New American Agenda

Last night, President Obama outlined a new American agenda with special emphasis on three areas critical to the well-being of the citizenry - energy, health care, and education.

In reference to a sustainable energy policy, Mr. Obama remarked:

"It begins with energy.

We know the country that harnesses the power of clean, renewable energy will lead the 21st century. And yet, it is China that has launched the largest effort in history to make their economy energy efficient. We invented solar technology, but we've fallen behind countries like Germany and Japan in producing it. New plug-in hybrids roll off our assembly lines, but they will run on batteries made in Korea.

Well I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders - and I know you don't either. It is time for America to lead again.

Thanks to our recovery plan, we will double this nation's supply of renewable energy in the next three years. We have also made the largest investment in basic research funding in American history - an investment that will spur not only new discoveries in energy, but breakthroughs in medicine, science, and technology.

We will soon lay down thousands of miles of power lines that can carry new energy to cities and towns across this country. And we will put Americans to work making our homes and buildings more efficient so that we can save billions of dollars on our energy bills.

But to truly transform our economy, protect our security, and save our planet from the ravages of climate change, we need to ultimately make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy. So I ask this Congress to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America. And to support that innovation, we will invest fifteen billion dollars a year to develop technologies like wind power and solar power; advanced biofuels, clean coal, and more fuel-efficient cars and trucks built right here in America."

Click here for a transcript of the entire address courtesy of Talking Points Memo, or watch the speech in its entirety on C-SPAN.

New and Improved Whitehouse.gov

Change has come...to Whitehouse.gov, the official website of the US President. The new tech-savvy Administration posted a newly designed site yesterday as Obama took office outlining policy positions and Administration activities.

An excerpt:


ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT

The energy challenges our country faces are severe and have gone unaddressed for far too long. Our addiction to foreign oil doesn't just undermine our national security and wreak havoc on our environment -- it cripples our economy and strains the budgets of working families all across America. President Obama and Vice President Biden have a comprehensive plan to invest in alternative and renewable energy, end our addiction to foreign oil, address the global climate crisis and create millions of new jobs.

The Obama-Biden comprehensive New Energy for America plan will:

* Help create five million new jobs by strategically investing $150 billion over the next ten years to catalyze private efforts to build a clean energy future.
* Within 10 years save more oil than we currently import from the Middle East and Venezuela combined.
* Put 1 million Plug-In Hybrid cars -- cars that can get up to 150 miles per gallon -- on the road by 2015, cars that we will work to make sure are built here in America.
* Ensure 10 percent of our electricity comes from renewable sources by 2012, and 25 percent by 2025.
* Implement an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050.

Energy Plan Overview

Provide Short-term Relief to American Families

* Crack Down on Excessive Energy Speculation.
* Swap Oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to Cut Prices.

Eliminate Our Current Imports from the Middle East and Venezuela within 10 Years

* Increase Fuel Economy Standards.
* Get 1 Million Plug-In Hybrid Cars on the Road by 2015.
* Create a New $7,000 Tax Credit for Purchasing Advanced Vehicles.
* Establish a National Low Carbon Fuel Standard.
* A “Use it or Lose It” Approach to Existing Oil and Gas Leases.
* Promote the Responsible Domestic Production of Oil and Natural Gas.

Create Millions of New Green Jobs

* Ensure 10 percent of Our Electricity Comes from Renewable Sources by 2012, and 25 percent by 2025.
* Deploy the Cheapest, Cleanest, Fastest Energy Source – Energy Efficiency.
* Weatherize One Million Homes Annually.
* Develop and Deploy Clean Coal Technology.
* Prioritize the Construction of the Alaska Natural Gas Pipeline.

Reduce our Greenhouse Gas Emissions 80 Percent by 2050

* Implement an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050.
* Make the U.S. a Leader on Climate Change.


Click on http://www.whitehouse.gov/ for what promises to be an interesting and engaging (and ever-changing) update on Administration activities and policy initiatives.

Proposal Ties Economic Stimulus to Energy Plan

The United States lost a net 533,000 jobs last month insuring that an economic stimulus package is eminent. Right now, that package is being formulated among members of Congress and the new Administration and it looks like the stimulus plan will be holistic in nature - that is, it will be tied to developing a cleaner and more sustainable national energy system.

From the New York times: Proposal Ties Economic Stimulus to Energy Plan

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/us/politics/04green.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

Presidential Candidates: Energy

Concisely, this Reuters article lays out Obama's and McCain's positions on the future of energy policy in the US.

http://www.reuters.com/article/vcCandidateFeed7/idUSTRE49T6W020081031

Farmer in Chief

Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, penned an open letter in the New York Times Magazine to the next "Farmer in Chief" outlining the negative consequences of our current food policy and offering up some healthy ideas about how we can bring about positive change in the way we eat - and save the planet along the way.

From the article:

After cars, the food system uses more fossil fuel than any other sector of the economy — 19 percent. And while the experts disagree about the exact amount, the way we feed ourselves contributes more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than anything else we do — as much as 37 percent, according to one study. Whenever farmers clear land for crops and till the soil, large quantities of carbon are released into the air. But the 20th-century industrialization of agriculture has increased the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by the food system by an order of magnitude; chemical fertilizers (made from natural gas), pesticides (made from petroleum), farm machinery, modern food processing and packaging and transportation have together transformed a system that in 1940 produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil-fuel energy it used into one that now takes 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce a single calorie of modern supermarket food. Put another way, when we eat from the industrial-food system, we are eating oil and spewing greenhouse gases. This state of affairs appears all the more absurd when you recall that every calorie we eat is ultimately the product of photosynthesis — a process based on making food energy from sunshine. There is hope and possibility in that simple fact.

