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Waxman-Markey bill ups the ante on tar sands and other dirty energy

2009-05-15T22:08:00Z

The huge Congressional climate bill has been formally introduced, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454). Over a month of discussion and heavy dealmaking has finally come to an end, recalling the famous Otto Von Bismarck quote "Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made").

The means the path has been cleared for the House Energy and Commerce Committee to take up the bill on Monday and likely to vote it out, as Chairman Waxman promised, by Memorial Day weekend.

This is a critical step in getting a bill to the President. Just a week ago, the President met with the Congressional Democrats and said 'work it out and send me a bill to sign'. This would have been an inconceivable scenario during the last eight years in spite of the growing urgency to tackle global warming pollution. The President has made energy and climate change a top policy priority (an apparently disasterous decision today on mountaintop removal aside) and there is no more important time for Congress to advance this issue.

The bill is 936 pages long, following a discussion draft of nearly 700 pages. It deals with just about every energy issue - from building energy codes and labeling, energy efficient appliance deployment, developing a smart grid, etc... But the biggest proposal is to put a cap- an absolute limit - on global warming pollution and start ratcheting that pollution down. It aims to reduce pollution by 20% by 2020, 40% by 2030, and 80% by 2050 (from 2005 levels), making progress towards what scientists say we need to do to avert the worst impacts of global warming.

While stemming global warming pollution is a key goal of this bill, it lays out the first steps in a much longer path that should bring about fundamental changes in the way we produce and use energy. It moves us towards more clean energy and energy efficiency, both through standards and through a first-time carbon cap. And although a key provision addressing carbon in fuels was removed under intense pressure from dirty oil interests, the cap will start to make winners out of companies producing clean fuels and losers out of companies producing dirty fuels, like tar sands oil strip mined and drilled from the heart of Canada's Boreal forest.

This is an opening salvo - and a critical one - in the run up to Copenhagen, where the world's leaders will meet in December to hammer out a new global warming pact.

But it is also an opening salvo closer to home. Canada has been watching the development of this legislation closely, on one hand saying that they want to adopt parallel requirements and, at the same time, saying that they are opposed to the legislation because of the burden it would place on their global warming intensive tar sands. Canada would not be covered by our cap - only Canada can adopt a cap that covers its global warming pollution - but provisions of the bill would likely affect the oil produced in the tar sands because its ultimate market is mainly in the U.S.

How would that work?

The bill puts the writing on the wall for dirty oil. The bill gives investors and others fair warning on directionality. What a cap with an 80% reduction means by 2050 is that we'll be largely off oil in our transportation sector. We'll need to be fueled by renewable sources - whether fuels or electricity. A lot more of our transportation will be connected to a greened grid.

Here's where Canada comes in. Canada has said (as per above) that it wants to move alongside the U.S. but it has yet to propose a cap or a low carbon fuel standard that would control the growth of pollution from the tar sands.

Under the U.S. cap, absence of a Canadian cap means Canada might have to buy allowances to make up for the higher carbon in producing its products. (This was included in the discussion draft and we are analyzing the latest language in the bill.) Under a LCFS - either at the state or federal level - absence of a Canadian low carbon fuel standard means that tar sands producers will have to reduce the carbon intensity of the tar sands oil anyway so that refiners, blenders and importers can comply with the fuel lifecycle reductions sprouting throughout the U.S.

California just adopted a LCFS that requires a 10% reduction by 2020 in carbon intensity from a 2006 baseline and over a dozen other states are perched to adopt similar measures. While the proposal for a federal LCFS did not survive this round, there is still much debate ahead in Congress and we're confident that states will continue to adopt them and that the EPA will act using it authority under the Clean Air Act. There is a huge amount of forward momentum on this new policy mechanism.

I'd like to say it is not clear what Canada wants - and perhaps that is true if one includes a look at the strong climate measures some of the provinces are taking - but the Federal government and Province of Alberta have made it clear. They have said protecting tar sands growth is more important than stemming global warming pollution. It's so important that Canada has repeatedly meddled in U.S. efforts to reduce our global warming pollution. Harsh criticism you might say but a review of the last year or so reveals a pattern.

Canada opposed our first federal purchasing requirement - Section 526 of the EISA - because it required federal agencies not to sign contracts for fuels that had higher greenhouse gases than conventional petroleum (starting the process of analyzing the pollution "lifecycle" of fuels). Throughout 2008, it actively lobbied our government and dispatched its Ambassador to ask key members of Congress to repeal the brand new section.
Canada opposed the California Low Carbon Fuel Standard regulations, adopted last month, arguing that tar sands oil's higher emissions should not be taken into account in the "lifecycle" assessment. It sent teams of government and industry officials to change the terms of the regulations. And again the Ambassador weighed in.
Canada opposed the Waxman-Markey discussion draft - what just preceded the introduction of HR 2454 - because it says it sets up unfair trade barriers when in fact they are asking to be allowed to pollute more while U.S. industry brings down its emissions. It opposed the federal LCFS in the draft as well, vocally siding with the many oil companies involved in the tar sands that also targeted the LCFS.
Canada has hired well-heeled lobbyists to do its bidding before the Administration and Congress on the tar sands. It just recently hired both President Bush and President Clinton's Press Secretaries to help "spin" tar sands oil as vital to U.S. energy security. Every briefing on the Hill is attended by a phalanx of officials from the Embassy.
And perhaps insignificant in and of itself, but a telling example nonetheless, an Alberta government communications official specifically attended a Washington D.C. panel to challenge three PhD scientists presenting on the impact of tar sands drilling on Boreal birds.

The list goes on.

So the question is, does Canada plan to get serious about its global warming commitments, addressing the many woes of tar sands extraction, and evaluating whether the tar sands is the right economic engine to wage its bets on for the 21st Century?

Those questions just got a whole lot more pointed with the introduction of H.R. 2454.

California leads the nation in adopting the first low carbon fuel standard

2009-04-24T07:22:51Z

In a historic vote last night, California's Air Resources Board passed the implementing regulations for the nation's first low carbon fuel standard (LCFS) by an overwhelming 9-1. This vote will put into action the LCFS first proposed by Governor Schwarzenegger as a key policy for meeting California's global warming goals. As has been the case for decades, California has again led the way in putting in place precedent setting environmental policy and put an important marker down that will favor cleaner fuels over high carbon fuels such as Canadian tar sands, liquid coal and oil shale.

The approval of the California LCFS regulations gives a huge boost to efforts to pass a similar measure nationally. Today all eyes will turn to Washington D.C. where the House Energy and Commerce Committee will debate a national LCFS in a lead up hearing before "mark up" next week on the Waxman-Markey global warming legislation.

Low carbon fuel standards are a critical complementary measure to a cap on global warming pollution. The LCFS requires that the carbon content of fuels decline over the next decade, paving the way for lower carbon fuels, such as next generation biofuels, and other measures to reduce global warming pollution from our transportation sector. Transportation accounts for about one third of U.S. global warming pollution and cleaning up fuels is seen as one of the critical components to meeting our climate protection goals and reforming our energy use.

