issue: Energy & Environment

Accounting Reform for…Biofuels?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

From yesterday’s Boston Globe comes an op-ed on the need for sound accounting guidelines when it comes to bioenergy and greenhouse gas emissions:

The problem: treaties and laws now treat all forms of bioenergy as carbon neutral and therefore completely non-polluting. In reality, how much bioenergy reduces greenhouse gases depends on the source of the plant material. The right rules will encourage the development of fast-growing grasses and trees that can greatly increase the amount of carbon absorbed by plants on marginal land and thereby reduce global warming. The wrong rules will encourage clearing of forests, which releases carbon dioxide and may even increase greenhouse gases while also threatening biodiversity.

[…]

[T]he climate bill working its way through Congress shares this error.

If the error continues globally, it gives oil firms or electric utilities that must reduce their greenhouse gas emissions a false incentive to switch to those forms of bioenergy that result from clearing forests. Several studies predict they will do so on a large scale. By contrast, the right accounting will give entrepreneurs the incentive to commercialize the great technical innovations in generating more carbon from the earth’s land and converting it efficiently into useable fuel.

The op-ed was co-written by Vinod Khosla and Tim Searchinger, both big names in biofuels, for different reasons. Khosla, cofounder of Sun Microsystems, is a big investor in bioenergy.

Searchinger, meanwhile, is known as a skeptic of biofuels. In 2008, he co-authored a study that found that, taking into account the conversion of forest and grassland into new cropland (as grain is diverted to biofuel production), biofuels actually increase greenhouse gas emissions. More recently, he co-authored a paper in the journal Science that looked into the failure of the Kyoto Protocol and U.S. climate legislation to account for emissions from biofuels.

The op-ed finds common ground in recognizing the promise of bioenergy, even as it calls for a more informed approach to its role in the global energy picture. All too often, the prefix “bio” lulls people into a false sense of enviro-comfort. But as Khosla and Searchinger suggest, if the biofuel you’re putting into your car came from crops planted on — or that eventually led to — a cleared forest, then chances are you’re not helping the climate much at all.

It may seem an obscure area of cap-and-trade, but the op-ed actually underscores the importance of rigorous research and strict accounting in developing a climate bill. Khosla and Searchinger urge policy makers working on cap-and-trade to distinguish bioenergy by its source and production process. The last thing we need is a climate bill that ends up wiping out swathes of forestland, all because of that misleading prefix.

(h/t to NRDC’s Switchboard blog)

Drive Like a Jetson

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

When you watch an episode of “The Jetsons,” what gets you isn’t so much that Elroy wore an antenna on his head or that the family spent their time in cars that levitated. What still resonates about the show is the extreme ease of transportation — they always just seem to get up and go. For many of us in the modern world, where gridlock and wincing at gas pumps are facts of life, the Jetsons seem spectacularly free of commuter woes. But it’s a cartoon.

Ambitious clean technology schemes have usually been condemned as the province of dreamers. But this week, a new organization threatened to convert Jetson-esque schemes for powering electric cars from futurism into reality through a network of charging stations and new fleets of affordable electric cars. The Electrification Coalition is a group of prominent companies who have committed dollars and workforces to creating the infrastructure to make electric cars. (We previously wrote about electric cars here.)

At a lavish launch in D.C. featuring New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND), and Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) were some old — and new — captains of industry: Carlos Ghosn, the president & CEO of Nissan Motor Company; Frederick W. Smith, chairman, president & CEO of FedEx; Peter L. Corsell, the young and dynamic CEO of GridPoint, a successful company in Arlington that builds software applications that integrate, aggregate, and manage distributed sources of load, storage, and generation to connect utility customers to the smart grid.

The Future: Closer Than You Think

The coalition’s goals are at once ambitious but practicable. By 2013, they hope to put approximately 700,000 “grid-enabled vehicles” (GEVs) — vehicles with lithium-ion batteries that you can plug into either a 110-volt or 220-volt outlet to recharge — on the road. Through economies of scale and government tax credits and other incentives, the coalition thinks it can put 14 million GEVs on the road by 2020 and more than 120 million GEVs by 2030. Ultimately, they would like to have 75 percent of all vehicle miles traveled by 2040 be electric.

How to visualize this? Ghosn, Nissan’s CEO, put it crisply: “How do you imagine an electric car? There is no tailpipe, no emissions.” He repeated himself: “NO tailpipe.”

A full fleet of silent, tailpipe-less cars is ambitious and could lead even the sane to skepticism. Friedman moderated a panel with several of the coalition members and led with a question: “I want you to sell me on the efficacy and the reality of implementing this roadmap.” The coalition members answered quickly and confidently, relying on actual business plans, dollars invested, consumer habits and charging infrastructure already in place, and cars already in production.

