Energy Secretary

This Times article paints a pretty positive view of DoE nominee Chu and the Joint BioEnergy Institute.

In Choice to Lead NOAA, a Wide Range of Credentials

Obama picked a marine ecologist to head NOAA.

Winter Cold Puts a Chill on Green Energy

There are obviously some important issues to think about in this story. Also some overemphasis...

Obama naming Nobel Prize winner from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as energy secretary

By Mary Anne Ostrom Mercury News

Posted: 12/10/2008 03:11:38 PM PST

Steven Chu, director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, will be Barack Obama's energy secretary, according to several media reports.

The Nobel Prize winning physicist and former chair of Stanford University's physics department, is a major supporter of developing alternative fuels and solar research and backs government mandated steps to control greenhouse gas emissions.

His selection signals that Obama plans to move ahead with his agenda of promoting environmentally friendly energy sources. And by putting a university scientist at the helm of the energy department, instead of an industry leader or political leader with no science background as had been speculated, it indicates that Obama plans to commit to a government industry partnership to develop green energy initiatives.

"It is wonderful to see another distinguished Californian be mentioned for a Cabinet level position,'' Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said in a statement. "Dr. Chu would bring extraordinary scientific accomplishments to the job of Energy Secretary at a time when science is telling us we must act to avert the ravages of global warming."

Chu, 60, of Oakland, has led the Berkeley national lab since 2004 and is a member of the board of the Hewlett Foundation.

The Associated Press, citing Democratic officials, said Obama has also selected Lisa Jackson for environmental protection agency administrator and Carol Browner as his energy "czar."

Wave power put to the test in Monterey Bay

Kurtis Alexander - Sentinel Staff Writer
Posted: 12/09/2008 01:30:56 AM PST

The 60-foot Velocity motored out of Santa Cruz harbor Monday afternoon under mostly sunny skies. On deck was an apprehensive crew -- scientists with research group SRI International of Menlo Park, observers from the Department of Energy and financiers with the Tokyo-based Hyper Drive Corp.

As the boat began to bob up and down after clearing the breakwater, and the stomachs of those with weaker constitutions began to churn, the day's mission became all the more clear: to see the wave motion go to work making electricity.

The 62-year-old SRI International, which counts the invention of the computer mouse among its discoveries, was at sea to test its new wave-powered generator, a floating device that awaited the Velocity about a mile offshore and holds the promise, its inventors said, of bringing energy to land.

"There's only so much you can do in the lab. At some point, you have to put it out in the water," said Philip Von Guggenberg, the group's business director.

The ocean has become the latest frontier for a power industry hungry for alternatives.

Waves, say energy experts, have many advantages. They're constant and reliable, close to the highly populated coasts where power needs are greatest, and, unlike other sources of electricity such as solar, can be harnessed with very basic technology.

Two countries, Portugal and Scotland, have begun to commercialize wave power and several others are working
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to catch up, including the United States, where several projects are in the pipeline.

"It's still a very open market," said Carolyn Elefant with the Ocean Renewable Energy Coalition, the young industry's even younger trade group. "Even companies that are on the leading edge now and currently feeding power to the grid, we don't know in 10 or 15 years if they're going to be the winners in this race."

For researchers at SRI International, the strategy in a marketplace with no defined standard is to go simple.

The group's wave generator is designed to let waves move a bendable slab of rubber-like material and, by doing so, act much like a turbine and produce electricity. Today, it might just be a few watts, tomorrow, a small city.

"We like to say we can make electricity with something as simple as a rubber band," said Roy Kornbluh, principal research engineer for SRI International. The technology, he adds, avoids the more costly and error-prone wave systems that rely on pumps to push air, water or oil to generate power.

And so, amid light winds on the Monterey Bay and relatively calm surf, the Velocity pulled up to the much anticipated wave machine. Kornbluh and others aboard set their sights seaward.

On a roughly 10-foot-tall buoy, two levers moved with the rise and fall of the ocean, pushing accordian-looking rubbery material up and down through plastic columns.

"It's responding to the choppy waves and the longer waves," Kornbluh said.

In other words, success. At least for now.