The beauty of the LCFS is that it is performance based. It does not pick favorites. Instead it provides a more level playing field for lower carbon fuels to compete against dirtier fuels. It does this by relying on a straight forward concept - determining how much carbon is embedded in the fuel through lifecycle assessment, an accounting measure that evaluates emissions from the production through to the combustion of a fuel.

The Canadian federal government and government of Alberta, where the tar sands are produced, lobbied strenuously against the adoption of California's LCFS, arguing that the tar sands should not be subject to lifecycle assessment that would take into account its high production emissions (tar sands production requires huge amounts of energy to clear the Boreal forest and to strip mine and drill for oil that is embedded in its soils, releasing three times the global warming pollution per barrel compared to the production of conventional oil). While Canada has argued that this is discriminatory, the opposite is true. Under California's LCFS, all fuels with a high carbon content (defined as fuels with carbon intensity of 15 grams of CO2 per megajoule of energy) will be subject to this lifecycle assessment whether they are produced in California, Venezuela, or Canada. Not to require this accounting would be giving an unfair disadvantage to lower carbon fuels and could easily wipe out the gains that California is seeking in reducing its global warming pollution.

To put this in context, NRDC analysis shows that just the incremental emissions from the tar sands production (above conventional oil) between now and 2020 could offset fully one third of the gains in national fuel economy requirements put in place in late 2007. While these fuel economy standards - mainly improving our fleet mileage for new vehicles to 35 miles per gallon - should hold our emissions on a flat line going forward, the LCFS is a critical tool in helping bring those transportation emissions down.

The main argument put forward by proponents of expanded tar sands production is that is necessary to meet our oil supply needs. But can we really afford to scrape the bottom of the barrel for the dirtiest oil on the planet? President Obama has made reducing our oil use a key policy goal. Today we borrow over $700 billion a year to buy oil. And oil saved is the best energy security policy. Our analysis shows that instead of increasing our reliance on tar sands oil, we can hold our oil use steady with fuel economy measures already in law and that we can start bringing our oil use down through measures like the LCFS, putting more plug in hybrids on the road, moving more of our transportation to the electric grid and implementing policies like "smart growth" that will reduce the miles people have to travel.

Canada is our largest oil supplier and tar sands is rapidly increasing as a percentage of this oil, but our reliance on tar sands oil is still under 1 million barrels a day out of twenty million. Surely we can work to reduce our overall oil demand so that we don't have to rely on an oil source that will make cleaning up our transportation sector so much more difficult. Instead of locking into an expansion of tar sands oil (there are several major pipelines in the permitting stage - Keystone, Keystone Xcel, and the Alberta Clipper - and a half dozen U.S. refineries expanding to take tar sands oil), we must make every effort to reduce our oil use. Already California has proven that smart conservation measures can save energy. The per capita use of electricity in California is half that of the rest of the nation. Now California is posed to show us that this can be done with transportation.

Canada has also argued that if the US doesn't buy its tar sands oil, it will send it to Asia. The reality is that getting a pipeline built from the tar sands in Alberta to the West coast of British Columbia will be extremely difficult, if not impossible. There are over 20 native tribes that are opposed to the Enbridge Gateway pipeline and it would require lifting a 15 year moratorium on tankers on the BC coast. Instead, Canada should work to clean up the hige carbon footprint of its current level of tar sands production and start addressing the many other enormous environmental problems associated with its production.

Environment Canada reported last week that Canada will miss its Kyoto targets by over 30%. The tar sands are the largest growing source of CO2 in Canada and make up more than half of the projected growth in Canada's emissions. In contrast with the 80% reduction set out in the Waxman-Markey legislation, Alberta's climate plan seeks to reduce its emissions by only 14% from 2005 levels by 2050. Canada's federal plan also allow emissions to grow rapidly from this sector. In spite of the requirements proposed, the tar sands emissions are projected to increase from 29 MMtonnes per year (current) to 80 MM and then only drop to 49 MM after 2020 - if and only if actual emissions are accomplished through controversial measures such as carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). Already the tar sands industry has shied away from committing to CCS in the tar sands, acknowledging that it is expensive and technically challenging.

California has sent an irrefutable message to all the major oil companies engaged in the high carbon fuels business. Do it at your peril. The billions of dollars slated to be spent to produce dirty fuels like the tar sands should instead be invested in clean energy and developing cleaner fuels. That is not only an environmental priority, but now a much smarter investment choice. Ask leaders in the global aviation sector. Led by Boeing Commercial Aircraft and Virgin Atlantic Airways, the Sustainable Aviation Fuels Users Group is already betting on low carbon fuels. They can see the writing in the contrails.

"Earth Hour" gains momentum

2009-03-29T02:23:40Z

On Saturday, March 28, millions of people and thousands of cities and municipalities participated in "Earth Hour" - a World Wildlife Fund organized event aimed at building awareness and action to stem climate change by turning lights off for the hour from 8:30-9:30 PM. First lights were dimmed in Australia and Asia. Then Europe and Africa followed. And finally North America and Latin America.

There's been lots of back and forth about Earth Hour - shouldn't we really just focus on changing our lightbulbs for greater impact than turning off our lights for an hour? I, for one, don't buy the sceptics' arguments and think it is a heartening thing to have millions of people participate in a worldwide event focused on global warming.

Sitting here in darkness, save my few candles, I observe two things - first that my computer is on and most of the lights in my neighborhood appear to be on. Too bad. That said, I have scrolled through the photos of lights going out at the pyramids in Cairo, at the Eiffel Tower in Paris, at Big Ben and the Parliament buildings in London and - maybe most remarkably - across many cities that I wouldn't have guessed would participate - Dubai, Jakarta, Bejing, Istanbul, Hong Kong, etc... According to WWF's web page on the event, in 2007, only Sydney, Australia - where the idea was hatched - participated. In 2008, 400 cities participated. This year, over 4,000 cities and municipalities are participating, including Las Vegas. That one I have to see.

I didn't join the others from my city who gathered in Freedom Plaza to watch Washington D.C.'s largest municipal building darken or before the National Cathedral. I have been spending the hour reading about the event and following some pretty interesting links. I clicked on a Yale link because I went to school there and I was interested to learn that Yale has a forum on climate change and the media. There was a news clips about Greg Craven, the Oregon High School teacher who posted a YouTube video on climate change to reach young people where they live - e.g. on the Internet. The video had a pretty eye-catching title - "The Most Terrifying Video You'll Ever See" and it had been viewed, according to the short clip, almost 2 million times. I had to check it out to see if it lived up to its name and what young folks had watched that many times. What I found was a video that in a few minutes lays out a rationale for why we have to pick column A to save the world.

I want you to go and watch the video so I am not going to tell you much more about Column A - but what struck me in watching this video is how the worst case for acting and being wrong about global warming (e.g. it doesn't happen) is that the world spirals into a global economic depression. Well, we've already got that (the video was apparently made before the events of the last half a year). The worst case for not acting and being right (e.g. global warming happens) is economic, social, political, health, and environmental collapse - or as Greg explains - the end of the world as we know it. He continues that under the worst case, it is all coming soon and won't be delegated to some distant grandchild. He does all this in a dispassionate way which is probably why this video is so terrifying. So please take a few minutes to watch it.

My hour would have gone by washing dinner dishes, putting laundry in the dryer, finishing cleaning up my desk and maybe picking up "The Omnivore's Dilemma" (a great read by the way). It would have been an hour that would have passed like any other, powered by coal from Appalachia (probably from the horrible practice of mountain top removal that NRDC is profiling right now on Switchboard).

Thankfully, there are millions who did much more than me to mark Earth Hour and who will get politically active as a result. That is a great and necessary thing. As for me, I am grateful for my hour steeped in candle light and spent scrolling through the photos from around the world. I enjoyed feeling the human collective, rather than fossil, energy in the moment. And I am grateful for learning about Greg Craven and his YouTube video that is reaching so many young people.

Let's hope that Earth Hour helps lead us closer towards making the momentous changes needed (e.g. to choose Column A). We must move from Earth Hour to Earth Year, Decade, Century - because we need to figure out - and fast - how to let the planet do what it has for the term of our time here - give us a liveable climate.

No substitute for optimism

2009-03-11T20:31:05Z

George Woodwell, a long-time scientist on NRDC’s board, has battled for action on global warming for years. Recently, I asked him how he stays so cheerful. Not missing a beat, he said “there is no substitute for optimism. If you can see a way forward, you can be optimistic”.

I’ve worked in the environmental field for almost thirty years and it is sometimes hard to feel optimistic. Changes to our planet have accelerated rapidly during this short period of time: global warming, fisheries collapse, water scarcity, the list goes on, but I have never failed to see a way forward. Sometimes it is a state or nation with an innovative policy. Sometimes it is incremental progress at the global level. Often times, it is inspired by the campaign of one or two intrepid souls. But now we are running out of time and we urgently need to see action at all levels, simultaneously working to better protect the planet.

This imperative doesn’t seem to be lost on our new president. In his acceptance speech and inaugural address, the President referred to our “planet in peril” as one of his top concerns and has consistently listed addressing global warming and energy reform at the top of his policy objectives. But he also clearly believes that doing right by the planet and generations to come will reap immediate benefits as well. The stimulus bill and his budget invest in a nascent energy “revolution” to get us out of the economic – as well as planetary - mess we are in. No longer are environmental and energy policies sidebar issues, but have moved into a center role where initiatives on clean energy, technological innovation, and job creation are meshed into one to meet multiple policy goals.

A good example is the stimulus bill, passed in mid-February. The bill has nearly $80 billion in renewable energy and efficiency spending, a full 10th of the overall package, which represents the biggest injection of federal support for transforming the production and use of energy in our history. It will help grow this sector, cut our reliance on foreign oil (which, by the way, costs us $700 billion in borrowed money every year) and cut the pollution that causes global warming. A huge chunk of this funding will go to weatherize millions of American homes and green Federal buildings, employing people in “green collar” jobs who have lost their job in the traditional construction industry. Another example is the President’s federal budget which contains, for the first time, estimates for proceeds from a “carbon cap” – a cap on absolute levels of pollution that puts a price on the remaining carbon dioxide emissions. The proceeds will fund renewable energy, health care, tax breaks, and other items (which we want more of) and help discourage pollution (which we want less of).

Next, the President and Congress will focus on legislation that will set up this “cap and invest” system. The U.S. faces twin imperatives – getting domestic legislation passed and moving a global agreement forward that bring about steep reductions. The good news is that already 1,000 U.S. mayors and half the states have put in place their own global warming plans. It will still be a huge fight but it feels like the ground is shifting in our favor – even in these difficult economic times. Globally it will also take unprecedented leadership. Over 15 years ago, the U.S. ratified the world’s first treaty on climate change after the Rio Earth Summit. Over ten years ago, a “protocol” was added to this treaty calling on developed countries to take the first steps in reducing greenhouse gas pollution. Sadly, there has been little real progress towards reducing pollution to below 1990 levels – the stated goal of the protocol – partly because the U.S., the emitter of 25% of the world’s global warming pollution, refused to act. Now the U.S. must show that we are prepared to do our part (and that we believe it is an economic plus to act) and bring along critical countries such as China and India.

What’s required is nothing short of changing the very way we have powered our society over the last couple of centuries. We don’t have much time to mull it all over either. Scientists are warning that we have less than a decade to start reducing the pollution that causes global warming if we are to stave off the worst impacts. Certainly a world perched on the edge of catastrophic melting of our poles makes the bank bailout look like small potatoes.

But then I think of George’s comment and reflect a little on where we have come from and what I have seen work. I started my career advocating for acid rain legislation. Acid rain is mainly a side effect of burning coal and it was poisoning the lakes and streams as well as causing other damage to huge portions of the eastern United States and Canada. In 1990, the U.S. adopted legislation that cut acid rain pollution in half by requiring that “scrubbers” be installed on coal burning furnaces and put in place the first “trading system” for pollution reductions.

On the global scale, chemicals used mainly in refrigeration were literally eating away at the world’s protective ozone layer, critical for shielding the planet from cancer causing UV radiation. In the late 1980s, the United Nations shepherded through a global agreement known as “The Montreal Protocol” that phased out the use of chemicals responsible for the damage. Less harmful chemicals were developed and the hole has been gradually closing ever since.

The backdrop to these two success stories was a period of intense national and global law making in the 1970s. After the first Earth Day, our major environmental statutes were passed in rapid succession – the Clean Air Act in 1970, the Clean Water Act in 1972, the Endangered Species Act in 1973, the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1974, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act in 1976, and the Superfund in 1980. In 1972, the first Earth Summit was held in Stockholm, Sweden. Many of our environmental treaties were adopted shortly thereafter. NRDC and other national groups were formed during this period – NRDC in the dining hall of Yale Law School – and now employ thousands of advocates working on behalf of people and the environment. Thousands more form a vibrant “grassroots” movement that continually challenges the status quo.

It is hard to imagine what our country would be like if we had not passed these statutes or invested in building this cadre of environmental activists in their support. I’ve travelled to many developing countries where the air is unbreathable and the water undrinkable. I’ve ridden in “tuk tuks” - taxis in Bangkok – whose gas tanks could explode at any moment. And, tragically, many environmental activists have lost their lives for lack of the civil liberties and democratic protections. We can’t protect ourselves against these harms without the power of the law and rules.

That system of laws and rules, and fundamentally behavior at all levels, is broadening out dramatically and will be tested like never before. The statutes of the 1970s seem almost quaint in their focus on solving problems by using technology to reduce pollution at the end of a pipe. As Tom Friedman said in his New York Times column on March 7, we are facing the point of inflection where both the Wall Street economy and the earth's natural systems are hitting the wall at the same time. Given that stark reality, the spotlight must now be on changing the very way we produce energy and food, and how much we consume.

Instead of making a better Cadillac, we have to throw it out for the Prius – or better yet, for high-speed rail and walkable communities. We need to have more “smart growth” and greener buildings. Companies should add photovoltaic panels and earthen roofs to reduce stormwater runoff and better insulate their miles of flat roofs. We’ll need to enact new treaties to control mercury and to protect the arctic as the melting ice opens it up for shipping and resource extraction. There is much to be done but there is already a beehive of activity that the President, Congress, and other nations can magnify with leadership and the right policies.

And while there is a dire imperative to these issues, there is also a huge opportunity to do things better and more fairly. Perhaps we’ll even be inspired to think more deeply about what matters most to us and what we plan to leave for the next generation and for other co-inhabitants on this miraculous planet. As George said, there is no alternative to optimism. That is a refreshing idea here in Washington, D.C. at the start of 2009.

President Obama puts clean, renewable power in stark contrast to dirty fuels

2009-02-25T04:09:18Z

In a forceful speech tonight, President Barack Obama asked America to join him in bringing about a revolution in how we produce and use energy. Already in his young presidency, he has signaled his desire to regulate greenhouse gases from cars and trucks, increase their fuel efficiency, and put in place high speed rail and other farsighted transportation policies. Last week, he signed into law a stimulus package with $80 billion dollars - nearly a tenth of the overall package - in renewable energy, energy efficiency and cleaner forms of transportation. Tonight, he called on Congress to enact a market based cap on global warming pollution to help make clean energy the most profitable and help our nation tackle two huge issues - our dependence on oil and global climate change.

One of the President's first lines tonight was "we import more oil today than ever before". He went on to say that this dependence is "our responsibility" and that this is a time for bold action. He continued that "it is time for America to lead again" dedicating his administration to change the way we produce energy as one of his three top priorities. He committed to doubling the nation's supply of renewable energy in three years and making our homes and buildings more energy efficient. Framing this was his statement that "we know the country that harnesses the power of clean, renewable energy will lead the 21st century".

Last week, the President made his first foreign trip of his presidency to Canada. His words there were gentle but he gave the same message. As he said tonight, "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. " It's hard to miss the underlying message that the days of producing energy and oil at any cost are over. Dirty fuels - like coal in the U.S. and Canada and oil from the Canadian tar sands - now stand in stark contrast to his commitment to build our infrastructure around renewable energy rather than new pipelines and expanded refineries to process more dirty tar sands oil.

The President also made it clear last week in Canada that these measures that will make us more energy secure. Payments for foreign oil drain nearly a trillion dollars every year from our economy in the form of debt. Our addiction to oil has put Americans and innocent civilians in harms way in the Middle East, lined the pockets of dictators, and despoiled some of our last wilderness areas in North America and around the world. And most fundamentally, our energy use is driving our planet inexorably towards catastrophic global warming. In recognition of this challenge, he said in Ottawa:

"We are very grateful for the relationship that we have with Canada, and Canada being our largest energy supplier, but I think that increasingly we have to take into account that the issue of climate change and greenhouse gases is something that's going to have an impact on all of us and as two relatively wealthy countries, it's important for us to show leadership"

How will Canada respond?

This week, Ontario will introduce a path breaking clean energy act. British Columbia has long led in producing advanced batteries and fuel cells. Alberta and the plains provinces have some of the world's best wind power. Ontario, British Columbia, and Manitoba are expected to introduce low carbon fuel standards modeled on California's vanguard effort to reduce carbon in our fuels. And many provinces are now moving to protect the Boreal forest, our largest land-based terrestrial storehouse of carbon. There is much opportunity to work together.

But like the U.S. dependency on coal (and on tar sands oil as Canada's largest customer), we have the challenge of making sure that these opportunities become the mainstream and that the old and perilous sources of energy rapidly become relegated to the past.

The production of tar sands oil is a challenge for both the U.S. and for Canada. But what is heartening is that our President is saying we need to move on. By putting in place a cap on pollution and transportation policies like more stringent fuel economy and low carbon fuel standards, we can reduce our dependence on tar sands oil. What remains to be seen is whether Canada will join in this effort and start to shift its economic engine from the tar sands to greener forms of energy production and let the Boreal forest do what it does so well on its own - regulate our climate.

As the President said, "It is time for America to lead again." Indeed. It is time for all of North America to lead again.

A Turning Point in the tar sands

2009-02-20T00:37:27Z

The tar sands issue will never be the same after the President's visit to Canada this week. It has been catapulted to the top tier issues between the U.S. and Canada. Now the spotlight will be on what can be done to clean up the massive environmental problems in the tar sands and whether they fit a "21st century" energy solution, as called for by President Obama. And that spotlight will not let up. This next month's National Geographic has a lengthy and graphic story on the destruction there.

While the President did not directly take on the tar sands (he was a polite guest), he talked about the development and use of clean energy as one of the most pressing challenges of our time. He went on to say that how we use and produce energy is "fundamental to our economic recovery but also to our security and our planet, and we know we can't afford to tackle these problems in isolation." He repeatedly stressed that global warming is the lens through which we must now look at energy issues.

In one fell swoop, the President obliterated the main argument that the Harper and Stelmach governments have put forward in support of expanding strip mining and drilling for tar sands oil. It was a policy of "oil-sands-at-any-cost-for-energy security purposes". They are going to have to do better now that the fate of the planet is now entwined. Energy security must morph to climate security. And as wealthy countries, we must lead on tackling global warming.

But the President also had wise words about how finding energy solutions for the 21st Century might enrich us. He talked about how addressing the climate change issue might help us make our economies more energy efficient, saving consumers and businesses money. And he talked about how he hoped that out of the collaboration with Canada we would emerge firmly committed to addressing an issue that ultimately "the Prime Minister's children and my children are going to have to live with for many years."

There will be a lot of back and forth in the next few days about what this new energy dialogue will mean and clarifications around whether the Harper Government's climate policy is the same as the one proposed by President Obama (it is not) and whether carbon capture and storage is a solution in the tar sands (it is not), but at the end of the day the key point is this - our leaders can no longer hide behind the coattails of the oil companies operating in the tar sands and call this a rational energy or climate or planetary policy.

Native Americans from north of the tar sands to refineries dotted across the West and Midwest and all along the proposed pipelines spoke out against the tar sands damage to their sacred lands, tar sands festivals were held and Greenpeace banners hung, and thousands of letters were sent by scientists, athletes, writers, artists, mayors, members of environmental groups...you get the picture. The message was "Tar sands no, green jobs and a green economy yes".

As if to drive the point home, today it was announced that Alberta - once rolling in oil money - is now in a deficit. And guess what? The oil companies are still making money. As the President said, there are no "silver bullets" in solving our energy problems but one thing is clear, we can do better and thanks to the leadership of our new President and the people of Canada and the United States, I am sure we will.

