Henry Henderson's Blog: Solving Global Warming

Engaging Change: Choosing for the Future

2009-06-22T21:24:04Z

Change is coming to the Midwest.

In fact, its here. We are already in the midst of transformative changes to our economy, climate and the quality of life of our communities. And there is no way to prevent it from continuing to come at us fast.

For many, the experience has already been disruptive and the anticipation of further change brings a sense of understandable anxiety. The challenge before us is to figure out how to best address the challenges of a changing future.

A set of reports that have come out this month on climate, energy and the economy illustrate two very different visions of change for our nation and the region, and the urgent need for us to choose the right pathway forward. They are contrasting visions, but the both clearly point out the need to move forward with quick deliberation as a community. We are in the driver's seat and will need to quickly choose which road we will go down to meet the threat of climate change and the transforming global economy of which we are a part.

Personally, I think the choice is pretty clear...

Exhilarating Economic Rebirth Through Clean Energy:

Two reports issued in early June show us a way out of the looming climate crisis AND also offer a roadmap for the Midwest to regain its industrial mantle in sustainable fashion.

First, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs released an exhaustive report on what is needed for the region in a new energy economy. It is a clarion call to elected officials in the middle of the country to lead the way towards a carbon cap and clean energy policy that will renew and reinvigorate our economy and create jobs.

And, as if answering the Council's challenge, the Midwest Governor's Association released recommendations for a regional carbon cap created by a consortium of industry, energy, and environmental interests on behalf of six governors and one Canadian premiere.

In both cases, diverse interests came together to protect both the economy and environment while working through some of the nation's toughest energy issues. In both cases, it was recognized that the way we have been doing things is not only unworkable from an environmental perspective; but from an economic perspective too. We have to change how we do business. That is the message coming not just from NGOs like NRDC, Fresh-Energy and Clean Wisconsin, but also from Exelon Energy, ConocoPhillips, Ford Motor Company, Caterpillar, the Governors of six states and a Canadian Premier. These are some seriously diverse voices!

Scary Climate Disaster:

The variety of voices has not quelled the anxiety of many in the region, particularly as it relates to concern over how households in the region will be affected. Up until now, the anxiety has been focused on utility bills. Some in the Business-As-Usual crowd recklessly and irresponsibly push the fiction that utility bills will skyrocket. Their goal is to keep the region steeped in 19th century technologies and mentalities. They wish us to sleep walk into a future that is tied to a past that can only marginalize our economy and expose us to a dangerous future...The dangers of that future are underscored by a report issued last week by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Last week, NOAA released the long-delayed US Climate Impacts report, sort of a domestic version of the historic IPCC report on climate change. The Midwest section of the new climate report is eye-opening. It underscores the threats to the health, safety and economy of the heartland if we do not move quickly to confront climate change: more killing heat storms like the devastating 1995 heat wave in Chicago that killed over 700 people, more flooding coupled with more drought, more sewer overflows, more invasive diseases and pests, stress on agricultural animals and plants, dropping water levels in the Great Lakes to the harm on shipping and critical infrastructure.

Thankfully, the truly diverse set of stakeholders assembled by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the Midwest Governors are unwilling to pay that price and have their eyes on what is clearly the better vision of change. It is a view informed by careful analysis, dialogue and a real commitment to practical policy and action that can move the region into a sustainable future.

They are making the case to the nation that the Midwest will not be the stumbling block that some expect (and hope) our region will be. We plan to retake the mantle of industrial powerhouse with a full embrace of the clean energy manufacturing that is already flocking to factories in Michigan and Ohio.

Change is inevitable.

And it is upon us.

And while it can be a wrenching experience, this is change we cannot avoid. What the Council and Governors' reports make clear, however, is that we have significant opportunities to meet the challenge and make things better through intelligent, inventive responses that help usher in a cleaner, more vibrant, clean economy. In short, the change before us can be good. But only if we choose the right kind.

