Climate Technology

Company agrees to pay record $250 million in Superfund cleanup costs

W.R. Grace & Co. agreed to pay $250 million to reimburse the U.S. EPA for ongoing cleanup of the asbestos-ridden mining town of Libby, Mont. A mine owned by Grace […]

Carbon offsetting is not the best way for the global north to subsidize the global south

Okay, my last post summarized Tom Athanasiou and Paul Baers' arguments in favor of drastic cuts in emissions. They place responsibility on the rich and to some extent the middle class rather than the poor. As you might expect, I agree with both these points. I disagree with their arguments that carbon trading and even offsets are the best way for the global north to subsidize the global south.

Tom and Paul's argument: the rich countries are responsible for cuts exceeding 100 percent. The only way to meet that obligation is by paying for cuts in the poor nations; Tom & Paul suggest buying offsets from them.

Why use offsets? Tom and Paul argue that the size of the cuts makes it essential to use the absolutely cheapest methods, and emissions trading tends to the produce the cheapest cuts.

I have argued in the past that emissions trading may be less expensive statically, but not dynamically. Compare rule-based regulation with stringency increases against a cap-and-trade with a cap that tightens.

How will the auction vs. allocation debate affect power prices?

Last January, Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) convened hearings on the ways allocation of CO2 permits under a cap-and-trade system will impact power prices and utility profit margins. The short version, drawn from the evidence of Kyoto and other systems that have given credits away for free, is that while free allocations lower power prices in theory, in reality prices rise just as much as they would otherwise -- but they increase margins for exempt generators (i.e., coal plants). Indeed, one of the great criticisms of the Kyoto Protocol has been that it has directly led to increased profits for Europe's old coal plants.

Since then, there has been a growing chorus from (coal-heavy elements within) the electric sector arguing that utility regulations compel them to pass along any operating savings to the rate payers -- and therefore, that free allocations really do ensure lower power costs. (See here for more details on the "pass-throughs" innate to modern utility regulation.)

So on the one hand, we have the paper trail from Kyoto, and on the other hand, we have what would appear to be a pretty robust theory based on modern utility law. Who's right?

The short version: facts on the ground trump theory. The longer version is below the fold.

How cars are like cigarettes

Check out this five-star excellent post on the many similarities between tobacco and cars by Michael O'Hare. He makes the point that once-unquestioned social conventions can change quickly once activists refuse to accept "that's just the way it is" and start highlighting the costs these conventions impose.

Send your questions for the National Green Jobs Conference

A big collection of policy makers, activists, job-training types, and labor union honchos are getting together later this week in Pittsburgh for “Good Jobs, Green Jobs: A National Green Jobs […]

No sensible warming response can exclude carbon pricing

Jim Manzi, with whom I have debated warming policy responses before, has a problem with The Washington Post‘s coverage of new studies on climate change. He writes: The premise of […]

Solar-panel manufacturers dumping toxic waste in China

Solar panels may look bright and shiny, but they have a dark underbelly: production of polysilicon for panels gives off a highly toxic byproduct called silicon tetrachloride. In China, where […]

Dairy producers’ alliance responds to Gary Hirshberg of Stonyfield Farm

This essay is the latest installment in a debate between Ed Maltby and Gary Hirshberg, CE-Yo of Stonyfield Farm. Maltby opened the debate with this post; Hirshberg responded here; Maltby's response follows below. We are airing the debate at length because we think our readers should know that our organic dairy farmers have reached a crisis point -- squeezed by production costs that are rising much faster than the price they receive in the market.

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I want to thank Gary Hirshberg for replying so quickly to some of the points that we have been raising for the last six months. Gary and Nancy Hirshberg and the many employees of Stonyfield have been pioneers in the organic movement, along with folks like George Siemon of Organic Valley and Mark Retzloff of Aurora Organic Dairy.

Gary has long been a leader of the organic community and has helped shape the way in which the industry has expanded. In answering some of Gary's points, I'd like to widen the discussion and move away from sound bites and platitudes that are the bane of our society, and share some of the difficulties of organic dairy that we all struggle with day after day.

Rising cost of oil pushes value of the dollar down

Bloomberg reports:

Crude oil may reach a record $130 a barrel this year because pension funds are investing more in commodities, said Pierre Andurand, the chief investment officer of BlueGold Capital Management LLP, a hedge fund ... "Next year, oil may rise even further to $150 a barrel."

Okay, this is a hedge fund guy who is betting the ranch on oil and probably doing his part to drive up prices. But at the end of the day, this is an issue of fundamentals -- supply and demand:

Oil companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell Plc and BP Plc are finding it tougher to replace their findings and are drilling for harder-to-reach deposits while energy demand and crude prices surge to records.

Another little-discussed factor in the run-up of oil prices is the run-down of the dollar, and with it, U.S. living standards compared to the rest of the world. Thank you so much, President Bush!

Car plant cuts energy costs $627,000 with two-month payback — with DOE help

Economic models greatly overestimate the cost of carbon mitigation, in large part because economists simply don't believe (and hence don't model) that the economy has lots of high-return energy efficiency opportunities. In their theory, the economy is always operating near efficiency. Reality is very different than economic models.

I have never visited a factory or commercial buildings that didn't have huge energy-saving opportunities, many of which also increase productivity. I wrote a book several years ago with a hundred real-world case studies: Cool Companies: How the Best Businesses Boost Profits and Productivity by Cutting Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Studies that model such real-world savings, like the 2007 McKinsey & Co. report, find deep emissions reductions are possible at low net cost to the U.S. (and world) economy.

Government has an important role in enabling these energy savings. The office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy, which I used to run, has lots of (underfunded) programs that deliver savings every day. One typical example showed up in my inbox yesterday, from the Industrial Technologies Program: