I agree with John Derrig’s letter of Feb. 10, saying we need to stop burning fossil fuels: “Leave it in the ground, OK?” This is what the world’s best climate scientists are telling us we must do to avoid “catastrophic” climate change (IPCC). But how, exactly, do we make a fast, smooth transition to clean energy?
There’s a simple, realistic solution to global warming, which will also be good for our economy: A win-win. Most major economists support it, including eight Nobel Prize winners.
It uses conservative, free-market principles, not government regulations, and it’s revenue-neutral. It won’t hurt consumers or taxpayers.
We can put an increasing carbon pollution fee on all fossil fuels, that’s returned, 100 percent, to every American, every month in equal amounts. As fossil fuels become increasingly more expensive than clean energy, people will use their carbon fee rebate to buy renewables. Middle-class and lower-income Americans will come out ahead financially.
And recent REMI report projects this would create 2.8 million U.S. jobs and increase GDP $75-80 billion annually.
It’s worked in British Columbia for six years. The Economist has pronounced it “A success” (“The Evidence Mounts” July 31. 2014).
The United States can tax imports from China and other carbon polluters to make them cut emissions. Return that import tax money to all Americans, and we can afford products made in the United States.
Report: Nevada leads US in per-capita growth in solar industry jobs; California tops 50K
February 12, 2015, Associated Press
RENO, Nev. – The number of solar industry jobs in Nevada more than doubled last year, the fastest per capita growth in the nation, a nonprofit research and education group said in a new report Thursday.
California became the first state to surpass 50,000 solar jobs with a U.S.-leading 54,680 in 2014, The Solar Foundation said in releasing its fifth annual State Solar Jobs Census.
It estimates that as of November 2014, the solar industry employed 173,807 workers nationally — up nearly 22 percent from the same month the previous year. It reported positive job growth in the industry during that period in 27 states and the District of Columbia.
Nevada has added 3,500 solar jobs since November 2013, an increase of 146 percent. That puts Nevada seventh on the list overall with 5,900 jobs, and No. 1 in jobs per capita.
Gov. Brian Sandoval said it is further proof the state that recently landed Tesla Motors’ gigafactory and a huge Switch data center expansion is emerging as a leader in new technology innovation.
“This announcement demonstrates the possibilities within our state if we continue to recruit the growing industries of the 21st century,” he said.
Lyndon Rive, CEO of SolarCity, based in San Mateo, California, said his company now has 1,000 employees in Nevada compared to none two years ago.
“The steps the state has taken to build a vibrant, clean energy economy are paying off with thousands of new jobs for Nevadans,” Rive said.
Massachusetts (9,400), Arizona (9,170), New York (7,284), New Jersey (7,200) and Texas (6,965) follow California on the list of total solar jobs. After Nevada, the most solar jobs per capita were in Vermont, Hawaii, California and Massachusetts. Those specific numbers were still being finalized on Thursday, group officials said.
“California is still the undisputed leader, but states like Minnesota, Illinois and North Carolina are growing aggressively,” said Andrea Luecke, president and executive director of The Solar Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based group that was founded in 1977. “Our long-term research shows that solar industry employment has grown by 86 percent in the past five years, resulting in nearly 80,000 domestic living-wage jobs.”
The study was conducted with BW Research Partnership, with support from George Washington University.
February 11, 2015, by Donna Beth Weilenman
GRANT COOKE File photo
For Benicia business owner and writer Grant Cooke, the question isn’t whether crude oil should come in by rail, pipeline or tanker ship. Nor which is better, hybrids or all-electric cars.
Cooke is looking ahead to hydrogen-powered vehicles that are no more combustible than those powered by gasoline and emit water vapor, not carbon gases, as they travel down roads and highways.
Now, in collaboration with Dr. Woodrow W. Clark III, winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize as a contributing scientist to the United Nations Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change, Cooke has written about what he calls the “third industrial revolution” — a revolution based not on the carbon-intensive industries of the past but on energy sustainability.
The book, “The Green Industrial Revolution: Energy, Engineering and Economics,” is the third collaboration between Clark, founder of environmental and renewable energy consulting firm Clark Strategic Partners, and Cooke. But if not for an unexpected career change, it may never have happened.
Cooke originally planned to be a writer in a different genre. He earned degrees in journalism and political science at the University of California-Berkeley and a master’s degree in journalism at the University of California-Los Angeles.
But witnessing the demise of evening newspapers, Cooke said he realized he might do better in a different industry.
He went to work at Diablo Valley College in promotion and administration, marketing the college for 28 years. Then, in 2005, “I decided it’s time to leave,” he said.