David Crane, president and CEO of NRG Energy, said, “The service station of the future is in your garage.” Ghosn talked up the vastly improved efficiency of new lithium-ion batteries, saying, “We can make batteries today that were not possible 20 years ago.”

Corsell of Gridpoint, the software designer for smart grids around the country, said, “We’ve learned that you can leverage technology…to give consumers benefits.” In response to the oft-raised concern about whether too many drivers charging their cars at once would burden the grid, Corsell said, “The power is there — we have all the power we need. You can incentivize people to use power at the right time by building technology into the car.” Other participants stressed that cars will essentially become “grid appliances” — simple technology will allow charging mechanisms in cars to be controlled through the Internet. In Chicago, one pilot program even pays drivers per day to hook their cars up to the Internet.

The Next Step

What’s needed is policy — leadership by federal and state governments to push electrification through incentives. In the short-term, the coalition’s policy goals include significantly increasing plug-in electric drive vehicle tax credits, establishing tax credits equal to 75 percent of the cost to construct public charging infrastructure, extending consumer tax credits for home charging equipment, and providing tax credits equal to 50 percent of the costs of the necessary IT upgrades for utilities or power aggregators to sell power to GEVs.

These common-sense but aggressive measures would put electrification within the free market by investing, as government can, in providing technology with the threshold it needs for manufacturers to achieve economies of scale. It’s now, not the Jetsons — and nobody will have to wear antennas on their head.

How the U.S. Lost the Leadership Role in Nuclear Energy

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Over the past decade, I have had the opportunity to travel to different countries and interact with many of the world’s top nuclear engineers and scientists. They all say the same thing: the U.S. needs to reclaim its leadership role in nuclear energy development activities.

The international nuclear science and engineering community looks to the U.S. for leadership and direction in nuclear technology research, new concept development, deployment of advanced technologies, construction of research and power reactors, and the safe operation, regulation, and oversight of nuclear facilities, and their regulation and oversight.

However, for the past two decades the U.S. has fallen behind the rest of the world in many areas. Although we maintain a leading position in some, including research productivity and reactor operation and regulation, we have lagged in others: the development of research facilities, new power reactor construction, used nuclear fuel recycling, and implementation of new technology. In recent years, we have lagged in a number of key nuclear technology areas and have failed to significantly upgrade our capabilities and facilities. The result is that other nations now have the world-class leadership position in key aspects of nuclear energy.

Here’s what we haven’t done:

  • We have not built a new power reactor in this country for more than 25 years.
  • We have not upgraded or grown our capabilities to analyze radioactive materials.
  • We have not commissioned a research or test reactor since 1992 or a new power reactor since the mid-1990s.
  • We no longer have the fast neutron irradiation facilities, which are necessary in the development and testing of advanced materials, reactor concepts, fuel cycles, and the destruction of radioactive waste materials.
  • We no longer have the capability to forge the large steel components needed for the next generation of nuclear power plants.

Meanwhile, other countries have stepped forward to advance nuclear technology. In China, 16 new plants will be in operation by 2020, which would quadruple its nuclear capacity in the next decade or so. Other developing countries are following this example — some 30 countries that do not currently operate commercial nuclear plants are actively considering the construction of nuclear power plants.

Yet even as the world proceeds apace on nuclear energy, America is essentially sitting out the game, unable to compete because our nuclear technological and operational capabilities have atrophied from decades of dormancy.

To retain a world leadership position — to compete in the burgeoning global market for nuclear energy and take the lead in nuclear energy security — the U.S. must consistently invest in building new plants and developing new concepts for future reactors; lead in fuel-cycle research; educate future generations of nuclear scientists and engineers; and consistently upgrade facilities for the study of materials, fuel cycles, radiation damage, large-scale component manufacturing, neutron data measurements, and critical facilities. We also need to maintain our capabilities and understanding of radioactive material handling and the protection of workers and the public.

Technological leadership today requires being an active and reliable participant in the international community that one desires to lead. The U.S. needs to reinvest, replenish, and grow its capabilities in order to maintain a leadership position. Otherwise we cede the leadership and court the danger of becoming a minor player — even an irrelevant one — in the global discussion on nuclear energy.

Read Andrew Klein’s new PPI Policy Memo, “Why Progressives Should Be More Open to Nuclear Energy.”

Why Retrofitting Should Be Sexy

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

You’ve doubtless seen ads recently offering you a $1,500 “stimulus federal tax credit” for 30 percent of the cost of putting in new windows. How the stimulus is related to windows might not be transparent to anyone less than wonky. But it’s an important facet of the Obama administration’s broader attempt to place retrofitting at the center of a new national energy policy.

The sexy side of environmentalism has never been about houses. We generally focus on cute animals (e.g. polar bears marooned on ice floes) or Hollywood disaster scenarios (e.g. The Day After Tomorrow). But the fact is that retrofitting houses to make them more efficient, through means that will create jobs, is the low-hanging fruit of the new environmental movement.