Mikio Waki, chief technology officer of Hyper Drive, says the technology, which produced a relatively scant 20 joules per second -- enough to power a small lightbulb -- during its four-day debut, is at least five years away from being scaled up and commercially viable. And how the power will be transmitted, either sending electricity through underground cables or producing hydrogen from the generator that would run through a pipe, is yet to be determined.

But in an industry that energy experts say could supply 6.5 percent of the nation's total energy needs, there is still time to figure things out.

"The best way to extract the resource is still unclear," said Alejandro Moreno, a manager of water programs for the Department of Energy, who joined the crew of the Velocity to preview the nascent system. "But any technology that can minimize moving parts and components that might break will be at an advantage."
Contact Kurtis Alexander at 706-3267 or kalexander@santacruzsentinel.com.

Michael Pollan for Secretary of Agriculture

Bill Moyers Journal . Watch & Listen | PBS

Gulf Oil CEO says gas could hit $1 next year

By Julie Onufrak
The Patriot Ledger
http://www.patriotledger.com/business/x1881115149/Gulf-Oil-CEO-says-lower-gas-prices-ahead?view=print

Posted Dec 04, 2008 @ 06:00 AM
Last update Dec 04, 2008 @ 08:42 AM
RANDOLPH — Gulf Oil CEO Joe Petrowski said on Wednesday that the price of oil could sink to $20 per barrel, and there is a chance gasoline prices could drop as low as $1 per gallon by early next year.

Speaking at a South Shore Chamber of Commerce breakfast at Lombardo’s in Randolph, the Brockton native said that after speculators drove oil prices up, there is a chance that the market will overshoot on the way back down, resulting in much lower prices at the pump.

Check out the latest prices locally
in our weekly CHEAPGAS survey.

Gas prices have already sunk fairly rapidly this fall, reaching a statewide average of $1.85 for a gallon of regular-grade gasoline this week, following a plunge in crude oil prices.

Gulf Oil, which is based in Newton, is not an oil producer. Gulf stopped producing oil in 1986 and stopped refining oil in 1992, according to Petrowski. He said the company is a “fuel agnostic” wholesaler, and will sell whichever fuels customers and distributors demand.

Though he said the company benefits from lower energy prices, he said he believes the price of oil should range from $40 to $60 per barrel, depending on economic activity, in order to keep pace with inflation.

Petrowski said that policymakers should make low-cost energy a goal by investing in alternative energy sources, increasing domestic oil reserves, and diversifying the foreign origins of oil so as to be less dependent on unfriendly countries.

While he said he believes global warming is a danger, Petrowski is not sure there is as much of a correlation between carbon and global warming as some environmentalists claim.

“Carbon is our greatest threat – there’s another myth,” he said. “I do think economic devastation and reliance on foreign supplies of oil (are).”

Since gas prices peaked in July, Petrowski said some people have resumed driving habits that they avoided when gasoline was $4 a gallon in the summer. But he said he hopes that the motivation to create alternative energy sources will not be lost.

Gulf opened its first E85 ethanol fueling station at Logan Airport in October – just as gasoline prices sank and the demand for ethanol decreased. “Ethanol’s not a great business right now, but it will be,” Petrowski said.

He said that cellulosic ethanol will eventually replace corn-based ethanol, and that he thinks the U.S. should eventually get rid of the import tax on ethanol from places like Brazil.

Petrowski said that New England’s energy future is bright, with research and development going on at local universities as well as access to gasoline from refineries in Canada, the mid-Atlantic region, the Caribbean and Europe. “We’re no longer at the end of the pipe,” he said.

Solar thermal in Lancaster CA

From the Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-outthere5-2008dec05,0,4265592.storyOUT THERE

Solar plant could be savior to struggling Lancaster: The city and surrounding Antelope Valley have been hard hit by poverty, unemployment and foreclosures. The nearly complete eSolar facility could create jobs and restore a sense of pride.
By Scott Gold

December 5, 2008

They lined up for meatball sandwiches the other night outside the Lancaster Community Shelter, in the cold of the high desert. There was a man in a fedora who'd lost his house to the bank. A college student whose loans fell through. An older woman with curlers in her bag, who planned to do her hair after dinner.

