Blogs: New Energy

After the Apollo Summit, I noted that "America's governors have begun to throw down over who can become the most energy independent and bring in the most jobs."

Looks like Iowa is joining the fray. From the Des Moines Register:

Iowa lawmakers are trying to put together the pieces for an ambitious plan to help Iowa fully wean itself off foreign oil by 2025, possibly becoming the first state to do so.

"The biomass capabilities of Iowa's soil are the best in the world, and the wind that blows in our state is the best in the world," Rep. Nathan Reichert, a Democrat from Muscatine, said Tuesday. "When you have those two resources, you just need to add a sprinkling of very bright, highly trained people, and we should have a pretty good opportunity."

Lawmakers want to set up an 11-member advisory council to create, by a December deadline, a statewide energy independence plan. They also want to authorize the Department of Economic Development to spend $100 million over four years on renewable power industries and research.

This is key legislation for Gov. Chet Culver and legislative leaders, who hope to trigger a new growth spurt in Iowa's wind, solar and biofuel industries.

...

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There's wide public support for Congress to tackle global warming, but Congress has work to do to sift through the details and forge consensus around a specific plan.

At a House hearing yesterday, Bush Administration energy official Thomas Shope sought to push a pessimistic view on when we'll be able to capture carbon dioxide from coal-fired plants, and store it underground, out of the atmosphere.

CQ.com reports:

Thomas D. Shope ... said that technology is unlikely to be available at an affordable cost before 2025, under funding levels for research and development recommended by the administration ... By 2025, a power plant using carbon sequestration technology would be about 10 percent more expensive than a standard pulverized-coal plant [and] by 2045, the costs would be roughly equivalent.

If that timetable became accepted, that would stymie attempts to make significant progress in fighting global warming by 2020, before the problem gets out of hand.

Or as a National Resources Defense Council official said at the hearing, "we'd all be fried" by 2045.

The political purpose of Shope's testimony may be to drive a wedge between factions within the Democratic caucus.

Fortunately, members of both key factions rejected Shope's pessimism.

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The following was initially posted at The Huffington Post

America's governors have begun to throw down over who can become the most energy independent and bring in the most jobs. Will the presidential candidates be next?

Yesterday marked the end of a landmark event, the first Apollo Summit for Clean Energy & Good Jobs. The three-day conference of the Apollo Alliance brought together labor leaders, business executives, environmental advocates and community organizers to build a clean energy future that will create millions of good-paying, high-skill jobs.

The highlight of the Summit was when Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick pledged (see the video) to make his state a leader in renewable energy...

I don't just want the wind farms. I want the companies that build the turbines. I want the ones that assemble the hybrid vehicles and consult on the conservation strategies. I want the companies that design and manufacture the solar panels. The whole integrated industry ought to and can have a place in Massachusetts ... I really believe that if we get this right, the whole world will be our customer.

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The Apollo Alliance Summit took its campaign for energy independence and good jobs t more »

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Senators Hillary Clinton (NY) and Bernie Sanders (VT) thanked Apollo Summiteers for coming to Capitol Hill and pressing their representatives to create good jobs by investing in renewable energy.

At a lunchtime event in the Senate, Sen. Sanders said of the labor-environmental partnership at the heart of the Apollo Alliance, "This is a marriage made in heaven. This is a marriage that will move heaven and earth." And Sen. Clinton noted it's a "tremendous asset" to bring together "those who care about the environment and those who care about the economy."

Both echoed the theme of the entire summit, as Sen. Sanders proclaimed "to be pro-environment is to be pro-jobs," while Sen. Clinton talked of job creation efforts in upstate New York involving biofuels, clean coal and green buildings.

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Apollo Summiteers are off to Capitol Hill today, meeting with congresspeople and their staffs and pressing for increased government support of renewable energy.

Before they took to the Hill, Rep. Jay Inslee (WA) addressed the Summit and deemed the Apollo Alliance the "most important coalition" in America today, because "this is a matter of our American destiny ... to lead the world in solving this global warming crisis."