The new path was amply revealed in an exciting (if this is your sort of thing) report recently released by Vice President Biden’s Middle Class Task Force and the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality titled, “Recovery through Retrofit.” The report puts the stimulus expenditures (such as the $1,500 windows credit) in a broader strategy.

The potential gains are pretty staggering. As the authors note, existing techniques and technologies — that is, “business as usual” approaches — can yield an incredible 40 percent energy savings per home, a reduction of 160 million metric tons of greenhouse gases by 2020, and total savings of $21 billion in home energy bills annually.

The report does the smart thing in modern progressive policymaking, focusing on how to use government to create a market that will allow entrepreneurs and consumers to find their own solutions, rather than imposing top-down measures that end up being inflexible and oppressive.

Consistent with this market-based approach, the report isolates three “market barriers”:

  • Access to information for consumers who need to understand how to retrofit their homes — it can be challenging to figure out if an “energy audit” firm is legit.
  • Access to financing for homeowners facing high upfront costs for home energy audits and retrofits — installing solar panels on your roof, for example, can be several thousand dollars.
  • Access to skilled workers who can actually perform the weatherization and retrofits — making sure folks are trained to strip and install adequate insulation is not as simple as it sounds.

There’s a lot of good stuff in the report. On improving consumer information, it proposes applying the ENERGY STAR ® label, which has worked beautifully to help consumers purchase efficient appliances, to houses as well.

On access to financing, the authors suggest measures that would allow the cost of retrofits to be added into a homeowner’s property tax bill, with amortized payments lower than the average utility bill. The cost (and value) of retrofitting would attach to the property, not an individual, meaning it would become part of the value of the house.

Finally, on worker training, the report advocates establishing uniform national workforce and certification training standards for retrofit workers — familiar to anyone who’s had to be licensed for a craft.

This is just a brief outline. You can check out the 12-page report for yourself here. It’s not polar bears or a new ice age, but from windows to workers, it’s a promising blueprint for change.

Obama to China

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

President Obama’s three-day swing through Shanghai and Beijing presents an interesting opportunity to make real headway on three critical trans-Pacific issues.

First is economics. Whether the issue is China’s near recession-proof economy, currency devaluation, or seemingly inexhaustible appetite for American debt, Obama has been walking a tightrope to frame financial competition as a healthy companion to cooperation. While it’s perhaps somewhat natural for Americans to “fear” Chinese economic hegemony, keep this in mind: China has to keep growing at a rate of close to 8 percent annually, or it won’t be able to integrate its approximately 20 million brand new job seekers each year. The potential instability could wreak havoc, so on some level (American debt notwithstanding) Chinese growth should be managed rather than ignored or fought.

Second is world leadership, specifically on climate change. I was listening to a BBC podcast this morning that highlighted China’s fascinating and divisive internal debate on its place in the world, with various cadres within the governing Communist party arguing for relative isolation over front-running. This is where Obama’s message can strike home: The world needs China as a global leader as other countries look to Washington and Beijing before making their move. The Indias, Brazils, and Russias of the world see little reason to agree to any wide-ranging worldwide carbon restrictions if China doesn’t play ball first.

Finally, many will paint the president’s visit as too soft on his Chinese hosts — Obama refused a visit in DC with the Dalai Lama and has been rather publicly muted (though not silent) on the issue of human rights (though he did address the issue at a town hall meeting with students). For the record, human rights must be a part of the conversation, both as a moral issue and bargaining chip (as base as that may sound). Obama has been rather careful to present them as one of many agenda items, one that doesn’t needlessly anger Beijing and derail important conversations on issues in which America needs a Chinese partner now.

Cap-and-Trade and the American Farmer

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

One of the more unfortunate developments in the debate over cap-and-trade has been the refusal of the agriculture lobby to sit down at the table and work toward a good compromise with policy makers and business leaders on climate-change law.

The pressure has worked. The Waxman-Markey bill passed this summer conspicuously leaves out the farm industry, which is a significant contributor to the climate problem, from fertilizer-emitted nitrous oxide (a greenhouse gas 296 times more powerful than carbon dioxide) to livestock emissions to the distortionary impact of ethanol on land use. But despite Congress’s concessions to the powerful agriculture industry, the farm lobby continues to fight efforts to pass cap-and-trade, as farmers express fears that putting a price on carbon — which is, of course, the key to slowing emissions — would be too burdensome for them. The resistance to cap-and-trade among farmers was illustrated by an Economist article this week that featured a Montana farmer named Bruce Wright, whom the article reported “cannot see how he could run his farm without cheap fossil fuels.”