Does the U.S. need tar sands oil? Our analysis shows we don't

2009-02-17T23:07:02Z

As the President heads to Canada this week, the Canadian government is expected to table a proposal to "protect" their carbon-heavy tar sands operations in Northern Alberta from future global warming regulation. The Canadians are confident, apparently, that the U.S. will embrace the tar sands because "the U.S. needs the oil".

Does the U.S. need tar sands oil? Our analysis shows we don't. President Obama has repeatedly stated that the U.S. must reduce its dependence on oil. He has focused - on energy security grounds - on oil from the Middle East and Venezuela. But the President, as well as his advisors, endorse a framework that positions climate security as a key component of national security. This will necessitate taking a harder look at the tar sands oil and other high carbon fuels as well as oil from the Middle East.

The great news is that we can reduce our reliance on Middle Eastern, Venezuelan and tar sands oil by reducing our demand. We don't have to increase our use of tar sands oil to reduce our demand for Middle Eastern oil. And we can cut our demand through measures that are strongly supported by the President. We are already off to a good start with savings under the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007.

According to NRDC's fuels expert, Luke Tonachel, we can reduce U.S. oil use by 3.9 million barrels per day in ten years. Extend that to 2020, by just one year, and it jumps up to 4.4 million barrels a day as EISA fuel efficiency mandates are realized and savings continue from smart growth and transit investments, moving some transportation to the electric grid, advances in aviation fuels and improved efficiency of building oil heating. Our analysis does not include savings that would come from a carbon cap or tax or from low carbon fuel standards, all of which are being enacted now on a state or regional level and are likely to come into play in the next decade. And we are just starting to analyze the effect of the stimulus mandates on carbon reductions but they will also accelerate oil savings.

Today, oil from the Middle East makes up 2.3 million barrels a day and from Venezuela another 1.3 million for a total of 3.6 million barrels a day, according to the Annual Energy Outlook. By 2020, oil from the Middle East and Venezuela is forecast to be 3.3 million barrels a day. That means that if we can save 4.4 million barrels, there is an additional 1 million that can be offset, the equivalent of what we now import from the tar sands. But it also means that there is no room to allow our dependence on tar sands oil to grow over the next decade.

What's encouraging is that the savings opportunities keep growing. By 2025 and 2030, under the same measures, we can reduce 7.2 and 9.7 million barrels a day respectively, cutting deeply into both our current 20 million barrels a day oil use and future projections. That means that savings we make in the nearer term are not undercut by a surge in demand later. The opposite is true, where these measures help bring about a continual decline in demand.

Most importantly, cutting our oil demand is also the cleanest path. By cutting emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollution, the U.S. can play a leadership role in international efforts to solve global warming.

We are at an energy crossroads with Canada

We are at a critical crossroads with Canada as our President and Canada's Prime Minister meet. Expanded reliance on tar sands oil will require a massive investment in infrastructure that would effectively lock us in to decades of use of this dirty fuel and greatly expand our global warming pollution. Other than Canada itself, the U.S. is the only customer for tar sands oil. The main artery that brings this oil into the U.S., the Enbridge pipeline, is being expanded and extended in the Midwest. Two new pipelines under construction - the Keystone and Keystone XL - will increase the flow into Midwestern refineries. In turn, these refineries are being expanded and retrofitted specifically to take tar sands oil. Texas and the Gulf states are next.

But due to the financial crisis and low price of oil, investment has slowed considerably. The threat of global warming regulation has also undoubtedly played a role. This provides a natural respite for our leaders to think through which energy future we want.

What our analysis shows is that clean energy and energy efficiency can truly be a substitute, not simply one of multiple energy sources (or "all of the above" as its known in policy circles) needed to fuel our future. We can kick the tar sands habit and produce the energy we need. What could be better news as the President heads up to Canada?

Will our leaders rise above the tar pit?

2009-02-12T17:34:00Z

The President will make his first foreign visit to Canada next week. This is a tradition and historically these meetings have been largely ceremonial.

Not so this time. Canada is abuzz with speculation about what directions might be set - particularly on energy policy. The President and Prime Minister agreed that energy and the environment will be top tier issues, along with Afganistan and trade issues. Therefore, it is likely to be the first international forum in which the President addresses climate change, and the world will be watching closely.

But there is a fly in the "tarry" ointment, so to speak. The Prime Minister is pushing "protections" for oil derived from the tar sands. This oil is literally scraped out of pristine forest and, by using huge amounts of energy and water, turned into a very heavy crude oil. It's production, topping 1.5 million barrels per day, comes at a terrible ecological and social cost to Alberta's Boreal forest. The Canadian Boreal forest is one of the world's last large intact ecosystems, our largest terrestrial carbon reservoir, and nursery to one third of our backyard birds and waterfowl. It is also the home to native communities that have lived in peace with the land for thousands of years.

With the leadership of President Obama, America is now looking beyond these extractive and energy intensive fuels to a clean energy future. In this future, more stock is put in renewable energy such as wind and solar and far less in the fossil fuels of the past. The stimulus bill approved by the House and Senate last night has record investments in renewables and in energy efficiency.

But change is hard and old ideas persist. This week, I heard Matt Miller of the Center for American Progress speak about his new book "The Tyranny of Dead Ideas". He describes our greatest challenge as being stuck in an old way of thinking. Andrew Revkin, a journalist from the New York Times, made similar comments saying recently that while global warming frightened him, more frightening is our inability to process the scale of the threat and to act decisively to protect ourselves.

Dead ideas seem to be a major driver in the tar sands. Instead of moving away from extractive, damaging practices of the past, we carry on because we seem almost unable to break away from them.

But next week, when President Obama travels to Canada, there is a chance for some new thinking. And here are some ways our leaders might want to start:

1) Set out a path for a new energy economy: This new economy would provide green jobs and environmentally sustainable energy solutions such as wind, solar power, and low carbon fuels. Already the Provinces of British Columbia, Manitoba, and Ontario are working with Governor Schwarzenegger's Western Climate Initiative to put low carbon fuel standards in place. More collaboration along these lines would be terrific.

2) Agree that there is no such thing as energy security that conflicts with climate security: James Jones, our National Security Advisor, said this week at a major security conference, that our overdependence on fossil fuels endangers our security, our economies, and the health of the planet.

A recent CSIS/WRI study makes the case that there is no room for high carbon fuels in a future that provides climate security.

3) Endorse a framework for action that sharply reduces our global warming pollution through absolute targets: President Obama is proposing that the U.S. adopt a cap on global warming pollution that requires sharp reductions from all emitting sectors. No sector is exempted, including coal. Trading in emissions reductions is allowed, along with some offsets, but there will be tremendous pressure to move to less emitting, low carbon alternatives for generating energy and for our transportation. To date, Canada has not adopted or proposed such a national cap.