FutureGen is Now

2009-06-13T00:14:29Z

Energy Secretary Chu has moved to restore the "FutureGen" project that the Bush Administration irresponsibly cancelled last summer. The action restarts an important effort to move the nation into a new energy future, which the past Administration's gaff had rendered "Too much Future and not enough Gen..."

FutureGen is a large-scale carbon capture and sequestration project that has the potential to manage coal's dangerous carbon emissions, along with significant reductions other pollutants such as mercury. While getting the federal climate bill signed into law is far more central to solving global warming, green lighting the FutureGen project sends an important signal and sets up a test of technology that could be part of the climate fight.

Carbon capture and sequestration (or CCS) removes CO2 from power plant air emissions and pumps deep underground into storage. FutureGen is intended as a demonstration project, to prove that the technology can work on a commercial scale. With coal generating more than half of the electricity in many American states (as well as countries like China and India), it is important to determine if this technology can be rapidly put into place to control greenhouse gas emissions, as a bridge to a broader clean energy economy.

Eventually this technology could help to address some of the serious harms caused by burning coal. And while problems with extraction, water pollution, destroyed mountain tops, poisonous coal ash floods demonstrate that there is no "clean coal," addressing global warming pollution from this fuel source is critically and immediately important.

While the technology could be important, the short term signal that this announcement sends could be even more valuable. It is a signal that American ingenuity is moving forward to fix the climate change problem. As we approach the international climate talks in Copenhagen this December, today's announcement takes on further importance.

Some may complain that FutureGen carries an undue cost that should not be shouldered by the American taxpayer and suggest that this research should have been handled by the coal and manufacturing industries.

I understand the sentiment---polluters should pay for their pollution.

But the reality is that absent a price on carbon, the private sector is not going to investto control what they can dump on the public for free. Absent a price on greenhouse gas emissions, the pollution is subsidized by the public, and the ultimate costs come in mortal threats to the public health, safety wellbeing and security. The immediate and long-term threats need to be addressed NOW. This forces public investment in order to bring the technology to scale and FutureGen is an important down payment on that investment.

Recognition of the need to put a price on greenhouse gas pollution reinforces the essential nature of the Waxman-Markey bill making its way through Congress. It also shows why we cannot dither on testing and demonstrating CCS technology---particularly if it means waiting for industries that have shown little interest in cleaning up their horrific operations. As Senator Durbin noted today:

"In my time in Congress, I can't recall a project that has greater scientific and practical significance than FutureGen, not to mention the enormous economic benefit it will have in Illinois."

With the announcement, the future is now. So let's get the capture technology where it needs to be and then prove the "Gen" part quickly.

Two Schools: a changing view of coal in the Midwest?

2009-05-22T16:18:52Z

A look at last week's news clearly illustrates the fascinating rift developing in the way that Midwestern states are looking at coal right now.

Happily, there are a number of states taking actions that challenge the pundits' view that the Heartland's slavish focus on the dirty rocks will imperil climate advances and public health.

...And then there are states like Indiana, that do not seem to grasp the changes occurring around them....

Old School

The news that that the State of Indiana had hired a former coal industry insider to oversee enforcement of pollution permits was unhappy-making, but not a surprise last week.

The new Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM) appointment is David Joest, whose private sector career involved fighting environmental laws tooth and nail as an attorney for Peabody Coal in Indiana and Michigan. Now as assistant commissioner for the Office of Legal Counsel, he will be in charge of enforcing the laws he did his best to oppose.

Mr. Joest's experience would seem a disadvantage for that particular job, but in a region where coal's human health, environmental and climate change impacts have traditionally been sidelined by foot dragging politicians mysteriously charmed by the commoditization of the dirty little rocks it is indicative of the old school politicians' scrambling efforts to protect their baby against a new clean energy future.