The refusal to engage on the issue is unfortunate — and, it turns out, misguided. Never mind that the American heartland would suffer some of the worst effects from climate change (the most dire models see a repeat of the Dust Bowl). According to a new study by 25x’25 Alliance, an advocacy group spearheaded by volunteer leaders in the agriculture, forestry, and renewable energy communities, cap-and-trade could end up being a net plus for farmers’ bottom line. The study (PDF here) found that a properly structured cap-and-trade scheme could bring in an additional $13 billion in annual revenues for agriculture and forestry, as income from offsets more than compensate for higher input costs for energy and fertilizer. (Among the offsets considered include methane capture, bioenergy crop production, and grassland sequestration.)

Moreover, the study also modeled a scenario in which emissions are regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (in accordance with the 2007 Supreme Court decision finding that the agency was responsible for regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act) instead of through cap-and-trade legislation. The study found a considerably worse outcome for farmers: “Agriculture is subject to higher input costs with no opportunity to be compensated for the GHG [greenhouse gas] reduction services the sector provides.”

A press release announcing the 25x’25 study underscores the point that farmers have more to lose by stonewalling on climate change legislation. “Farmers and ranchers want to be a part of the climate change solution and this study illustrates the significant role they can play,” says Roger Johnson, president of the National Farmers Union. “Failing to address climate change through legislation, and instead subjecting producers to EPA regulations, would be a huge mistake.”

As I’ve written before, cap-and-trade will lead to a higher cost burden to some, but also create a new revenue opportunity for others. According to this study, a cap-and-trade system with a decent offsets mechanism would actually be a boon to farmers who are moved to change their ways by new market incentives. Here’s hoping the Bruce Wrights of America catch on.

Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

A new report jointly produced by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation and the Breakthrough Institute compares the U.S.’s competitiveness on the clean energy front with China, Japan, and South Korea. What they found confirms what others have written about of late: that the U.S. is now lagging in the innovation game it once ruled. According to the study, public investments in clean energy in those countries far outpace U.S. investments. If the gap persists, the U.S. will find itself importing the overwhelming majority of the clean energy technologies it deploys, from wind turbines and high-speed-rail materials to solar cells and nuclear-plant equipment. It’s a troubling survey that underscores how much ground the U.S. needs to make up to become a world leader in innovation and green energy.

The Electric Car Ecosystem

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The second coming of the electric car — particularly in the guise of the highly anticipated Chevy Volt — has certainly received a fair amount of publicity in recent months. No wonder: the electric car represents America’s best bet to rejuvenate its auto manufacturing industry.

But while it’s exciting enough to dream of factories humming again and assembly lines pumping out the next generation of autos, the promise of the electric car goes beyond its immediate boost to the American car industry. A fascinating article by Bernard Avishai in Inc. details what exactly the rise of the electric car could mean to our economy:

Actually, here is where the dots connect and the news turns good. For the technical challenge of greening electric cars means entering a commercial landscape that mirrors the transformative industries of the 1980s and ’90s: computers and software, switching and networking, consumer electronics converging with cellular technology. This landscape is full of start-ups and medium-size supplier businesses that play to American strengths: entrepreneurship, originality, comfort with the virtual. We ought to stop thinking about the auto industry as a handful of great manufacturing companies superintending large, dependent suppliers — or, for that matter, cars as standalone objects. Rather, the electric car will be a kind of ultimate mobile device, produced in expanding networks for expanding networks; a piece of hardware manufactured by a burgeoning supplier grid and nested in an information grid interlacing the electrical grid. Building out these three networks will be more profitable, and a greater engine of economic growth, than building the cars themselves.

A word that pops up frequently in Avishai’s piece is “ecosystem.” Not in the environmental-ecological sense — though that obviously matters, too — but rather in the sense that a new complex of entrepreneurs, innovators, and manufacturers will likely spring up in response to the mainstreaming of the electric car. Reforming the grid, constructing a new electric-car-recharging infrastructure, making the next generation of batteries, building hardware and software for the smart cars: these and other ancillary industries have already been jump-started by the promise of the carbon-free car.

Where does government fit in? The Obama administration has already shown its commitment. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act included $500 million for producers of electric drive components, $400 million for grants promoting plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles, and $4 billion toward the development of the smart grid. Avishai points out that when Obama signed the stimulus package, he was introduced by the head of Namaste Solar, a company of 60 employees — a subtle nod toward the idea that the green economy will be driven by thousands of new, smart companies that spring up to compete in the clean tech ecosystem. The players in the nascent industry also believe that the government has a role in establishing standards early on to bring stability to a free-for-all environment and remove some uncertainty for start-ups to jump into the fray.

And this doesn’t even get to the other obvious benefit of our car transformation: the reduction of carbon emissions as millions of gasoline-powered cars are replaced by the new breed of automobile. It all seems like a vision out of science fiction. What’s thrilling is, as Avishai reports, it’s already happening.