Sadly, for Canada, the tar sands stand in the way. The economic interest in exploiting tar sands is driving a very weak Canadian federal policy on climate change. While many of these tar sands projects are coming to a halt due to the economy and price of oil, the Canadian government seems irrevocably captured by them. The tar sands are Canada's largest growing source of global warming pollution. On the U.S. side, importing tar sands oil also produces higher emissions at U.S. refineries, compared to refining conventional petroleum. The solution to both challenges is to reduce oil use by improving vehicle efficiency, producing clean alternative fuels, and improving public transportation. But first we need to break from our old ideas.

So when our leaders gather to discuss these issues next week, we should be on the lookout for technological fixes that keep old thinking alive. One of those is carbon capture and sequestration. While CCS, as it is known, may have greater promise in other applications, it is unlikely to deliver the "silver bullet" to fix the tar sands global warming pollution. And it won't clean up the other problems of air, water and land degradation. It is better to spend the billions on new technologies that don't have the huge downsides of strip mining and drilling for tar sands oil. Alberta has some of the greatest potential for wind power generation but it will take changing the mindset and political system that follows that in Ottawa, Calgary and Edmonton.

We cannot afford to get this wrong, for the climate, for biodiversity and maybe most importantly for ourselves. We need to know that we can move from dead ideas to a future that is more inspiring and more in sinc with nature.

This is where I want our new President to lead us next week. And I think most Canadians feel the same.

Tar sands: Freedom of speech is another victim

2008-12-18T21:53:25Z

The tar sands as a major source of oil for North America looks most favorable when oil prices are high and oil companies have cash to invest. That has meant a resurgence of interest in tar sands development over the past several years. But now Canada faces a triple whammy - oil prices have dropped, capital for projects has dried up, and Canada faces charges of obstructing progress in tackling global warming because of the carbon intensity of strip-mining and drilling oil from the Boreal forest. Arguably oil prices will rise again and capital will become available (or oil companies will invest their own profits) but the real question is whether the Canadian government and oil industry have the social license to continue.

Fidel Castro weighed in this week, stating that tar sands development was as big a condemnation of capitalism as the wreck that is now Wall Street. Whatever you might think of this critique, it does raise some important questions. Can development such as the tar sands (which is, by the way, the world's biggest capital project) go forward even if society at large is against it? Is the availability of technology and access to capital an unstoppable force, especially when it comes to oil? What will the new Administration do about tar sands oil (the US is the major consumer)? These questions are very much at play right now as Canada struggles to redefine its arguments for developing the tar sands. The global warming impact of moving tar sands carbon into the atmosphere has made a large dent in Canada's energy security claim.

Sadly, Canada remains far from acknowledging the problems that are diminishing global receptivity to the tar sands. At the recent climate talks in Poland, Canada garnered the "Colossal Fossil" award for 10 "fossils" in as many days. This award is given by the Climate Action Network to countries deemed most responsible for obstructing the negotiations. Most of the obstruction came from Canada's insistence that it had the right to pollute more because of the tar sands and their role in energy production. There seemed little capacity to reflect on whether that form of energy production belongs in a carbon constrained world.

And the concerns are widening. Not only is tar sands development a cause for alarm when it comes to the climate, it now appears to be a major impediment to sustaining North America's bird population and is polluting one of North America's largest river networks that spills into the Arctic. NRDC, along with the Boreal Songbird Initiative and the Pembina Institute, released a report on December 2 entitled "Danger in the Nursery" about the impact of tar sands oil extraction on millions of nesting songbirds and waterfowl in the Boreal forest. Environmental Defence followed with its report "11 Million Litres a Day" on December 10th about the leaking tailings ponds and potential link to cancers downstream. Then, the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation filed a series of law suits over permits granted for tar sands operations, challenging the very right of the government to issue them on traditional territory of native communities.

In response, the Canadian and Albertan governments have belittled the findings at best and, at worst, have tried to cover them up. One of Alberta's most prominent scientists, David Schindler, criticized the Alberta government for "dishing real oilsands propaganda" and not subjecting its own claims to non-partisan scientific scrutiny, noting that the two reports cited above - and criticized by the government - relied on data from peer-reviewed scientific papers and were themselves peer-reviewed.

Instead of promising the international community that Canada would look into these issues, the government delegation in Poland ordered a tar sands display torn down. The display was posted by a group of young Canadians expressing their views, which is normal at these international meetings. A prominent Canadian Scientist, Don MacIver, resigned as the chair of a working group involved in the negotiations because the federal government revoked his permission to speak in Poland. One of Canada's leading climate change experts, Gordon McBean, tied this directly to the government's advocacy of the tar sands.

On the heels of these incidents, the Alberta Culture Minister held a news conference to decry the short movie "Downstream" and announce that from now on proposals for public funding will go through a rigorous "content screening" for anything offensive to Alberta. The film is up for an Oscar in the short category and portrays a voice seldom heard in the energy debate - the voices of the Fort Chipewyan community which is struggling against the tar sands and to cope with cancer deaths, including among its children, from suspected contamination. Wouldn't any sensible government embrace a film that does just what documentaries are designed to do - to make us think about the ripple effect of our actions in this world? Has Canada let its love affair with the tar sands cut into it tolerance and freedom of expression, the very civil rights that underpin discourse in a democracy?

The latest Government of Alberta press release about a tar sands promotional trip has the Premier heading to Texas. He and his top team have visited Washington D.C., California, Chicago, Wyoming and Europe this year, spending a substantial portion of the government's $25 million PR kitty to push the tar sands globally. But it is telling that his last trip of the year is to Texas. It underscores how much receptivity to the tar sands has shrunk. If you have to "sell" the tar sands to Texas, you are undoubtedly in trouble.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world is waiting for some honest answers.

What future for dirty fuels in the Post-Bush era?

2008-11-19T19:25:20Z

In a taped statement yesterday, President-elect Obama addressed an international meeting on climate change hosted by California Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger in and co-hosted by an all-star, bi-partisan group of governors active on global warming issues (see Canada's reaction here). My colleague, Peter Miller, who was there said it was the first time he's seen a video taped statement receive a standing ovation. NRDC reacted quickly with our President, Frances Beinecke, lauding Obama's statement and commenting that addressing climate change through clean energy available now can help turn our country's faltering economy around.

After eight years of an Administration fighting the reality of global warming, it is indeed a huge moment to hear our President-elect talk about the high a priority it will be for his Administration. He laid out his plan to work with Congress to pass climage change legislation and to re-engage with the international community, much of which puts acting on global warming as central to renewed relations with the United States. My colleague, Jake Schmidt, talks about what this means for moving the international agenda post-2012 (building upon Kyoto).

But for those of us working on the darker edge of the energy debates, this statement comes as yet another commitment by President-elect Obama to move us away from the harmful fossil fuels that have not only made our country less efficient, and therefore less stable economically, but put life on our planet at serious risk. We hope that investors, politicians, and those in the oil and coal industry that are weighing the future for "dirty fuels" will stop to listen to the new direction that our new President-elect plans to take the country.

