reduce gross domestic product in 2020 by an average of 2 percent. See:
http://www.resource-solutions.org/pub_pdfs/Climate%20Policy%20and%20Economic%20Growth%20in%20California.pdf Transmission Lines for Green Energy
Enviros Throw Support Behind California Power Line Project
It’s about time… now wake up and get with the program.
The Sierra Club and NRDC have endorsed a proposed transmission line that would bring renewable energy to Southern California cities, marking a departure from the groups' typically wary stance on such projects. The endorsed project is the Southern California Edison Co.'s application to build two transmission lines that would run from an area near Palm Springs to Blythe and Romoland in Riverside County — mostly along existing power lines and Interstate 10. The organizations state that this line is different because it will carry power from multiple generation sites and will largely be built along existing rights-of-way and they state that this doesn’t signal a change of direction on other transmission lines. See:
http://www.reuters.com/article/mnEnergy/idUS328103819420091130 Carbon Sequestration
Experts Propose Spending Up To $450B To Deploy CCS Technology by 2035
Stick it in the ground and don’t worry about it. After all, out of sight out of mind.
In a report designed to guide policymakers on carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies as they develop energy and climate legislation, the group of experts, consisting of stakeholders in the CCS debate, addressed several issues related to deploying the technology, including funding levels and timelines. The group proposed a range of spending over the next 25 years. The panel suggested spending $5 billion to $7 billion on research and development through 2025, $5 billion to $25 billion on demonstration projects through 2030, $20 billion to $65 billion on pioneer plants through 2024, and $80 billion to $350 billion on early adopting plants from 2012 through 2035. The report suggests spending at minimum $2.88 billion in 2010 on the R&D, demonstration and pioneer plant phases. Congress appropriated $404 million for fiscal 2010 spending on CCS research after spending $692 million in fiscal 2009 and $3.4 billion in stimulus funding. See:
http://dorgan.senate.gov/issues/energy/cleancoal/cleancoal.pdf Green Technology
DOW™ POWERHOUSE™ Solar Shingle Named a Best Invention of 2009 by TIME Magazine
A chicken in every pot, solar shingles on every roof!
The product integrates low-cost, thin-film CIGS photovoltaic cells into a proprietary roofing shingle design. The design reduces installation costs because conventional roofing shingles and solar generating shingles are installed simultaneously by roofing contractors. The solar shingle systems are expected to be available in limited quantities by mid-2010, and more widely available in 2011. See: http://www.dowsolar.com/
Water Demands of Next-Generation Feedstocks Still Uncertain – GAO
Shower less, make more fuel. Or, smell better, drive less. Or, make more fuel, shower with a friend.
The effects of increased biofuels production on water resources remain uncertain, says the GAO who called for additional research into feedstock cultivation, biofuel conversion and water resource data. The report outlines the effects of corn growth and corn ethanol production on water resources, and it speculates that corn cultivation could have a greater effect on water quality and supplies than other feedstocks because corn requires more chemicals, and chemical runoff will affect water bodies. But next-generation feedstocks are not in the clear, according to the report. Conversion of feedstocks to biofuels will also affect water supplies, but the full extent of those impacts remains largely unknown, the report says. See:
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d10116.pdf U.S. Could Face Glut of Biofuels
Make less fuel, save more water. This is making me dizzy. Maybe we should shower in the biofuel?
Thanks to a recession-based fall in fuel demand, U.S. government mandates requiring the use of 15 billion gallons of biofuels by 2012 could face the reality that there is nowhere to use all that fuel. Two years ago, while crafting its biofuels legislation, Congress did not account for fuel demands remaining or falling — a progression begun by the recession that could continue thanks to improved fuel efficiency. This trend, and the fact that ethanol can constitute only 10 percent of normal gasoline blends, suggests the country is unlikely to use all the biofuels Congress ordered. See:
http://www.blogger.com/goog_1260056715844http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/27/business/energy-environment/27ethanol.html?_r=1
No comments:
Post a Comment