Cap-and-Trade: Neither a Job Killer Nor a Free Ride

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Cap-and-trade legislation in Congress has come under fire from both left and right. Some on the left claim that the distribution of free emissions allowances to industry amounts to a “free ride.” Meanwhile, many on the right slam the bill as a job and economy killer.

But a new study (PDF) by PointCarbon Research, a carbon market research firm, rebuts both sides’ claims. The study focuses on the impact that climate change legislation would have on the largest emitters in the power and oil industries, which represent about 40 percent of the covered emissions in the U.S.

Contrary to right-wing forecasts of widespread economic collapse, PointCarbon found that a cap-and-trade market would, in fact, yield winners and losers among industry players. “Some companies will actually be considerably better off with a U.S. cap-and-trade program than without,” the study found, noting that companies like Exelon (the largest American utility), FirstEnergy, NRG, and PG&E stand to gain the most. Firms with a diversified fleet of non-emitting (hydro, nuclear, and renewables) and low-emitting plants are more competitively positioned and will likely see benefits.

Meanwhile, firms that rely heavily on high-emissions plants (Southern Co., AEP, Duke) would see the biggest exposure. That finding debunks the idea that industry receiving free allowances would be getting a “free ride” under cap-and-trade. As the study points out, “in reality the bulk of free allowances destined for [the power] sector will not help large power companies exposed on the generation side.”

But even as some firms do see more of a negative impact on the bottom line, the study notes that as the carbon market matures, “companies will be able to mitigate their exposure through internal reductions and offset investments” – meaning that the incentive to innovate and modernize that a carbon price brings will eventually help these companies adjust to the new low-emissions economy.

The study raises a fundamental point: “[P]utting a cost on emissions means giving a value to reductions.” In other words, a price on carbon will mean a cost burden to some – but a revenue opportunity for others. Letting actors compete in this new market is the most efficient and effective way to address the looming climate crisis.  That is precisely what the Senate cap-and-trade legislation hopes to achieve.

Could Nuclear Be the Key to Passing a Climate Bill?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The Washington Post reports today that prospects for passing climate change legislation in the Senate — coming up for committee debate on Tuesday — look increasingly dicey as Democrats remain deeply divided on the issue. Democratic senators from the South, Midwest, and Rocky Mountains are balking at the bill’s impact on industry and consumers, while few Republicans are willing to stick out their necks for a bipartisan vote on climate change. But slim hopes for an across-the-aisle deal still exist:

So Democratic leaders, with the support of the Obama administration, are trying to sway at least half a dozen Republicans by offering amendments to speed along their top priority: building nuclear power plants.

Many people have long viewed nuclear energy with suspicion, with cost, safety, and nuclear waste at the top of the list of objections. But the fact is that it will take a long time to scale up the production of renewable energy sources like solar and wind power. It will take just as long to rebuild our transmission grid to deliver that power to all parts of the country. And efficiency alone is not enough to address the climate issue — we need a source of clean power even as we try to develop our renewable energy industry and modernize our grid.

Nuclear is, of course, not the sole answer to our energy needs. But it’s looking like it might be the answer to our political deadlock on climate change legislation. Progressives might not like it, but they should keep in mind that the key is the cap. Getting that cap is the hardest part. Embracing nuclear energy to get one seems not just good policy but smart politics as well.

At the White House, Clean Tech Gets a Push

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

A room full of clean tech entrepreneurs likely would not have been found in the Bush White House. But on Wednesday, October 28, that’s just what you would have seen in a brand-new auditorium (so new that there was no sign for the entrance, and it felt sort of like walking into a warehouse) on the ground floor of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. On the heels of its announcement of a $3.4 billion investment in building a smart grid — leveraged to achieve $4.7 billion in private investments, totaling over $8 billion — the Obama administration hosted an “Energy and Climate Stakeholders Meeting.” The presenters included White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, and White House Climate Change Policy Director Carol Browner.

The meeting included an extraordinary, hour-long give-and-take with Chu, who admitted that he would rather be riding herd on DOE bureaucrats to try and get more money for programs to spur clean tech when “they have me doing meetings like this.” But it was said with a smile. He also told stories about crawling around in his attics — first in California, when he was a professor, and now in Chevy Chase — to find the weak spots in his insulation. The lesson? We need far stricter standards in retrofitting homes.

The level of enthusiasm among these administration A-listers was palpable. “We’re off and running!” Jarrett announced. Describing the attitude in Congress and the potential passage of carbon reduction legislation in the Senate, Browner said, “I’ve been in and out of D.C. for twenty years, and there’s sort of that tipping point that happens, where everyone who talks starts saying not ‘if’ but ‘when.'”

In describing $151 million in new grants at DOE’s elite ARPA-E unit for transformative energy research, Chu said, “We’re going to try and hit home runs, not just base hits,” citing, with geeky but endearing enthusiasm, a new program for all liquid metal batteries that can provide large-scale energy storage at 1/20th of the prior cost.

