The American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE)’s webinar last month on Security, Sustainability, and Renewables was the latest in a series of recent renewable energy policy discussions to highlight growing interest in the emerging opportunities for the renewable sector to work with the U.S. military. Interest in military applications of renewables have risen at least in part due to federal policy uncertainty. The impending expiration of several renewables incentives (such as the Recovery Act’s tax grant program and the production tax credit for wind) along with the budget constraints arising from the political impasse over government spending and debt suggest the real possiblity of significantly lower direct federal government support for renewable technology R&D and deployment. As a result, there is growing interest in looking for ways to improve the efficiency of existing renewable policies as well as looking for opportunities for hedging against possible removal of support (see for example, the work of the Bipartisan Policy Center on more efficient subsidies for renewables).
The San Jose Mercury News published an op-ed by CPI’s Executive Director Thomas Heller about the shape of future international climate negotiations in a rapidly developing world:
The world has changed significantly since climate talks began two decades ago in Rio. It is no longer shaped by two rival superpowers. New economies — China, India, Brazil, Korea, Indonesia — have grown in size and standing.
These new players define their political and economic status in the global order without relation to the old poles of developed and developing, state and market, the West and the Rest. Pushed by a will to lead instead of follow and enabled by the public spending that comes with fast economic growth, these new players increasingly are implementing their own policies, blazing the path that any international accord will ultimately reflect.
The recent meeting of APEC produced, among other things, a non-binding agreement that the APEC bloc countries would, by 2035, reduce energy intensity levels by 45% from 2005 levels. While this agreement has received only a modest coverage, some analysts have suggested that the agreement could be an important example for future international agreements and would, if followed, lead to significant decreases in energy consumption and Carbon emissions. Upon closer inspection, the agreement is really only a codification of Business As Usual (BAU) and serves to demonstrate some of the challenges of using energy intensity as a metric. The agreement also highlights some of the politics behind negotiating some of these types of targets.
A recent CPI study estimated the impacts of U.S. building energy codes on energy use and carbon emissions in new homes. While energy savings is a very logical place to start in measuring the effectiveness of these codes, it’s also important to understand their impact on costs. Much of the appeal of energy efficiency programs lies in the persistent finding that they are very cost-effective, often paying for themselves with their own energy savings over time.
Shale gas has been called a ‘glint of hope’ for climate change; a ‘global phenomenon’ for domestic energy security around the globe; and is a centre piece of the IEA ‘golden age of gas’ that could potentially supply the world’s energy requirements for 250 years.
But several important studies, including one released this week for the European Parliament [PDF], have argued that the conventional resource potential of shale gas might be significantly overstated and importantly, that the risks to human health and the environment may outweigh the benefits.
Just when I was beginning to doubt that voluntary action by major emitters could truly reduce pollution, a new study [subs. req.] has shown that voluntarily slowing commercial container ships near-shore (and switching to low-sulfur fuel) can reduce some major pollutants by up to 90%.
Container ships approaching land from the open ocean bring a number of environmental problems with them, like acid-rain causing sulfur dioxide, lung-damaging particulate matter, and haze-forming black carbon, all emitted within a few miles of people living near shipping lanes and ports.
TAGS: air, board, california, carb, dioxide, matter, noaa, particulate, resources, shipping, sulfur, voluntary_action