Community & Humanity // Current

Celebrate the Climate: Look for Energy Star, the Gift that Keeps on Giving

From the EPA press office: This holiday season you can give a gift that is green in more ways than one. With Energy Star... more

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9 days ago

BP scraps British renewables plan to focus on US

BP has dropped all plans to build wind farms and other renewable schemes in Britain and is instead concentrating the bulk of its $8bn (£5bn) renewables spending programme on the US, where government incentives for clean energy projects can provide a convenient tax shelter for oil and gas revenues.

The decision is a major blow to the prime minister, Gordon Brown, who has promised to sweep away all impediments to ensure Britain is at the forefront of the green energy revolution. BP and Shell - which has also pulled out of renewables in Britain - are heavily influential among investors.

BP has advertised its green credentials widely in the UK and has a representative on the ruling board of the British Wind Energy Association (BWEA). But it said difficulty in getting planning permission and lower economies of scale made the UK wind sector far less attractive than that of the US.

“The best place to get a strong rate of return for wind is the US,” said a BP spokesman, who confirmed the group had shelved ideas of building an onshore wind farm at the Isle of Grain, in Kent, and would not bid for any offshore licences.

BP has enormous financial firepower as a result of recent very high crude oil prices. Its move away from wind power in Britain follows a decision by Shell to sell off its stake in the London Array project off Kent, potentially the world’s largest offshore wind farm.

Shell gave the same reasons as BP for that move, saying the economics of UK wind were poor compared to those onshore across the Atlantic, where incoming president Barack Obama has promised to spend $150bn over 10 years to kick start a renewable energy revolution .

BP said about $1.5bn would be spent next year on US wind projects and the company expected to spend the $8bn up to the year 2015.

BP is still proceeding with some limited solar, biofuels and other schemes, but the vast majority of its time and energy is now being concentrated on wind. By the end of 2008, BP expects to have one gigawatt of US wind power installed and plans to have trebled this by 2010.

The BWEA shrugged off BP’s decision. “The offshore wind market is evolving and getting stronger. Different investors will come and go at different stages of the development cycle. But whoever the players are, we know that the offshore industry will be generating massive amounts of electricity for the UK market in the next few years,” said a spokesman.

Britain is not the only country to miss out on BP’s largesse. The company said yesterday it was also pulling out of China, India and Turkey, where it had also been looking at projects.

BP had formed a joint venture with Beijing Tianrun New Energy Investment Company, a subsidiary of Goldwind, China’s largest turbine maker. The two companies had signed a deal in January under which they planned 148.4MW of wind capacity in Inner Mongolia, China’s main wind power region. BP had also started building two wind farms in India and was considering schemes in Turkey. It is now expecting to sell off the Indian facilities and halt work in Turkey.

Green campaigners have been highly sceptical about BP’s plans to go “beyond petroleum” and feared that the company’s new chief executive, Tony Hayward, would drop this commitment, started under his predecessor, John Browne.BP has dropped all plans to build wind farms and other renewable schemes in Britain and is instead concentrating the bulk of its... more

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19 days ago

Why is our energy policy so lame? Ask the three GOP stooges.

Okay, you probably don’t need any more reasons why U.S. energy policy is so lame. But don’t complain to me, complain... more

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19 days ago

IEA report explains what must be done to avoid 6°C warming

The International Energy Agency is out with its World Energy Outlook 2008. I wrote last week about the report’s stark... more

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19 days ago

Homeless female vets seek shelter -

Below is the story of our national disgrace: When Carisa Dogen looks back on her life of 38 years, it's easy to see where... more

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21 days ago

Legality of Same-Sex Marriage Ban Challenged

The future of same-sex marriage in the Golden State will rest, once again, in the hands of its highest court. But this time, its... more

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3 responses

21 days ago

Stabilize at 350 ppm or risk ice-free planet, warn NASA, Yale, Sheffield, Versailles, Boston et al

The good news: We can avoid multimeter sea level rise, the loss of the inland glaciers that provide water to a billion people,... more

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22 days ago

Green investment does create jobs

Robert Pollin has issued a direct rebuttal, “Green Investments and Jobs,” to the Heritage Foundation’s lame “debunking” of Green Recovery, a study Pollin co-authored for the the Center for American Progress. My line-by-line response to the disanalysis by Heritage’s Donald Kreutzer is here.

Pollin, Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute at U. Mass-Amherst, concludes:

Public investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy can overturn the long-held conventional wisdom reflected in Kreutzer’s critique, which claims we can have a green economy or a growing economy, but not both. In fact, green public investments to fight global warming are both a powerful engine of job creation and a necessary instrument for achieving environmental sustainability.

