Politics

Which side are you on? The solar trade wars

January 8, 2012

Should we worry about Chinese government subsidies to its solar industry? Or send the Chinese a thank-you note?

A group of seven US-based manufacturers of solar panels is alarmed. These manufacturers, led by Solar World, a German firm with a plant in Oregon, filed a complaint with the United States International Trade Commission, which reached a preliminary conclusion in December that US companies were, in fact, being harmed by subsidized imports. If the Commerce Department goes on to find that Chinese firms have been dumping solar panels on the US market at prices below their costs, it could impose steep tariffs of 50 to 250% on Chinese panels, according to this report in The Times by Matt Wald. The Chinese government provides billions of dollars of low-cost financing and free or cheap land to Chinese solar firms.

Jigar Shah

But much of the solar industry–led by Jigar Shah, the founder of Sun Edison, entrepreneur and environmental advocate–thinks this complaint is a terrible idea. Tariffs  would raise the costs of solar power to US business and consumers, at a time when those are coming down; they could also set off a solar trade war that would harm other US solar companies.

As it happens, the U.S. had a trade surplus of nearly $1.9 billion in the solar sector with China in 2010, as exports of raw material and factory equipment more than offset imports of finished solar panels, according to the Solar Electric Industries Association,. What’s more, Jigar says, most of the 100,000 or so jobs in the US solar industry — he says as much as 97-98% — are downstream of the manufacturing business in project development, logistics, construction and installation.

“SolarWorld’s petition will do far more damage than good to the U.S. solar industry as a whole,” Jigar wrote in this letter to Gordon Brinser of Solar World. “Every morning, thousands of hard-working Americans put on their tool belts and go build solar power plants. Our country needs more of those jobs, not fewer.”

What got me thinking about this brouhaha was an email the other day from a California company called Solar Power Inc., or SPI, that underscored for me just how committed the Chinese are to getting their solar panels onto rooftops in the US.  SPI said it had secured construction financing worth $44 million from the state-owned China Development Bank to fund construction of solar projects in New Jersey. [click to continue…]

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The eerie quiet of the insurance industry

January 5, 2012

If there’s one industry that ought to be concerned about the threat of global warming, it’s the insurance industry. OK, the ski industry, too, but I digress.

Dave Jones, California’s insurance commissioner, recently put it this way: “Climate change is an obvious physical threat to us all, but increasingly it also poses a serious financial threat to the insurance industry…” When extreme weather causes damage, insurers pay.

So you’d expect insurance companies to be among the most forceful voices in corporate America calling for the regulation greenhouse gas emissions.

Uh, no. They’ve been eerily quiet.

And, at the least, you’d expect them to be proudly steering some of their massive investments to clean energy or energy efficiency projects aimed at reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.

Wrong again.

“It’s surprising, in a sense, because they have so much to lose from climate change,” says Sharlene Leurig, senior manager of the insurance program at Ceres, a nonprofit coalition of investor and environmental groups. But, she notes, insurance is a conservative business. The industry is all about risk, but it doesn’t want to take the risk of speaking out on climate change. [click to continue…]

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Why I’m (still) an optimist

January 1, 2012

Happy New Year! And good riddance to 2011, a year during which we made little or no progress on some of the issues that I care most about: climate change, the long-term federal debt, social mobility (aka the American dream), and our dysfunctional Congress. Yet I remain an optimist.

Texas drought 2011

I could write many words about our woes. Instead, I’ll try to be succinct. On the climate issue, global emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning jumped by the largest amount on record in 2010, we learned recently, and 2011 surely brought further increases.  Concentrations of CO2 are 39% above where they were at the start of the industrial era and approaching the point when some scientists say it will be nearly impossible to contain global warming, the Guardian reports. Neither the US nor the UN moved closer to regulating CO2. In a discouraging development, Republicans Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich backed away from their once-sensible support of greenhouse gas regulation, in what can only be seen as shameless pandering to the know-nothing wing of the Republican Party. Discouraging, too, was the Fukushima nuclear disaster, which will slow down the growth of carbon-free nuclear power. So will the failure of Solyndra. Meanwhile, the U.S. suffered massive flooding of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, a terrible drought in Texas, record wildfires and at least 2,941 monthly weather records that were broken by extreme events, according to the NRDC.. Coincidence? Uh, no.

Like the atmospheric concentrations of CO2, the federal budget deficit has been growing.That’s no coincidence either. We’re living beyond our means, whether by burning fossil fuels or taxpayer dollars, and sticking future generations with the cleanup bill. Just last week, the White House asked for a $1.2 trillion increase in the federal debt limit, raising it to about $16.4 trillion. According to Marketplace Radio, that amounts to about $52,000 for every American. For a typical  family of four, that’s bigger than the mortgage. [click to continue…]

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In defense of the plastic bag

December 22, 2011

Pity the much-maligned plastic bag.

Plastic bags are being banned or taxed in cities and counties across America–just this week in Seattle, before that in San Francisco, Portland and Washington, D.C.  Beginning in January, Montgomery County, MD, where I live, will impose a five-cent charge for carryout bags at all retail stores. Like most of my neighbors (median household income in the county tops $92,000) I can afford the extra nickel.

But I’m not persuaded that plastic bag bans or taxes makes sense. Here’s why.

They’re not  based on science. Independent studies show that plastic bags are environmentally preferable to paper. Other suggest that, when they are reused, they are preferable to the reusable plastic or cloth sacks that many of us tote around.

Some of the arguments put forth for the bans don’t hold up. That plastic waste waste in the oceans you’ve probably read about? No, it’s not the size of Texas. Nor is it made of plastic bags.

Getting rid carryout bags won’t lead to a long-term solution to the problem of plastic waste. Maybe instead of banning or taxing bags, we should be recycling them. That’s the argument being put forth by a company called Hilex Poly, which will recycle tens of millions of pounds of plastic bags, sacks and wraps this year, and would like to do more.

You may disagree but after digging into this subject for a while, I’m certain about only one thing: It’s complicated. [click to continue…]

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Making sense out of Durban

December 12, 2011

So what the heck happened in Durban? Is the world closer to dealing with the problem of global warming? Or not?

If, like me, you aren’t a devotee of the UN climate negotiations, reading the headlines isn’t much help.

From the glass-half-full crowd: Progress at end of Durban Cop17 climate talks (LA Times). Reason to smile about Durban climate conference (Eugene Robinson in the WPost). Climate deal salvaged after marathon talks (The Guardian).

From the pessimists: How the world failed to address climate change–again (Michael Levi at The Atlantic.com). The Durban climate deal failed to meet the needs of the developing world (The Guardian, again). COP out (South Africa’s Cape Times).

COP out strikes me as about right. To gain some insight in what happened, and why, I called David Victor, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, the author of an excellent new book called Global Warming Gridlock and one of the smartest people I know when it comes to understanding global climate politics. David has followed the UN process closely since its beginnings in the early 1990s, and he has become convinced that it is the wrong way to deal with the climate threat.

David Victor

Durban didn’t change his mind.

“In terms of substance, they have not really achieved much,” David says. “They’ve agreed to have negotiations about what they might agree to in the future.” [click to continue…]

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Crony capitalism at Safeway

November 29, 2011

A beautiful new Safeway opened recently in Bethesda, MD, where I live. It’s  just a couple of blocks from a nearly-new Giant supermarket. To attract shoppers, Safeway sold turkeys before Thanksgiving for 39 cents a pound. Maybe it was 33 cents. In any event, I hope we can all agree that this kind of thing–namely, competition–is what makes America great.

Except, that is, if you live nearby in Washington, D.C., where, as The Washington Post reports today, Safeway poses big hurdle to plan for Southeast Wal-Mart.

Walmart, it so happens, wants to open a new store at a long-neglected shopping center known as Skyland in one of the low-income precincts Washington. The trouble is, a Safeway across the street has a covenant from the 1990s that prevents a competitor from locating in Skyland. Safeway, to its credit, has 15 stores in the district and is one of the city’s biggest employers. But why it was given a promise that no competitor would locate nearby is anybody’s guess.

D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray’s office says hizzoner is trying to work out a compromise with Safeway.

Craig Muckle, Safeway’s manager of public affairs, tells The Post:

We want to be cooperative, but there is a reason that the covenant is in place to protect our interests.

Give him credit for honesty, if not for his faith in markets. He goes on to explain that city neighborhoods, unlike the suburbs, may not have enough buying power to support two big grocery stores.

In the city, with one possible exception, there is no grocery store directly across the street from another grocery store….To have more than one…someone may survive, someone may not.

Quelle horreur! Competition that results in winners and losers is evidently fine when it comes to the Superbowl, political campaigns and even suburban shopping, but not when it comes to buying groceries in your nation’s capital.