Despite the many jobs likely created by aggressive embrace of the clean energy economy, the reduction of energy bills from energy efficiency, the positive impact to public health from a switch to renewable energy, and the necessary climate protections that would occur; many old school officials are fooling themselves into believing they can keep powering themselves with the same antiquated coal practices and other dirty fuels from a by-gone era.

And so, as the carbon discussions in DC have intensified, so has the scare rhetoric in protection of coal, over the protection of people. Again, look at Indiana where the governor made wild assertions that a national climate and clean energy bill would increase household energy prices by 50% --- and worth noting that the comments came before there was any bill before Congress, so assumedly the numbers were plucked straight out of polluted air.

Thankfully, there is a new school in the Midwest too.

Six governors (and one Canadian premiere) are set to reverse the trend with a regional climate agreement that will move their states forward on a clean energy path. Their signatures will cap carbon pollution, safeguard the public well-being, jump start state economies, protect the climate, and push the region away from the outdated delusions that would otherwise keep us tied to 19th century technologies.

I look forward to Governor Quinn's signature on the agreement. The ascendant thinking from Illinois and the other participating states can give added momentum to the national climate debate and create the signal to help bring the Old School along.

Indiana Couple (crop 2) photo by Kevin Saff via Flickr shot in Michigan City, IN.

Carbon Cap for the Midwest: despite the pundits, Midwest now leading the way to clean energy

2009-05-14T23:23:45Z

While all eyes are on DC to bring the nation closer to a clean energy future, there was big news this week in Minneapolis.

That is where the better part of two years of negotiation culminated in a groundbreaking agreement to reduce global warming pollution and revitalize the regional economy through clean energy development. I was honored to be among the advisory group appointed by governors from the states of Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa, and Kansas (and joined by the Premier of Manitoba) who have been working on a regional plan together to cap carbon pollution and advance clean energy to be in place by 2012.

Admittedly, six states is just a start. But don't let the regional scope of the plan distract you. When you consider that the commentators and talking heads watching the DC debates repeatedly refer to the Midwest as a road block to national action to cap carbon emissions, what happened in Minneapolis is critically important. A group of environmentalists, energy utilities, petroleum and manufacturing business representatives (all appointed by the governors) managed to work through what are the hardest and most contentious issues in our nation's energy policy, and emerged with an integrated system that is actually more rigorous on carbon and clean energy investments than the one being debated in our nation's capital. It sends an undeniable signal to our representatives in Washington that "it can be done" and the Heartland is a leading part of the solution.

More importantly, it can be done in a way that protects the health, safety, economy, and security of the nation. After all, that's what we've negotiated for the region.

I am waiting for news that Governor Quinn has signed on to the recommendations in Illinois. And I hope that the rest of the governors follow suit in time to head to DC to make it clear that the Midwest is opening the road to a reinvigorated economy and clean energy future.

Newton, Iowa: Renewal Through Renewables

2009-04-24T17:00:39Z

How appropriate and auspicious it was to have President Obama spend part of his Earth Day in Newton, Iowa this week.

The small town, just east of Des Moines, gives us a concrete glimpse of how investment in the new energy economy can transform the slumbering giant of Midwestern manufacturing and move our nation's economy into a cleaner, more resilient and vibrant future, beginning now.

For generations, Newton was been synonymous with Maytag, one of the great 19th Century manufacturing enterprises that helped transform and modernize the lives of Americans through entrepreneurial spirit, intelligence and determination. For more than a century, Newton was home to the company's corporate headquarters and washing machine manufacturing center. In the wave of corporate consolidations in the late 20th and early 21st Centuries, Maytag was bought out, and in 2007 the factory closed. A rust belt future loomed for Newton, as it does for much of the formerly vibrant Midwestern manufacturing centers. (See Richard Longworth, Caught in the Middle: America's Heartland and the Age of Globalism, Bloomsbury Press, New York, NY, 2008.)