The room was rapt — which is perhaps what you’d expect from a hundred clean tech folks crowded into a spanking-new auditorium with a spanking-new administration. Change, indeed!

This item is cross-posted at The Huffington Post.

Build This: A Real Infrastructure Policy for America

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Imagine boarding a sleek new bullet train and rocketing from Washington, D.C. to Richmond, VA in under an hour. Imagine creating thousands of durable new blue-collar jobs to build and maintain railways, construct and fine-tune railcars, and help design the electrical grid that would support high-speed rail. Imagine a new architecture for concentrating development around sophisticated new urban centers — and a hungry new customer for clean energy.

Imagining high-speed rail in the U.S. has often just been the province of dreams. The idea has been bedeviled by various lobbying groups hostile to sustainable transportation, beset by internecine warfare between different states and federal agencies, and bereft of a long-term infrastructure policy. As one grizzled and skeptical railway executive told me at a conference held last week by the new U.S. High Speed Rail Association at the H.W. Marriott Hotel in Washington, D.C., “I attended my first high-speed rail conference thirty years ago.”

But these dreams are about to leave the ether and descend to earth, in the form of concrete, steel, and electrical lines, as the U.S., thanks to the Obama administration, prepares to invest $8 billion in actually building high-speed rail. On the heels of the administration’s announcement of $3.4 billion in grants to drive the creation of a “smart grid” in the country, the time is right to think about an infrastructure policy not just for next year but the next generation.

The U.S. High Speed Rail Association is a broad coalition of domestic and international partners working to drive American investment in high-speed rail. There’s good reason to think it’s an idea whose time has finally come, after eight years of the George W. Bush administration, during which federal funding for rail was essentially scaled to zero. The challenge will be to ensure that the initial $8 billion is not frittered away in a series of pork-barrel pilot projects, but instead becomes the first investment in the long-term infrastructure strategy the U.S. has been sorely lacking.

The organization estimates that a fully functioning, 17,000-mile, national high-speed rail system would cost at least $600 billion over 30 years. In his panel presentation, Gov. Ed Rendell (D) of Pennsylvania, a long-time advocate of high-speed rail, urged participants to take the long view on such an infrastructure investment. “We need a capital budget run through an infrastructure bank,” Rendell urged. “It’s the only way to do this.” Rendell emphasized that thousands of “tough, blue-collar work” would be created by high-speed rail, citing an estimate by a Pennsylvania steel plant that makes rail ties that its work force would triple if high-speed rail were to become reality.

John Krueger, a staff attorney with the U.S. Public Interest Group who advocates for new federal budget priorities on transportation, argued that grassroots public opinion will ultimately change our infrastructure policies. “Why high-speed rail?” he asked the conference. “It’s what the people want….The opposite of NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) is PIMBY—Please In My Backyard.” Over 220 states and localities have submitted applications for the $8 billion the Obama administration has allocated to high-speed rail. And in the budget request for 2010, the House of Representatives approved an additional $4 billion of high-speed rail funding, surpassing an initial administration request of only $1 billion.

Presenting on the second day of the conference, Norm Anderson, who heads the consulting group CG/LA Infrastructure, emphasized a series of gaps in the nation’s long-term infrastructure strategy. He highlighted the urgent need for a clear focus on the competitiveness and job creation dimensions of high-speed rail. With competitive nations such as China aggressively investing in high-speed rail, we risk losing our edge in technology, concentrated urban development, low-carbon transportation, and a stable employment base for thousands. Anderson also emphasized the need for a strong funding mechanism — the national infrastructure bank also advocated by Gov. Rendell — and a federal entity that would “own and understand” infrastructure, opening it to both competition and public-private partnerships.

Inspired by events such as the U.S. High Speed Rail Association conference and the Obama administration’s $8 billion commitment, the Progressive Policy Institute’s new E3 Initiative in the coming months will be developing and driving policy proposals on infrastructure and other areas central to rebuilding the nation’s economy around clean technology. It’s an exciting time — and we need to ensure that the excitement does not fade into a passing fancy, but rather leads to real steps that revitalize the U.S.’s economic dynamism.

This item is cross-posted at The Huffington Post.

Reframing Climate Change

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

A recently released Pew poll on Americans’ views on climate change should worry progressives. According to the survey, there has been a significant drop in the percentage of Americans who believe that there is proof that manmade global warming is happening. Also worrisome is the decline in the percentage of people who think that climate change is a “very serious” problem.

The poll of 1,500 Americans found that 57 percent of respondents think there is “solid evidence” that the Earth is warming, down from 71 percent in April 2008. It also found a startling drop in the number of people who think that global warming is “very serious,” from 44 percent in April 2008 to 35 percent today. Particularly striking is the fact that the declines have occurred across the partisan spectrum, with fewer Democrats, Republicans, and Independents all saying they see evidence for warming.