He had been networking with some young engineers, and realized he, too, had “a knack for design.” The result was writing third-party utility-sponsored energy-efficiency programs for schools and colleges, with data centers in California, Texas and New York.
“It was a start-up company. We got bought out,” he said. That gave him the chance, in 2010, to start his own business, Sustainable Energy Associates, a mechanical engineering company focused on renewable energy and water conservation.
But along the way, he said, he wrote a sustainable energy program for Southern California Edison. That led to his connection with Clark. “He had become a leader in the sustainability world,” Cooke said.
Funding for the program got deferred, but the collaboration lasted. The duo have worked on three books so far; one, “Global Energy Innovation — Why America Must Lead,” primarily can be found in libraries, though it also is available through Amazon.com, where readers can learn that the book explains why the United States must leave behind lethargy and defeatism to take the lead in technological inventiveness in the areas of green jobs and carbon-neutral communities.
A second book, which experienced delays Cooke said were prompted by political change, isfocused on China and its “green” revolution. It is being translated into Mandarin before being released.
“The Green Industrial Revolution” has been out since Nov. 20, 2014, and Cooke called it “a major reference book of its type,” adding, “We are fairly serious scientists.”
The authors’ contention, Cooke said, is there is a “mega-trend change” in how energy is going to be generated.
For instance, he said, China “came of age” with the 2008 Beijing Olympics, when it became what he called “an essential part of the world economy.”
He said that country is moving fast to set aside its dependence on coal and investing trillions of dollars to clean up its environment.
“China,” he said, “is more serious than the United States.”
But it isn’t just about the environment: “We’re talking about a social, political and economic transition.”
Cooke said the upcoming change is on par with such significant events as 17th century Industrial Revolution, the switch to steam engines, the 19th-century discovery of oil as a fuel and the development of the internal combustion engine.
“My contention is, we are on the verge of the third industrial revolution,” he said. adding that some places already already are involved. That third revolution will be powered by renewable energy, with onsite distribution and a change from centralized to a decentralized, smart grid system.
“We’re at the end of a carbon-intensive lifestyle,” he said.
The change needs to happen, he said, because weather patterns are becoming unstable: the American Northeast is being inundated with snow, ice caps are melting and “the atmosphere is a garbage can for heavy carbon users.”
Not only that, but the change can reduce the cost of energy, he said, and that includes reaching a zero marginal cost.
“We’re economics-driven,” he said. He compared it to the production of any item, such as shovels: If he produced 10,000 shovels, the first hundred could cost $9 each, because part of the production costs are about building the system, such as the assembly line that makes the shovel.
But once he had paid for the system, the cost of making those shovels diminishes, Cooke explained. “Eventually, the only cost is resources, so you make more profit per shovel. That’s what is happening in renewable energy.”
He cited Moore’s Law, developed by Gordon Earle Moore, co-founder of Intel Corporation, and said based on that law technology doubles in strength and capacity every 18 months.
“My contention is, the same law applies to the growth of renewable energy,” Cooke said. “At the moment, the world uses six percent renewable energy. Each 18 months, it doubles. As it increases, costs go down.”
Those who put solar panels on their homes pay the cost of that installation in seven to eight years, Cooke said. “Once you reach seven years, the cost to generate energy is no cost.”
He said the business model for sustainability is better than for carbon-intensive industries, which is “a failing business model. It will be supplanted by renewable energy,” adding that in 19 regions of the world, solar energy is less expensive than carbon-generated energy.
One reason that is happening, he said, is the supplanting of fossil fuel by hydrogen energy in the transportation sector. “Norway, Sweden and Germany have relatively small but effective ‘hydrogen highways,” roadways where motorists have access to hydrogen “refills.”
In 2016, he said, California will launch its own hydrogen highway, along Interstate 5 from Mexico to Oregon, capable of supporting the hydrogen-fueled vehicles he said are in development by all major automobile manufacturers.
“Each has a prototype car,” he said, and Toyota and Honda already have such cars in Southern California.
He said several investment banks are reporting that carbon-based industries are losing money, and are predicted to lose $28 trillion in revenues in the next 20 years.
Cooke, who also is writing “Smart Green Cities,” which will be published this year by Ashgate/Gower in England, recognized that Benicia depends on carbon-based industries for its economy, and the largest of these is Valero Benicia Refinery.
He said this city has “geographic advantages” that those who are knowledgeable about economics find attractive. Those people could help Benicia change from counting on revenues from carbon-based companies to what he called a “smart-driven economy.”
“It’s happening before our very eyes,” he said.