Unfortunately, a whole new synthetic, high carbon fuels industry is being put in place to recover oil from the most difficult places, literally cooking oil out of rocks and scraping it out of sand buried deep under carbon rich forest reserves. Our analysis shows that the carbon emissions from developing dirty fuels could offset much of the gains we have made from improving our fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks.

Let's hope the trifecta of low oil prices, financial credit collapse and an incoming Administration tasked on moving the country to low carbon, not high carbon fuels, will give us the breathing room to shift gears and move our country away from these dirty fuels. Canada is the largest oil supplier to the U.S. and half of their oil exports already come from the high carbon, environmentally destructive tar sands. And the Bush Administration announced yesterday that they are proceeding with regulations to open 2 million acres of public land for oil shale development.

This is taking us backwards, not forwards, on energy policy and was part and parcel of what the voters rejected in the November 4th elections. We're going to put our bet on - and our advocacy behind - clean energy, energy efficiency and renewables such as wind, solar and next generation biofuels, rather than these dirty, high carbon fuels. We know that change won't be easy - all the forces that have pushed a high carbon fuels agenda are still in play - Big Oil and Coal and all the election contributions to members of Congress. But it will make a huge difference to have leadership and support right at the very top. Yesterday's welcome statement signals that we might be one step closer to rejecting these dirty fuels.

Al Gore on "Yes we can!"

2008-11-10T03:29:29Z

Read Nobel Laureate Al Gore's opinion piece today in the New York Times about what this means to him. He comments on how best to channel the energy and enthusiasm for change that is ushering in our 44th President of the United States. He says take that energy and enthusiasm and translate it into a climate policy that will create millions of jobs, put good old American ingenuity back in play, and - by the way - save the planet.

The dirty fuels - tar sands, oil shale, liquid coal and "clean coal" are out (see what he says).

What's in? Solar thermal plants in the Southwestern desert and geothermal plants where there are natural "hot spots" in the earth, wind farms from Texas to the Dakotas, and a "smart grid" to move renewable energy from rural to urban areas.

What's also in? Re-tooling the auto industry to provide fleets of plug-in hybrid cars and trucks that can both be used for transport and electric storage.

And finally, buildings can be retrofitted, and Government aid for failing mortgages can also help to make homes more energy efficient.

Think of the jobs making all this happen, think of the change this could bring to Main Street. As my colleague and Co-Chair of the Center for a New American Dream, Julie Schor, put it - it's time for Green Street. Yes we can!

Environmental history to make in the 111th Congress

2008-11-05T20:54:44Z

Tackling environmental challenges - like global warming - will likely be at the forefront of our new President-elect's agenda. After eight years of the most anti-environment administration in our history, there will be a lot to do to better care for our precious planet. Without a healthy planet, we can't hope to attain our dreams for more prosperity, more democracy, more diversity, etc. Virtually all of our aspirations are tied to this reality.

As President-elect Barack Obama enters the White House in January, he will understand this better than any President who has been elected to lead our country. He acknowledged in his speech last night that we have a "planet in peril". While NRDC did not take a position on the race for the White House (we are a non-partisan, charitable organization that cannot endorse candidates), it is heartening to think of having a President in office who truly cares and is educated about the environment. It is also exciting to think that the solutions will help create new jobs through energy conservation, clean energy and transportation, and redesigning our communities to be more people and environment friendly.

One of the more difficult issues our next President and Congress will have to tackle is the rapid development of a synthetic, high-carbon fuels industry in North America. On top of our list of concerns is the strip mining for oil in Canada's Boreal forest - one of the planet's last large intact ecosystems and our largest terrestrial storehouse of carbon. Oil from this region - called the tar sands - is literally scraped out of what was previously part of a beautiful forest of green, slow growing trees and winding rivers, and the nesting ground for nearly 40 percent of our songbirds and waterfowl.

Sadly, our rapacious appetite for oil (some 20 million barrels a day) has seen oil production from this forest increase substantially as other sources of oil decrease or become unavailable to the multinational oil companies. Boreal forest derived oil now makes up nearly 8 percent of our daily oil use and its production releases three times the global warming pollution per barrel than conventional oil. Its contribution to our oil bottom line is expected to triple in the next decade with over $100 Billion spent building a spider web of new pipelines and expanding refineries.

President-elect Obama and the next Congress will have a real choice to make - will our government continue to provide incentives to develop these high carbon fuel sources or will it put us on a path to develop a low carbon economy? We know that cleaner alternatives are available now, such as fuel efficiency, better public transportation, and renewable energy. And our latest national poll conducted on energy and gas prices shows us that almost 80% of Americans believe we need to switch to renewables too. We don't need these high carbon fuels as a "bridge" (giving new meaning to "bridge to nowhere"). We have the necessary technologies now to start to move America beyond oil.

We hope that our next President will do everything he can to put this technology in place and promote American ingenuity and policy to move us along a very different energy path. This seems a far better alternative than scraping the bottom of the barrel and losing irreplaceable natural resources.

We have a lot of environmental history to make in the 111th Congress. We can't wait to get started. NRDC will be there every step of the way.

Photo: Canada's Boreal forest in the tar sands region

Famous Arctic Explorer talks about energy crossroads

2008-10-15T20:55:08Z

Will Steger is the first person to have made his way across the Antarctic on foot, a daunting terrain of ice waves and howling winds. There were no dogs, no company at all. Just endless white, a man and his wooden sled, wind, ice, and bitter cold.

Now he is taking on what might prove to be an even harder challenge. In his "The Longest Summer" tour, he is travelling the Midwest to talk about the big energy choice we are poised to make - will we choose solar, wind and other renewable sources of clean energy or energy even dirtier than conventional fossil fuels, further imperilling our fragile planet? It's hard to believe that there is even a debate. It seems so obvious. Choose clean energy! But, as Steger points out in his excellent Op-Ed in the Minnesota Star Tribune, we are just as likely to pick the dirty energy of our past as we are to choose the clean energy of our future.

In the Op-Ed, he contrasts the high-carbon path of developing oil shale with the lower-carbon path of renewable and other green energy. He points out that there is a lot of political pressure to develop these dirty fuels. His Senator, Norm Coleman (R-MN), supports developing oil out of the Rocky mountain shale deposits, a highly greenhouse gas and water intensive way to make oil.

But sadly Minnesota already refines a high-carbon fuel and is one of the largest players in promoting its use in other parts of the Midwest. At its Pine Bend refinery, Minnesota refines "dirty oil" derived from the tar sands region of Alberta, Canada. The owner of the refinery, Flint Hills Resources Ltd, is one of the largest purchasers and distributors of tar sands oil. To produce this oil, thousands of acres of undisturbed Boreal forest ecosystem - the nursery for millions of songbirds and waterfowl – is dug up and huge amounts of global warming pollution are created in getting the oil out of the tarry soil.