Though he cautioned that without strong government policies to quickly create clean energy jobs, those jobs would go to other countries such as China, Germany, England and Denmark.

He argued that a cap-and-trade system to limit carbon dioxide emissions was needed to create those jobs. Otherwise, "companies use the atmosphere as their garbage dump for free."

Inslee characterized the debate as between "the optimists and pessimists," and Americans are "the greatest optimists in the world and the greatest innovators in the world."

And with that, the Apollo optimists headed to the Hill.

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Monday night's dinner speakers offered a common theme: the future of our economy is tied to the future of our environment.

Keynote speaker Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell emphasized that the development of renewable energy is not just "a race for energy independence" but also "a race for economic superiority," where we will lose our strong economic position in the world if we drag our feet. "It is absolutely criminal that we are moving at a snail's pace." (Watch the video.)

Gov. Rendell pointed to the Gamesa wind energy project in Pennsylvania as a model. Gamesa representative Michael Peck already addressed the dinner audience, explaining how their "sustainable partnership" with the United Steelworkers is on its way to bring 1,000 good-pay, high-skill union jobs to the Keystone State.

(Check out this American Prospect piece for more about how the Gamesa project came to be.)

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Oh, it's on.

After Gov. Deval Patrick declared his intention to make Massachusetts the capital of renewable energy, Gov. Bill Ritter threw down the gauntlet on behalf of his Colorado.

Patrick, who won election promising support for a groundbreaking wind farm off of Cape Cod, announced yesterday (watch the video):

I don't just want the wind farms. I want the companies that build the turbines. I want the ones that assemble the hybrid vehicles and consult on the conservation strategies. I want the companies that design and manufacture the solar panels. The whole integrated industry ought to and can have a place in Massachusetts ... I really believe that if we get this right the whole world will be our customer.

Then Ritter (watch the video) upped the ante:

Governor Patrick talks about bringing jobs to Massachusetts. We're going to arm wrestle you for those jobs because we want those same manufacturing plants.

This competition is nothing but healthy for our energy future, as Ritter noted:

...that's a good thing to have two governors competing for those jobs, competing in this industry to build out the turbines competing, to have the wind farms located in their state. That's the right way for us to think about it.

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Damon Silvers, Associate General Counsel of the AFL-CIO stunned the room this afternoon, announcing that while there's $160 trillion of fossil fuels currently underground, the economic costs of unchecked climate change will total between $700 and $1,400 trillion -- possibly causing a global depression.

Silvers said that's why the AFL-CIO backs investing union pension assets into clean energy funds -- because you're not responsibly investing for the future, if you're not investing in a sustainable future.

Further, Tom Croft of the Heartland Network stressed that it's important for unions to control their assets and invest in sustainable projects that will create good jobs.

Investment experts at the "Moving Labor & Public Pension Funds into Clean Energy Investments" panel assured attendees that the rapid growth of the clean energy market means it's easier to create financially sound, diversified portfolios.

In turn, there is no trade-off between investing green and making green. With the help of folks who know the energy industry , it's not hard to do both.

And since there are hundreds of billions of dollars in union pension funds, a clean energy investment strategy may have significant impact.

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This morning's "Policies and Partnerships for a Clean Power Future" session found wide agreement from union officials and business leaders on how we should reform our energy policies.

Todd Foley of BP Solar and Jim Gordon of Cape Wind both lamented the "start and stop" nature of our government's involvement in promoting renewable energy.

Gordon advocated long-term policies, including tax incentives for production and power-purchasing agreements with utilities, while IBEW Local 103's Marty Aikens supported residential tax credits .

Lee Smith of the National Photovoltaic Construction Partnership pushed for state and local governments to create more demand by purchasing clean energy from domestic manufacturers. Foley concurred that if smart policies create domestic markets, home-grown manufacturing will make good business sense.

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