But a funny thing happened with the realization that building washing machines is not all that different from building wind turbines. Just like that, Newton was revived with the introduction of TPI Composites---a company that saw real opportunities in Newton's available infrastructure and experienced work force. The former Maytag factory was quickly converted and is now producing massive blades for the wind turbines that are popping up around the nation to serve the emerging market in renewable energy in the new Century.

Newton does not stand alone. Look at Toledo where former windshield manufacturers are pumping out solar panels. Or here in Chicago where the closing of the Republic Windows and Doors factory that was an election issue for the blink of an eye has ushered in Serious Materials, a company that will use the same factory to create super-efficient windows and building materials. These are communities that embody the inspired possibility of renewal through renewables and the new clean and efficient energy economy.

Renewable energy and energy efficiency has the potential to address many of this nation's problems at once: bringing jobs back to industrial centers, eliminating dirty power sources that contribute to climate change and pollute our skies, as well as creating new industry that could quickly lift many sectors out of the economic doldrums. The signal sent by the stimulus package and omnibus bills, coupled with an increased sense that we will finally tackle global warming through long overdue legislation suggests critical momentum. Creative, green-leaning businesses may finally be looking forward to the responsive policies they deserve.

We can create new Newtons throughout the region---but only if we get serious quickly... We must build transmission lines to deliver clean power to users. We need government action to remove protectionist barriers hindering wind farms and other clean energy sources, and repeal the unfair and costly subsidies that reward producers of dirty energy. At this moment, the confluence of fresh ideas and new leadership makes it clear American industry is more ready than ever to move into a greener future.

Newton, Iowa photo by Teecycle Tim via Flickr

Solar for the South Side - A “can do” plan for urban solar array in Chicago?

2009-04-22T22:33:40Z

In today's Chicago Tribune, Josh Boak reported on a plan to install 32,800 panels in a former industrial site on Chicago's South Side. It would amount to the largest solar power project in an American urban center.

The site for the proposed solar array is promising: Chicago's West Pullman neighborhood. A century ago, this was part of the innovative and prosperous company town built by George Pullman to produce his famous railroad cars. At the time, these were the cutting edge of transportation technology, and the community was considered both an industrial wonder as well as an amazing social experiment. As technology, transportation, and industry changed, the community was left more "on the edge" than at the leading front of prosperity and productivity. The new solar energy plan has the promise to again harness cutting-edge technology as a ticket to rebirth for this once vibrant area.

While we have not seen all the details of the plan, there is a lot to like about the concept:

"Brownfields" to "Bright Fields"- investment in new, clean energy is per se good, and particularly good when it transforms a community at the heart of old, shuttered, industrial sites, with the legacy of pollution.
Locating solar generation in an urban environment adjacent to customers and a rich built environment will avoid a host of transmission issues that burden large-scale solar farms outside of metropolitan areas.
Green Jobs where they are needed - Chicago's South Side needs good jobs and will be the likely recipient of the many new green jobs that the project would create, reinvigorating the local economy.
As more of clean energy projects like this are established, the economies of scale will help to drive down the cost of solar technology.

Proposals like this one show the potential to clean up both our cities and our energy supply while bolstering the economy and environment. Apparently, not everyone shares this optimism. The Tribune's "comment forums" are rife with posts that rip the plan, complain that renewable energy is a waste and mock solar in "the Windy City."

These whingeing, negative, pewling comments bring to mind EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson's remark about the "no we can't crowd" who say NO to innovation. These nay-sayers have little faith in American ingenuity and capacity to create new technologies and build a clean energy economy.

Personally, I cannot help but feel a sense of deep, bracing, fundamentally American optimism about the promise of generating clean energy in the heart of Chicago communities like West Pullman.

Can’t Stand the Light of Day: Ohio liquid coal drops application for federal loans

2009-03-27T23:33:19Z

I saw a fascinating press release from Baard Energy today. They are a company attempting to build the first large-scale liquid coal refinery in the U.S. Oddly, the press release announces that the company is dropping its pursuit of $2 billion in loan guarantees from the Department of Energy to help finance the project. Interestingly, the company blames NRDC and Sierra Club for forcing them to pull the plug on its request for public support. From the release:

According to Mr. Baardson, the company learned that recent NRDC and Sierra Club legal challenges against permits issued by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will likely delay for years any funding from a DOE guarantee.