 

 

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Climate policy: big ideas are dead

November 16, 2011

Right, left or center, most agree that U.S. climate and energy policy today is, at best, an ineffective and inefficient patchwork.

Better get used to it, said a bipartisan panel of Washington insiders today (Nov. 16) at the Atlantic Green Intelligence Forum.

For now, and for the rest of the Obama administration, when it comes to energy and climate, the White House and Congress will use the tools at hand, and not invent new ones.

“We all agree–big bills are dead,” said Carol Browner, the former White House climate czar and a Democrat.

“I never want to hear the word comprehensive again because once you hear the word comprehensive, you know a bill is never going to pass,” said James Connaughton, the former Bush II White House environmental adviser.

What this means, unfortunately, is that the U.S. won’t get an energy and climate policy that is sufficient to deal with the threat of global warming until 2013 at the earliest, even as greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise rapidly. Just a week ago, the International Energy Agency warned that it will be impossible to hold global warming levels to safe levels without dramatic shifts towards low-carbon energy sources in the next few years. [click to continue…]

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Time for a carbon tax?

November 9, 2011

“I was a huge supporter of cap and trade,” said Wayne Leonard, the CEO of Entergy, a $11 billion utility company.

“We developed enormously elegant solutions, but they couldn’t get done.”

Taxing carbon emissions is the next best way to deal with the threat of global climate disruptions, he said, in part because it would give the energy industry a degree of certainty about how to deploy its capital.

“A simple tax on every one is a starting point,” Leonard said. Proceeds could be used to reduce the federal deficit or rebated to consumers.

Leonard spoke today (Nov. 9) at a launch event for the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, a new organization that is succeeding the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. Eileen Claussen, who has directed the Pew Center for 13 years, will lead the new group, which has raised money from three so-called strategic partners — Entergy, HP and Shell — as well as Alcoa Foundation, Bank of America, GE, The Energy Foundation, Duke Energy, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Pew is no longer a backer.

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Daniel Yergin: Why shale gas is like Walmart

November 8, 2011

The breakthrough energy innovation of the 21st century is not thin-film solar, sophisticated wind turbines, advanced biofuels or small-scale nukes.

It’s shale gas.

So says Daniel Yergin, the energy guru and author of The Quest: Energy, Security and the Remaking of the Modern World (Penguin, $35), who was interviewed today (Nov. 8) by Walter Isaacson at the Aspen Institute in Washington. Yergin, the best-selling author, consultant and all-around energy guru, is right: The ability to extract natural gas from shale, using a controversial technique known as fracking, is reshaping America’s energy landscape.

“So far this century, this is the biggest innovation in energy, in terms of scale and impact,” Yergin said. He likened its impact on the energy business to the arrival of a new Walmart in town, which shakes up competitors, big and small.

The impact of cheap, abundant natural gas on energy usage has enormous implications for the climate crisis.

Cleaner-burning gas could replace dirty coal as a fuel to generate electricity. Then again, Yergin said: “It’s does create a more challenging marketplace for wind and solar and everything else.” [click to continue…]

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Flying green? Yes, say Alaska and United

November 7, 2011

Technological progress is impossible to predict, but it’s safe bet that we won’t be flying solar- or wind-powered airplanes anytime soon. So the best hope of flying without emitting large volumes of greenhouse gases lies with biofuels.

This week, there’s good news on bringing biofuels in the air. Beginning Wednesday, Alaska Airlines will fly 75 commercial passenger flights in the U.S. powered in part by biofuels. “This is a historic week for aviation,” declared Alaska Air’s CEO, Bill Ayer, in a press release. Today (Nov. 7), United Airlines make the first U.S. commercial flight using an advanced biofuel made from algae, according to Reuters.

Keith Loveless, vice president of corporate and legal affairs, who oversees sustainability, told me: “These fuels will make a meaningful contribution towards reducing the aviation industry’s environmental impact, and towards reducing fuel volatility, which is an incredible problem for the airline industry.”

But–and you knew there would be a but–biofuels remain way too expensive to replace jet fuels today. That’s why Tom Vilsack, the agriculture secretary, got on the phone with me last week so that the Obama administration will do all it can to advance progress on aviation biofuels. “We are engaged right now in aggressively promoting research to determine the most efficient non-food feed crop that can be used,” he said. [click to continue…]

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