Pollin has included a summary of his basic arguments that is well worth reading:

First, green investments–including energy efficiency measures such as building retrofits, public transportation, freight rail, and “smart grid” electrical transmission systems; and renewable sources such as wind, solar, and biomass energy–are all potent sources of net job creation relative to spending on traditional fossil fuels, including oil, coal, and natural gas. By “net job creation,” I mean that green investments will create more jobs for a given amount of spending than expenditures within the oil, natural gas, or coal industries. For instance, spending $1 million on green investments will create about 17 jobs within the U.S. economy, while spending the same $1 million within the oil industry will create about 4.5 jobs.

Second, the main reasons green investments are a source of net job creation relative to spending within the traditional fossil fuel industries actually has nothing to do with whether the investments are “green.” Rather, there are two primary factors at play. The first factor is higher “labor intensity” of spending–that is, more money is being spent on hiring people and less on machines, supplies, and consuming energy. This becomes obvious if we imagine hiring construction workers to retrofit buildings or install solar panels, or bus drivers to expand public transportation offerings, as opposed to drilling for oil off the coasts of Florida, California, and Alaska. The second factor is the “domestic content” of spending–how much money is staying within the U.S. economy as opposed to buying imports or spending abroad. When we retrofit public buildings and private homes to raise their energy efficiency, or improve our public transportation systems, virtually every dollar is spent within the U.S. economy. By contrast, only 80 cents of every dollar spent within the oil industry remains within the United States.

Third, “Green Recovery”advances a short-term economic stimulus proposal as a tool for fighting the severe current recession. The first purpose of any short-run stimulus program–regardless of whether it is centered around green investments, household consumption, or expanding unemployment insurance benefits–is to inject more spending into the economy as quickly as possible. We pay for such short-run measures primarily through allowing the federal deficit to rise. As such, in “Green Recovery,” we do not propose any tax increases whatsoever in the short term. A $1 million increase in spending on green investments will therefore produce 17 new jobs, with no offsets in spending cuts or job losses elsewhere in the economy.

continued and worth readingRobert Pollin has issued a direct rebuttal, “Green Investments and Jobs,” to the Heritage Foundation’s lame... more

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24 days ago

Censure Michele Bachmann

Tell Congress to Censure Michele Bachmann 18,087 signatures so far updated 10/18 12:16 p.m. On the October 17 episode of... more

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1 month ago

Didn’t McCain hate robo-calls?

He complained bitterly about George Bush’s campaign smearing him with blatantly false rumors in a late blast of robo-calls... more

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1 month ago

Obama supporters protest McCain endorsement

More than 100 Democrats marched to the Napa Valley Register building Monday evening with picket signs and chants of, “Change... more

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1 month ago

The truth-telling ad ABC won’t let you see — and what you can do about it

So ABC will take millions of dollars from oil companies to run misleading energy ads, but they refuse to run one truthful ad from... more

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1 month ago

Study Confirms CO2 Links with Greenland Warming and changes in Ocean Circulation

Geo-scientists from the Oregon State University recently analyzed West Antarctic ice core samples taken in the 1960's and... more

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1 month ago

Palin's Flip Flop on Gay Rights

Watching the vice presidential debate, you might have gotten the impression that Sarah Palin supports civil rights for same-sex couples. During an exchange on the topic, both she and Joe Biden said they oppose gay marriage. But Biden added that he and Barack Obama favor granting gay couples many of the same benefits—hospital visitation rights, health benefits—that married couples enjoy. Palin was tougher to pin down. She clearly didn't want to appear intolerant, but neither did she want to seem to embrace gay rights. "[N]o one would ever propose, not in a McCain-Palin administration, to do anything to prohibit, say, visitations in a hospital or contracts being signed …" she said.

The folks in Alaska might have been surprised to hear that. In the past, Palin has described her opposition to granting gay couples the benefits married couples receive. In an August 2007 interview with NEWSWEEK, Palin said she had upheld such benefits (angering fellow conservatives) but only because the state Supreme Court said it was unconstitutional to deny them:

NEWSWEEK : And do you have a position on that? Would you like to see it? Do you care? PALIN: I would vote to further define the definition of marriage as it pertains to benefits even—yes, I would.

That is, not extend benefits to same-sex couples?
Correct. And if it took an amendment to our constitution, I would go there …

The Alaska governor was careful not to say anything like that during the debate. Biden, sensing an opportunity, tried to force Palin into clarifying her position. "I'm glad to hear the governor … thinks there should be no civil-rights distinction … between a committed gay couple and a committed heterosexual couple. If that's the case, we really don't have a difference."

Moderator Gwen Ifill threw it back to Palin: "Is that what you said?" Palin dodged the question: "Your question to him was whether he supported gay marriage and my answer is the same as his and is that I do not." A spokeswoman for the McCain campaign told NEWSWEEK that Palin opposes "all forms of discrimination against people with different lifestyles."Watching the vice presidential debate, you might have gotten the impression that Sarah Palin supports civil rights for same-sex... more