"This is upside down," Mr. Baardson explained, "Under the DOE guidelines, lawsuits will likely have to be settled before we can be assured that the loan guarantee funds would be made available. The DOE will also require a full environmental impact statement and this would give groups such as the NRDC and Sierra Club even more opportunities to challenge and delay the issuance of any loan guarantee."

To me, this case is an example of how the law and the economy are supposed to work: our legal challenge to the Baard proposal has illuminated the real risks, economic uncertainties and implicit inequities of the proposed plant. Far from being "upside down," the legal process is doing exactly what it is intended to do---ensuring that the environmental and public health needs are appropriately addressed before huge sums of taxpayer money are needlessly squandered on projects like this one. There is no place in the coming clean energy economy for a filthy refinery such as this and the economics will likely bear this out. The legal process is demonstrating that Mr. Baardson's dream proposal cannot survive the light of day, as my co-worker Shannon Fisk deftly summarized:

If the project cannot get money from the Department of Energy program designed to support advanced coal technology, then the State of Ohio and banks who have been asked to front the money in this economic crisis should really do some serious risk assessment. Baard blames environmentalists for their financial problems, but an environmental review is no threat to a viable project.

That last bit is central. There is a huge disparity between what Baard Energy and their liquid coal cronies claim about this facility and what they ask for in the regulatory process. Despite the repeated label of "clean coal," Baard has not committed to using carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology or otherwise limiting the facility's high CO2 emissions.

In addition, in contrast to Baard's public claims that they will use cleaner biomass in the facility, their permits potentially authorize fueling the facility entirely with high sulfur coal, which emits large amounts of sulfur dioxide, particulate matter, and other pollutants that endanger public health and the environment in the communities around the refinery. There is nothing clean about this facility and that will continue to hinder them with investors who bother to look under the hood and kick the tires...

And cleanliness of the refinery aside, does it make any sense to invest vast sums into a fuel source that emits twice the CO2 of typical gasoline? As we have covered elsewhere on Switchboard, the intelligence and defense communities have already recognized that climate change offers the biggest security risks to our national interest since the Cold War---why on Earth would we embrace a fuel source that speeds this?

The short answer is that we won't.

Baard Energy's whining aside, their money problem is not the result of our legal efforts to protect the public interest. Their money problems are the result of bad timing and a bad technology that is counter to the public interest.

We are at a point where our economy is clearly tied to our moving into a clean energy economy. Public investment, in terms of loan guarantees, tax breaks, and out-right investment in research, development and infrastructure, must be clearly tethered to clean energy, not tethered to dirty, uneconomic risks like Baard.

A February Coal Snap in Michigan: Attorney General Prevents Governor from Upholding the Law

2009-02-28T00:04:15Z

Last month, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm used her State of the State address to stake out an exciting new clean energy future for the wolverine state. By focusing on energy efficiency and renewable energy, she was just weeks ahead of President Obama's similarly visionary stimulus plan.

But despite a plethora of truly exciting energy policies outlined in the speech, one garnered the most attention, by far---a perceived assault on coal.

The state had been marching down a dangerous road, with more coal plants in development than any other in the nation. Granholm ordered her Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to re-examine the need for these plants and to ensure that a proper evaluation of alternatives had been conducted.

Basically, she was following the law; protecting the state's economy and the health of its citizens---and most importantly from a legal perspective, doing the things that the Clean Air Act requires in the interest of the people of Michigan.

But in response, the forces trying to perpetuate the old energy economy mobilized to oppose the clean energy future of the state. The ACCCE... The coal apologists... And amazingly, the state's Attorney General.

That is correct: the State of Michigan's chief law enforcement officer is actually publicly working to prevent the Governor from upholding the law...

...not to mention vitalizing the state's economy...

Last week the AG ruled, incorrectly, that the Governor overstepped her authority by asking her direct reports to fulfill the requirements of the Clean Air Act.

As a result of this political battle, the state DEQ will move forward with public comment on those proposed coal plants. Hopefully, the US EPA will step in to support the Governor's position. Beyond the legality of her actions, there is the fact that this week the EPA rejected woefully inadequate pollution permits awarded by the DEQ for a coal plant on the Northern Michigan University campus this week. And the President's call for "market-based carbon cap" legislation from Congress to deal aggressively with global warming pollution---which is also set forth in his budget as an important way to fund federal support for clean energy projects. (Of course, this is why the coal folks are trying so hard to push these plants through in Michigan...it might be their last chance for a free pass on pollution.)

Either way, NRDC's attorneys and experts will have plenty of comments to share with the state regulators and our local environmental partners who have been fighting this battle so hard...

In a time when we see so much focus on re-imagining and rebuilding our energy sector...when the industrial opportunities begin to present themselves for a state struggling as mightily as Michigan...it is unfortunate to see old economy die-hards and political opportunists fighting the broader environmental and economic good in a state that had been getting the vital leadership of a Governor promoting needed energy and economic reform.

Granholm's Grand Plan: Michigan's new clean energy vision

2009-02-05T18:29:53Z

This week, Governor Granholm of Michigan delivered a dramatic State of the State address. More than a third of it was focused on energy issues, laying out a powerful, practical and transformative vision for the state to seize the opportunity for broad renewal through a new, clean energy economy.

The spotlight fell brightest on the Governor's coal announcement. Until last night, Michigan was on the path to sink capital into more dirty coal plants than any other state in America. But today, all of those plants are on hold. The Governor put the breaks on coal development pending a thorough evaluation of need and alternative technologies. Certainly, this is an exciting development---and one that NRDC has been working with a number of other groups to bring about.

More important than this significant development is the fact that it is simply a part of the wide-ranging policy changes and programs that the Governor outlined to literally transform her state's energy sector, and set the conditions for economic renewal.

Governor Granholm is right to embrace Energy Efficiency as the keystone to renewing the economic vitality of Michigan (and the broader Midwest). Energy efficiency refocuses capital on real solutions, strengthens reliability, reboots industry, creates jobs, and saves resources. Her address signaled a similar mindset with an enthusiastic embrace of efficiency reflected in her effort to "decouple" the states utilities (in effect, changing their profit structure away from payment by the kilowatt produced; towards a rate system that rewards efficiency).

And she did not stop there. These new programs and policies were also prominent and powerful:

A pledge to reduce Michigan's fossil fuel use by 45% by 2020
A renewable energy corps putting jobless citizens to work on weatherization and efficiency projects,
A program to help homeowners take on efficiency programs with no money down
A deepening embrace of renewable energy generation and manufacturing---both of which have incredible potential in Michigan

These are all policies that don't just change how we deal with energy, but will jumpstart the economy.

Granholm, speaking as the governor of a major industrial state has enthusiastically embraced the vision of a new economy based on clean energy. The next step is to put a price on global warming pollution, which is currently a public subsidy to polluters, who unfairly compete against clean energy services.

In the Midwest, there has been a dangerous "coal rush" to build new dirty plants as if they could drag us out of decline, rather than condemn us to a retrograde Dickensian future. NRDC and other groups have been steadily challenging the worst of the planned coal plants out there---not as a narrow end in itself, but in order to make it possible to seize the promise of a safe, efficient, vibrant future. Governor Granholm seems to have that vision and this week, she staked her leadership on the promise of a clean energy future for her state.

I hope that the rest of us can follow.

Soon.

Photo: Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm (left) and Nancy Gioia, director, Hybrid Vehicle Programs, Ford Motor Company from Ford Motor Company's Flickr page.