CleanTechnica

A new report released today says that if we shift our economy — to a greener, low-carbon economy — we will have more jobs, not fewer.

Earlier this week, Tony Blair (former prime minister of the UK) and the Climate Group reported that if we worked to avoid climate change we’d create 10 million new jobs by 2020 — worldwide. Another recent study by Greenpeace and the European Renewable Energy Council says that such a shift could increase employment in the EU by 2.7 million jobs by 2030.

One more report, released today by the Global Climate Network (an alliance of nine influential think tanks) comes to similar conclusions.
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There’s one thing I don’t get about how Cap and Trade works. How carbon emissions would still come down, whether the initial allowances were auctioned or free. Most environmentalists are up in arms over “polluting industry getting free allowances” while I don’t object to anything that sweetens the deal. But would it work?

So I contacted Harvard’s Robert N. Stavins to get a very simple concrete example. He has authored much referenced works on environmental policy design and Cap and Trade legislation draws heavily on his work. Here’s his analogy in which TV or video gaming stands in for carbon emissions. First, you set a Cap. The limit will be 4 hours total, with a Cap of one hour max for each child. Here’s how he put it.

“If I put in place a system whereby you have to have an allowance for every hour of video games tonight, it does not matter whether you bought it or got it for free, it still limits you to one hour.  Period.”

He added: “And if you are allowed to trade these allowances with others, you have the same incentives to sell your allowance if you don’t want to play any video games tonight; or to buy more if you want to play more than one hour, regardless of whether you had to buy or got for free the first one.”
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Now that Cap and Trade is a possibility, there is a rising clamor for a carbon tax instead, from conservative thinktanks like the American Enterprise Institute, outlets like The Washington Times and even directly from Exxon itself. Yet when first introduced by Al Gore, in 1993, the carbon tax was anathema to the fossil industry. What makes a carbon tax now less of a threat than Cap and Trade? It’s the Cap.

The key difference between Cap and Trade and a carbon tax is that a carbon tax controls just the cost of pollution – only a cap limits the quantity.

The “Cap” limits emissions by fossil companies

The Cap in Cap and Trade is the only mechanism for ensuring a total limit to carbon emissions. A Cap is set for the fossil industries as a whole. The Cap on emissions at point-of-entry sources (oil pipelines, coal fields and coal-fired power stations) in the current Cap and Trade bill limits total carbon.
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A new survey of Asians finds that they want a strong international climate agreement, and they want a few key world leaders to step up to the plate to make it happen.

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The DOE is headed up by Steven Chu, who has totally revamped the Department of Energy from a fossil friendly enterprise to one that moves us swiftly off of oil and coal and towards more home grown renewable power like solar and wind.

The Heartland Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute are oil-funded think-tanks dedicated to turning out academic-appearing reports that have successfully confused Americans about global warming. The result has been that oil companies have successfully delayed renewable energy development in this country.

Like Americans For Prosperity and FreedomWorks, which was behind the firing of Van Jones, the Green Jobs Czar; these organizations are funded by Exxon and David and Charles Koch (Koch Industries oil empire).  Freedom works is currently sponsoring astroturf townhalls to fight energy legislation.

The plot thickens…they now have Steven Chu in their sights.
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Successfully transitioning the United States to low‐carbon electricity will require an improved
transmission infrastructure. Cities don’t grow where there’s too much wind. The best solar is far from us in our deserts.

We need to build a supergrid like the national highway system we built in the 1930’s. But a new study finds that this might be almost impossible to do in this country. A historical legacy of Balkanized ownership of multiple tiny grids and ineffective regulatory structure has hindered upgrades to and expansion of the U.S. transmission network.

In these political times of political hysteria against any kind of national common good, it will be hard to overcome a legacy that grew out of our rugged individualism.

By contrast, China and Europe have easily added more renewable power, by socializing the grid.
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Since the Waxman-Markey Cap and Trade bill is designed to reduce pollution by paying people who reduce pollution with money from polluters, it comes in for all the usual criticism from the fossil industries. They claim Al Gore something something, there’s no global warming, scientists didn’t consult me, it was cold yesterday and so on.

However, it also comes in for some anger from the rest of us, who do support the idea of funding a transfer to a renewable energy economy, but worry that we will pay higher costs and believe that the Cap and Trade bill gives too many initial free allowances to polluting industries. But this anger may be unwarranted.

Consumers are shielded from rising energy costs with most of the allowances:
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Since the Renewable Portfolio Standard began in 2002, the California Public Utilities Commission has now approved contracts for more than 8,600 megawatts of new renewable energy, nearly all of it solar, signed with the state’s largest utilities. Most of the state’s renewable energy already on the grid till now has been wind power.
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The U.S position on Climate Change is overshadowing all other discussions in the lead up to Copenhagen, even at a conference I recently attended in Melbourne Australia – the 5th Australia-New Zealand Climate Change & Business Conference, August 24-26th. The Australian position requires global consensus for a greenhouse gas emissions target by 25% with a successful Post 2012 Agreement in place, but only 5% if that is not concluded. It all depends on what the U.S does in Copenhagen according to their minister Penny Wong.

The European Union is the only group that will continue with strong commitments independent of the U.S position with a 20% reduction of greenhouse gases on 1990 levels by 2020 and 30% if a global agreement is concluded.

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Which state makes 15 percent of its electricity entirely from wind power?

Iowa. In 2006, according to the Iowa Utilities Board, wind power provided 5 percent of the state’s electricity. Now, just three years later,  Iowa produces between 15 and 17 percent of its own electricity from wind power.

MidAmerican Energy, Iowa’s biggest utility, pays farmers $3,500 a year (plus 2% increase annually) to rent locations for 102 wind turbines. To scout the best locations, they paid $5 an acre to survey likely farmland, and will pay $10 an acre per year to keep those options open for future additional wind turbines.

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