There are several reasons for the growing doubts about climate change. A major factor is media coverage of the issue. Even though climate change is settled science, the media continue to give a platform to skeptics, falsely giving the public the impression that there is no consensus on the issue. (Exhibit A: George Will, not only a marquee name at the Washington Post, but the most widely read syndicated columnist in America.)

Another is that the science itself is so complex that Americans are especially prone to misapprehensions. For instance, a study by academics Patrick J. Egan and Megan Mullin (PDF) found that, at least for less educated Americans, there is a significant relationship between local weather conditions and people’s views on global warming. In other words, during a cooler stretch of days in the summer, some respondents are more likely to think that global warming is not a serious problem. As scientists have pointed out, short-term shifts in weather patterns are irrelevant to the broader debate about climate change.

But a likelier explanation for public cooling on global warming is the state of the economy. Simply put, it’s harder to think about saving the planet when you’re scrambling to save your job. Progressives need to do a better job of framing climate change as less a crisis to be addressed than an opportunity to be exploited. While the Obama administration has sought to make the connection between environmental stewardship and economic recovery via its “green jobs” initiative, progressives have clearly not done enough to hammer home the message.

The shift from a fossil-fuel based economy to a greener, cleaner one is obviously necessary for us to avoid the massive consequences of climate change. But by forcing the economy to innovate – always America’s strongest suit – the transformation into a clean economy just might be the spark America needs to regain its dynamism. Too few Americans know or understand this – and, consequently, their commitment to addressing climate change is proving tenuous.

“Green Shoots” on Climate Change?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

With the entire U.S. political world engaged in handicapping the likely outcome of the health care reform debate, while others focus on the Obama administration’s impending decision on strategy and troop levels for Afghanistan, there hasn’t been much attention paid outside advocacy groups to prospects for action on climate change legislation (passed, as you might recall, by the House during the summer).

The general prognosis has been pretty negative, in part because of the extreme difficulty encountered in getting the revised Waxman-Markey legislation through the House (requiring compromises that left a lot of advocates cold or lukewarm), and in part because the Senate was so absorbed with health reform.

But last weekend the leading Senate climate change legislation advocate, John Kerry, threw a change-up that will at the very least require a recalibration of expectations, by signing onto a New York Times op-edwith Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham offering a new “deal”: combining a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions with provisions liberalizing offshore oil drilling and relaxing regulations on nuclear power development.

The op-ed is worth reading in its entirety, but aside from offering conservatives the carrot of more U.S. oil and nuclear power, it also bluntly threatens the stick of unileratal action on climate change by the Obama administration:

Failure to act comes with another cost. If Congress does not pass legislation dealing with climate change, the administration will use the Environmental Protection Agency to impose new regulations. Imposed regulations are likely to be tougher and they certainly will not include the job protections and investment incentives we are proposing.

The message to those who have stalled for years is clear: killing a Senate bill is not success; indeed, given the threat of agency regulation, those who have been content to make the legislative process grind to a halt would later come running to Congress in a panic to secure the kinds of incentives and investments we can pass today. Industry needs the certainty that comes with Congressional action.

This threat may actually be welcomed by hard-core Republican pols who would lick their chops at the idea of “bureaucrats” end-running Congress to set up a cap-and-trade system, but not by those industries that would actually be affected, particularly since the business community is already divided on the issue.

The op-ed also discusses the national security case for action on climate change, and as Brad Plumer at The Vine notes, this argument polls well, has some appeal to conservatives, and also explains why Foreign Relations Committee chairman Kerry has for the moment displaced Barbara Boxer of CA as the “face” of the climate change initiative in the Senate.

Meanwhile, Nate Silver goes through the Senate membership and tries to assess which specific senators might be moved by a new bipartisan “deal” on climate change:

So what does this get the Democrats? It gets them Linsday Graham’s vote, and possibly Lisa Murkowski’s. It takes Mark Begich from a leaner to a likely yes. It might encourage Mary Landrieu, and possibly George LeMieux of Florida, to look more sympathetically at the bill. Then there are a whole host of more remote possibilities: Isakson of Georgia, and perhaps Cochran and Wicker of Mississippi or Burr of North Carolina; none of those votes are likely, but they become more plausible with offshore drilling in place. Overall, it seems to be worth something like 2-4 votes at the margin.

That would give the Kerry-Graham bill a fighting chance, especially if an additional vote or two — possibly John McCain’s — can also be picked up as a result of the nuclear energy compromise. Of course, that’s assuming that no liberals would rebel against the new provisions, but the opposition to both offshore drilling and nuclear energy seems to be fairly soft in the liberal caucus.

On this last point, it’s worth noting that Dave Roberts of Grist, a highly credible warrior for action on climate change, adjudges the concessionson oil and nuclear energy “an affordable price [to pay] for the benefits of passing a bill.”