He said there are places in Solano County where wind turbines generate energy for a few pennies per kilowatt, and solar arrays do the same for a little more than a nickel per kilowatt. “The average resident or small business owner pays 19 cents a kilowatt,” he said.
He predicted that renewable energy would overtake industries based on petroleum, and Benicia needs to join that change. “It’s time. The industry is declining, and it’s starting to accelerate,” he said. “Renewable energy is overtaking petroleum. It made profits at $140 a barrel. Now it’s looking at $50 a barrel or less.” He said the petroleum industry will never return to the prices of old.
“As futurists, Woody (Clark) and I are looking at a world that’s coming,” he said. Europe and Asia — especially China and India — are making greater efforts toward sustainable lifestyles, he said, an area in which the United States is lagging because of politics.
“Leadership is so bogged down,” he said — even as millions die from pollution-related illnesses, the world economy loses $1 trillion in global gross domestic product, increased salinity affects the world’s drinking water supply and marginal farmland fails to produce, leading to famine.
If this country is going to get pushed into a higher gear regarding sustainability, he said, “it will have to come on a local level. California is starting take on a leadership role. New York, too — New York has banned fracking.”
Ultimately, he said, he hopes the books he and Clark write explain to people that the world in which they grew up is changing, significantly.
“The sooner they understand the world’s environment is in danger, the sooner they can mitigate the danger for subsequent generations and move to a carbon-less lifestyle.”
“The Green Industrial Revolution: Energy, Engineering and Economics” is available on Amazon.com.
SACRAMENTO >> California lawmakers on Tuesday unveiled a package of bills to significantly expand renewable energy use in California, cut gasoline use by 50 percent and require the state’s major government pension funds to sell off investments in coal companies.
The four measures, proposed by Democratic leaders in the state Senate, mirror many of the goals set out by Gov. Jerry Brown in his State of the State speech last month. Opposed by oil companies and praised by environmental groups, the bills would extend California — which already had the nation’s toughest climate and renewable energy laws — to a new level in setting environmental policy for other states.
“We need to move the state away from fossil fuels, away from the grip of oil,” said Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles. “This is common sense climate policy.
Given that Democrats have large majorities in both the Senate and the Assembly, their prospects for passage are considered high.
The bills were introduced Tuesday at an afternoon news conference in Sacramento.
They are:
SB 350 (By Sen. Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles, and Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco) >> Would require that by 2030, California utilities generate at least 50 percent of their electricity from solar, wind and other renewable energy sources, an increase from the current law which requires 33 percent renewable by 2020, and which the utilities are now on target to meet. The bill also would require state agencies to toughen building standards to require a 50 percent increase in energy efficiency in buildings from now until 2030. And it would require the California Air Resources Board to reduce petroleum use by cars and trucks by 50 percent from now until 2030, most likely through rules limiting greenhouse gas emissions from new vehicles, new incentives for electric vehicle purchases and rules requiring lower carbon content of petroleum fuels.
SB 185 (DeLeon) >> Would require that the California Public Employees Retirement System and the State Teacher’s Retirement System divest from companies with 50 percent or more of their revenues in coal mining or coal burning. CalPERS alone has assets of $295 billion, yet only has coal holdings totaling less than 1 percent of that amount, or $167 million.
SB 32 (Sen. Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills) >> Extends California’s landmark climate law, AB 32. The current law, signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006, requires California to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, a reduction of about 20 percent from “business as usual.” The state is on target to meet that goal. The new bill would go much further, locking into law a goal that Schwarzenegger had set: cutting greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. The bill, if passed, would require the California Air Resources Board to set new rules to meet the standards, and likely would involve further crackdowns and fees on the oil industry, petroleum power plants and gas-burning vehicles, with more incentives for renewable energy and electric vehicles.
SB 189 (Sen. Ben Hueso, D-San Diego) >> Would establish a seven-member expert committee to advise and inform annually the Legislature annual on clean energy and climate policies that could create jobs and spread economic benefits to all economic levels of society.
Although many industry leaders were waiting for the formal rollout of the bills to comment, billionaire Tom Steyer, a former San Francisco hedge fund manager who has helped fund efforts to reduce greenhouse gases and other air pollution, praised the measures.
“These are achievable policy proposals that will create good-paying green jobs here in California, mitigate the impact of climate change, and leave a cleaner, safer, more stable world for the next generation,” Steyer said.
“At a time when our state is faced with the choice between moving backwards by accepting the fossil fuel industry’s status quo or embracing a clean energy future for our state, this new legislative package includes commonsense proposals that will move California forward.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.