Check out the entire article here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Michael%20Pollan%20letter%20farmer%20in%20chief&st=cse&oref=slogin

Buyer's Market?

Common sense might have you reasoning that when the price of oil goes up, interest in alternative energies goes up. But the recent spike in crude oil prices was met by falling alt-energy stocks?

http://www.247wallst.com/2008/09/alternative-ene.html

Why?

Maybe it has something to do with the uncertainty around tax credits - or the lack of them - for alternative energy-related projects. Tax incentives for the construction of energy-efficient housing and for the construction of wind and solar power plants runs out at the end of the year and, so far, they haven't been renewed.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122211753163964501.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Democrats want to rescind the multi-billion dollar corporate tax breaks for oil companies. Republicans, with filibuster power in hand, have been holding up passage of this year's energy bill insisting that the subsidies for big oil must be be extended as well.

Looks like the financial crisis on Wall Street has knocked the energy bill completely off the agenda before the October recess. So with no guarantee of tax credits, even at current levels, many projects are in a state of paralysis.

There will be a new energy bill at some time, but just exactly what that will be remains to be seen, and it hinges dramatically on who's elected - as president and in Congress.

Go out and vote.

Drill Baby Drill

Some people are pitching an old idea with a new mantra.

Cameras panning the hall at the recent Republican National Convention captured an astounding scene of frenzied faithful chanting "drill, baby, drill!!!" - with xenophobic fervor.

Although there was an uncomfortably delivered and hollow seventh-grade-student-council response to calls for an all-inclusive energy policy - Palin's "like we don't know that already"line - the message was clear: if Republicans are elected in the fall, oil and gas interests will continue to drive our energy policy.

For those with short memories, that's what got us to where we are today.

George W. Bush famously stated in his January 2006 State of the Union Address that we (the United States) are addicted to oil. In a rare moment, his words rang true. So if in fact we are addicted to oil, wouldn't a policy of "drill, baby, drill" be like the drug addict who thinks the solution to all of his problems is better access to heroin closer to home?

Thomas Friedman, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for the New York Times, has an interesting take on the "drill, baby, drill" chant. He likens it to a group, on the eve of the information technology (IT) revolution, chanting "typewriters, baby, typewriters."

Friedman predicts that America's economic place in the world over the next few decades will be determined by how well we innovate with green technology - not by how much more oil we can exhume from our beachfronts and natural parks.

Check out his article on the subject; it's an interesting and thought-provoking read.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/opinion/14friedman.html

Solar Power Plants

Solar power plants are starting to pop up in some of the strangest places. This plant located in Germany, a country not known for an overabundance of sunny weather, produces 12 megawatts of electricity - enough to power about 12000 homes.

Germany has in place a healthy program subsidizing the production of solar power in a proactive effort to encourage new household and commercial investment in solar. So does Spain. As a result, those two countries are where most of the new power plants are being constructed and hundreds of thousands of new "green collar" jobs have been created in the process.

Several large-scale solar power plants are in the planning or construction stages in Florida and in the American southwest, mostly in Arizona, California, and Nevada. But there's a catch; the utility companies and project investors are in a "wait and see" mode until Congress decides how it is going to approach energy policy. The current meager incentives are set to expire this year. Not reauthorizing incentives at current levels will doom most of these projects.

Energy legislation was tabled as Congress went into August recess, thus insuring further paralysis for major advancements in solar energy in the United States.

The legislation has been held up by those who insist that we need to open up natural preserves and beach-front property for oil and gas drilling. Those same forces secured billions of dollars in subsidies for oil and gas companies in recent years as a concession for the very limited tax credits for developing and installing alternative energies.

Meanwhile, over dependence on fossil-based fuels at the exclusion of everything else brought us to where we are now. John McCain went down to Louisiana recently to campaign for an American petro-future but they called the trip off at the last minute when a barge spilled oil in the Mississippi the night before the photo opportunity was scheduled. Talk about bad timing (or good timing depending on where you stand).

Arguing for more drilling as an energy policy is like a drug addict insisting that all of his problems would be solved if he just had better access to good heroin.

Call or write your Congressman and Senators and let them know you would like to see more alternative energy tax credits for individuals and businesses. And more funding for research and development of alternative energies would be money well spent.

Here's a list of the largest solar power plants in the world currently in operation.

http://www.pvresources.com/en/top50pv.php

UPDATE:

A New York Times story today breaks news of two new solar power plants planned for California producing a total of 800 megawatts - enough electricity to power almost a million homes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/15/business/15solar.html?_r=1&ref=business&oref=slogin

Drafting a New Document

Here we are, approaching the July 4th holiday weekend. No longer are we under the heavy hand of Great Britain or King George (watch it with the wise cracks), but we are under a certain form of tyranny in the form of an energy policy that dictates and limits how we go about living our lives.

Tomorrow, I will publish a proclamation addressing a much-needed change of course:

The Declaration of Energy Independence.

Stay tuned, and enjoy your barbecue eggplant kabobs and not driving this weekend...