If nothing else, Kerry’s gambit has shuffled the deck, complicated Republican claims that Democrats are uninterested in genuine bipartisanship, and offered a sign of potential progress in advance of international climate change negotiations in December. All in all, it’s a good example of strategic audacity on an extraordinarily wonky issue, and well worth watching.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Energy Efficiency Spurs Economic Growth

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

A new study from Environment Northeast (ENE), an environmental research organization, offers a rebuke to the notion that energy efficiency can only be achieved at the expense of economic growth. Studying the macroeconomic impact of efficiency policies in the Northeast, ENE finds that efficiency provides not just savings for consumers and a decrease in emissions — the usual benefits of energy efficiency — but a significant economic boost as well.

The study used a forecasting model to project the effect of efficiency programs on the economies of six New England states: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It found that efficiency programs led to gains of more than $180 billion in gross state products over 15 years, more than justifying the efficiency investments made by the states.

How exactly does energy efficiency get translated into economic growth? Saving on energy bills, consumers could then redirect that money to the wider economy. Moreover, lower energy costs give regional businesses a boost by strengthening global competitiveness and promoting further growth. So much for the false choice between the environment and the economy that skeptics would have us make.

To read the ENE report, click here.

Building a Clean Economy on an Old Tobacco Plant

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

It’s hard to imagine many new uses for a shuttered tobacco factory. Thirty-foot tall cranes designed for moving bales, a paper factory, heavy equipment including backhoes, fork-lifts and tractors, and old cement floors stained by tobacco juice made sense for tobacco. But the odds that this plant, situated on 140 acres of land and given up by tobacco company Brown and Williamson in 2006 after its merger with R.J. Reynolds, would find a second life seemed pretty low.

Welcome to the world of sustainability and green entrepreneurs. An enormous tobacco factory in Chester, Virginia, about 20 minutes southeast of Richmond, has become the unlikely but inspiring location for an interdisciplinary group of green companies to work together and create a sustainable—and profitable—economy.

The Sustainability Park was launched in 2006 by Brenda Robinson, a Richmond-area biomass entrepreneur. She founded the Sustainability Park to create a community of businesses sharing a common vision of sustainability and renewable energy advancement.

“The Park is still creating jobs and did throughout the economic downturn,” said Robinson, the Park’s founder. “We are continuing to expand with new manufacturing facilities and equipment.”

The Sustainability Park currently has thirteen tenants, whose services include biomass production; industrial composting for landscapers and gardeners; recycling of massive amounts of debris that would otherwise go to landfills; and even a baseball training facility for Richmond-area youth that uses all-recycled equipment. Tenants in the Park also provide the important new business of LEED¬—Leadership in Environmental Energy and Design—Certification. This important program, created and monitored by the U.S. Green Building Council, provides strict standards for certifying construction as sustainable according to a variety of criteria, including the percentage of post-consumer material used and the impact on the local environment.

The Park and other projects like it across the country, belie the notion that green or sustainable projects are somehow antithetical to the free market or to capitalism; on the contrary. The Park itself is a for-profit company and the tenants are all for-profits. There is a raging market for the services the tenants provide. One company, Ace Recycling, sorts large quantities of construction debris, recovering tons of metal, biomass and other materials, for later post-consumer use, whether as wood pellets or as road surfacing—and at prices often lower than landfills.

Robinson explained that small businesses, like those at the Sustainability Park, are currently constrained by the lack of growth capital and government programs are not structured to aid these types of projects.

“We have been resourceful without government assistance,” said Robinson, “but infusion of government shovel-ready funding would have created many more sustainable jobs and additional tax revenue while helping the environment, promoting creative entrepreneurship and clean energy solutions.”

These businesses do need help from government, whether with improved access to stimulus funds; reducing the red tape often required at the federal or state level to apply for and receive grants; and increased investment in research and development. Recently, the Park considered applying for a federal grant to help increase efficiency of their own energy use, which could have saved $250,000 a year. They stopped the application process when they discovered that the regulations in place—including the requirement to purchase a $30,000 energy audit and a limit of 25% on the company’s savings—would have dramatically reduced their economic impact.

Yet, the profitability and early success of the Park’s tenants reveals the tremendous promise of clean technology as a business model and investment for society. Robinson noted the co-location of such varied “green” businesses has triggered tremendous cooperation, brainstorming, and even business deals within the Park. A recycler, for instance, sold material to another tenant to build a road.

The innovation and entrepreneurial spirit at the Park shows that America can indeed grow its way out of the current economy and into a new clean economy, where we will begin leading the world again. Our policymakers need to open the door and where helpful, provide incentives and ease regulatory burdens. The new generation of green entrepreneurs will do the rest.

For evidence, just see the facts. Less than three years later, $20 million has been invested in the Park, which has created 80 local jobs—including rescuing many employees who lost their jobs when the tobacco factory closed.