A “crossroads” implies a choice and a debate. The time for that debate is now and it should start with a look at the role of the tar sands – as well as oil shale - in the Midwest’s future. Thanks to Will Steger, that debate will get a new injection of the right kind of energy. Then its up to us.

The tar sands "pollution delivery system" coming to a Great Lake near you

2008-10-09T20:18:45Z

Yesterday, two important reports were released and their conclusions are startling. First was the Munk Centre's report cataloguing a "pollution delivery system" from Alberta, Canada, to the Great Lakes. It warned that the air and water pollution from increased tar sands refining in the Great Lakes region will adversely effect the Great Lakes - which represent some 20% percent of the earth's fresh water supplies and serve 30 million people just on the U.S. side of the border. As my colleague, Josh Mogerman, queried "Which is more important to North America, fresh water or more oil?"

The second report was a report by the RAND Corporation and commissioned by the National Commission on Energy. It concluded that in spite of the dangerous global warming pollution and profligate water and energy use from further developing our transportation fuels from Canada's tar sands, they are likely to be highly resistant, unlike liquid coal, to pricing carbon. The report's author noted in a Greenwire piece, you'd have to price carbon at $250 per ton before you'd see an impact on slowing the tar sands.

So, in sum this means that investment in the tar sands is likely to continue to grow in spite of the threat of putting a price on carbon pollution. Any limitation on its development will have to come through government policy and regulation directed at its development or policies such as the Low Carbon Fuel Standard adopted by California. Pricing carbon, whether that is through a cap-and-trade system or a tax, is not likely to be enough - we need to do more and we need to do it fast.

Before we know it, this "pollution delivery system" will be constructed and Americans will never have had the chance to debate a clean energy future. All the major oil companies are busy - right now - building this system and they have gotten help in a big way from Congress. Last week, the dirty secret of the "Bailout package" was the nearly billion dollars in subsidies for refinery expansions that record-profit earning oil companies have already committed to building. And those subsidies don't require those expansions to control their carbon dioxide or other pollution.

We like to say that we are at a global warming and energy cross-roads, but that implies a choice. We need to insist that our politicians debate this choice out loud and in an accountable way rather than bury these subsidies in the fine print of a massive bill. We, the American people, know we can do better - there are all kinds of solutions from improving our infrastructure and public transportation to mass-producing plug in hybrid cars to investing in smart growth. And guess what? If we do all this, we can also help climb our way out of this mess we are in by creating good jobs for Americans in building the clean energy future.

Last week, I heard an old tax professor of mine from law school deride the bailout bill's tag-ons, like the tax relief for the production of arrowheads and bicycle commuting benefits (which actually sound good to me!) What he failed to mention were the really big ones - the billion dollar ones - that will ensure the tar sands "pollution delivery system" is delivered lock, stock and barrel to a Great Lake near you.

That is, unless you and I demand a different future.

Charting a Greener Course for Aviation Fuels

2008-09-25T15:23:24Z

Today, key players in the aviation industry, led by Boeing and Virgin Atlantic Airways, have joined forces with academics and environmental groups to launch a push for low carbon fuel. This new coalition, Sustainable Aviation Fuels Users' Group, is being advised by NRDC and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to ground test and bring to market the next generation of low carbon, sustainable aviation fuels. For the first time, the development of a fuel will be monitored from the growth of the plant through to its refining into a fuel. This is a whole new way of thinking about producing fuels and nothing like this is done for fossil fuels.

What is fundamentally at stake is a race for our energy future. There are two paths ahead of us - ever dirtier high-carbon fuels such as tar sands oil and liquid coal or developing new, lower carbon fuels that don't harm the environment.

The group will focus on two potential new low carbon fuels - jatropha and algae - which are considered "next generation" biofuels because their production is intended not to compete for food or water resources or for land important for conserving nature or carbon. It is also committed to developing fuels that will benefit small scale farmers and local communities.

While the group acknowledges in its pledge that efficiency and bringing down the carbon content of their fuels overall are critical components of reducing global warming pollution, the reality is that as long as planes are flying, they are going to use fuel. Right now, the majority of that fuel is coming from controversial sources, politically and environmentally. It is encouraging to think of a future fuel that could alleviate the damage from fossil fuel extraction and combustion and benefit, rather than tear apart, local communities and our environment. That is what this group is ambitiously setting out to do.

So how will the aviation sector help develop these low carbon fuels?

Importantly, the group has agreed to adopt the standards of a global, multistakeholder process called the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels (RSB) and certify - through third party verification - aviation biofuels through rigorous environmental and social screening.

The challenges ahead are weighty. But the group has laid out important parameters in their pledge:

1. Jet fuel plant sources should be developed in a manner which is non-competitive with food and where biodiversity impacts are minimized; in addition, the cultivation of those plant sources should not jeopardize drinking water supplies.
2. Total lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions from plant growth, harvesting, processing, and end-use should be significantly reduced compared to those associated with jet fuels from fossil sources.
3. In developing economies, development projects should include provisions or outcomes that improve socio-economic conditions for small-scale farmers who rely on agriculture to feed them and their families, and that do not require the involuntary displacement of local populations.
4. High conservation value areas and native eco-systems should not be cleared and converted for jet fuel plant source development.

These criteria should be consistent with, and complementary to emerging internationally-recognized standards such as those being developed by the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels."

Bringing these new, lower carbon fuels on-line could make a critical dent in fossil fuel use, especially as the use of high carbon, dirty fuels, such as those derived from Canadian tar sands oil and liquid coal, are on the rise. Already tar sands oil makes up 8% of overall U.S. oil consumption of 21 million barrels of oil per day and could quadruple over the next decade. These fuels take a lot more energy and water to extract and process. And they are irreversibly scarring the irreplaceable wildlands of the western part of our continent. Four tons of soil - euphemistically called "overburden" - is mined where once pristine Boreal forest stood - a living part of one of the largest intact ecosystems on earth and one of our largest carbon storehouses.

At the first "Eco-Aviation" conference in Washington D.C. last June, the Chairman of Air New Zealand stood before an assembled crowd of representatives from the aviation and aerospace industries and proclaimed that now was the time to tackle climate change. He said that the sector should take up serious efforts to address what was becoming the issue of our day - global climate change. Virgin Atlantic Airways (VAA), in partnership with Boeing's Commercial Aviation division, had much the same message and a zippy ad about VAA's first biofuels test flight last February.

This was the opener for what was to become the Sustainable Aviation Fuels Users' Group being launched today. In the absence of federal leadership on developing low carbon fuels, initiatives such as this are critical to jumpstarting a new fuels future. Low carbon fuels - together with efficiency and moving much more of the energy for our transportation to the grid and then greening the grid - hold the promise of actually reducing our dependence on oil and helping us combat global warming.

We will work hard to see that it is the work of this initiative - not the high carbon fuels agenda - that takes flight. Our planet depends on it.