Boucher’s bill to fund CCS technology at the expense of rate-payers

A few months ago, the debate about greenhouse gas policy in Washington was in the Senate focused on Lieberman-Warner. That effort ultimately failed, as a good idea (reduce GHG emissions within a market framework) got turned into a really crummy bill. Good intentions were bedeviled by lousy execution. Conventional wisdom says that the next effort to develop a U.S. GHG plan will emerge from the House, and specifically from the House Energy committee.

This week, we got our first look at where their priorities lie, and it is not pretty. If there was any lesson taken from L-W's failure, it seems to have been that if your long-term goal is a crummy bill, you might as well just skip the whole good intentions part.

The intellectual bankruptcy of conservatism: Heritage even opposes energy efficiency

Conservative think tanks remain oblivious and impervious to the facts. They cling to global warming denial and delay even in...

To solve global warming, we need to support every alternative transportation pathway

The following is a guest essay from Bob Rose, executive director of the U.S. Fuel Cell Council. This essay responds...

Dow Chemical ordered to clean up dioxin downstream of headquarters

Dow Chemical on Wednesday was ordered to clean up dioxin in homes and yards downstream of its Michigan headquarters, the...

Why McCain hates renewables but pretends he loves them

McCain has been an opponent of renewable energy all his political life. Why? He is a conservative — and that...

Prince Charles sparked controversy when he expressed doubt in GM crops

The British royal family is no stranger to controversy and media attention, but Prince Charles caused a new kind of...

The cheaper the power, the more we use

I'm going to geek out for a second. But first, check out this graph:

I suppose there are two lessons:

1. Price and consumption are not perfectly correlated. Clearly there are many non-price factors affecting electricity consumption. (These include, at least, the local climate, building size and type, and local energy efficiency policies.) But still ...
2. Price definitely affects use, and the fit gets better as you move up the price axis. The more expensive electricity is, the less likely consumers are to be profligate.

In energy circles it's sometimes alleged that consumers are price insensitive or economically irrational about consumption. There's some truth to that, but it's only a partial truth.

These charts help demonstrate why carbon pricing can be effective. Putting a price on carbon -- or a price on energy -- acts to reduce consumption. Price is not the only factor and it may not even be the biggest factor, but it does appear to matter. And it appears to matter more above about 10 or 12 cents per kilowatt hour.

This hooks into a larger debate in the Western Climate Initiative.

Los Angeles utility starts to squawk as it stares down a $700 million carbon bill

Regulators have won praise for speed and thoughtfulness with which they have laid the groundwork for implementation of A.B. 32, the landmark bill that aims to bring California's greenhouse gas emissions down to 1990 levels by 2020. But even within a single state, climate change legislation creates winners and losers, and regional tensions are starting to show.

California's climate plan consists of a slew of new efficiency standards, regulations, and reduction measures -- as well as a cap-and-trade system to place a lid on total emissions. It's the cap-and-trade system that is part of the present pushback.

At issue in particular are the long-term contracts that the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP) has entered into for coal-based electricity. Although coal has kept L.A.'s electricity some of the cheapest in the state, the utility will have to pay enormous sums for carbon allowances under the new law.

It's always instructive to unpack some of the distortions that surround the politics of climate change legislation. Officials from L.A. seem to be trying out three different angles in their resistance to the bill. The first is that the steep cost of the allowances will divert money away from energy efficiency and renewable energy programs.

House passes an energy bill that combines increased drilling with expansion of renewables

After a day-long debate over energy legislation, the House passed the Democrats’ “Comprehensive American Energy Security & Consumer Protection Act,”...