Everyone had a story to tell, a cigarette to borrow, a friend to greet. But soon, the crowd hushed as a young mother and her boyfriend walked toward the door carrying 3-week-old twins. They had no money, nowhere to stay, they said. Between them, they'd applied for a dozen jobs -- she got all gussied up for her interview at Denny's, even borrowed a pair of heels -- but they'd had a run of rotten luck, she said.

The buzz in the Antelope Valley these days is about a company called eSolar, which is putting the finishing touches on a thermal solar energy facility here -- 24,000 mirrors that glitter like diamonds when you approach on Avenue G. There are plans for several more facilities in the area, all larger, the company says.

Local officials are atwitter at the possibilities. Visitors and investors are expected from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. A slew of jobs would be created; there were 225 people working last week on the Avenue G facility alone, most of them locals. Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris said the solar plants could be the catalyst to restoring the sort of "intellectual excitement" that existed when aerospace, still a vital industry here, was the only game in town -- when "if it went up, it came out of here," he said.

"Now, we're going to go a long way toward saving this world," the mayor said. "Right here in Lancaster."

It's heady talk, and people are listening. Lancaster and the surrounding valley are suffering, even by the standards of a community that long ago acclimated to a boom-and-bust cycle. Many here are living on the edge, and some beyond, with tens of thousands more expected to arrive in coming years.

There is a sense that development cannot come fast enough, not with shops closing, one in five people living in poverty, high unemployment and the highest mortality rate in Los Angeles County. Not with so many houses falling into foreclosure that the city of Lancaster has gone into real estate -- buying and renovating empty homes to slow the decline of neighborhoods.

"It's bad," said William Turner, 21, who got a job installing eSolar mirrors through a temp agency. He is among those vying for one of the full-time positions the company will offer soon; competition will be fierce and many of those hired will be overqualified for their jobs, officials said.

"People around here are really hurting," Turner said. "We need a change."

ESolar operations and maintenance manager Bob Holsinger was the fourth of five siblings who grew up on an Illinois soybean farm, and he still looks the part, with broad, rounded shoulders and aircraft-carrier-sized boots.

When Holsinger was young, his father dispensed one piece of advice to the kids: "Last one out, turn out the lights." It was meant, of course, to cut down on the power bill. But Holsinger always suspected it meant something else -- that whoever controlled the flow of electricity would be the last one standing, even if everything else went south. Today, after a 35-year career in energy, it turns out he might have been right.

California is the epicenter of U.S. solar technology; there are dozens of energy projects in the works. Few have generated as much anticipation as this one, if only because with 1,000 mirrors being installed each day, it is growing in stark contrast to the boarded-up storefronts and the brown, brittle lawns in front of abandoned houses.

The company uses the mirrors to focus the sun's rays on an elevated target, which produces superheated steam that turns turbines to create power. The whole thing can be assembled easily, like an Erector Set for grown-ups. Workers can put it together using four wrenches.

The mirrors can be adjusted remotely from the company's headquarters in Pasadena to ensure that they are capturing the sun. The mirrors can be fine-tuned; workers at a test site recently used the reflection to spell out the words "HAPPY BIRTHDAY BILL" for a colleague.

"It's pretty slick," Holsinger said.

When eSolar flips the switch, five megawatts of electricity will be sent into the grid, enough to power roughly 5,000 homes. A second facility, far larger, is expected north of Lancaster, and there are plans for several more in the area, enough to produce 500 megawatts, perhaps, in the next decade, the company says.

"We are not going to have a carbon footprint in 10 years. We just won't have one," said the mayor, a successful lawyer given to hyperbole, and to infectious passion.

It is an unlikely development in the Antelope Valley, which remains, despite its growth and increasing diversity, a strait-laced, conservative area. "Culturally, it is somewhat new," said Barry S. Munz, vice president at Antelope Valley Engineering Inc., a contractor at the eSolar site.

But how important is it?

"We will turn flips for them," Parris said. "And, quite frankly, I don't turn flips for anybody."

Back at the homeless shelter, it's easy to see why.

Resident case manager Bobby Hampton said the shelter now serves up to 120 dinners each night, half again as many as when he started six years ago. Demand has been rising; this summer, he said, "business started booming."

A striking number of clients lost their homes to the bank; others unwittingly rented rooms in abandoned houses taken over by unscrupulous squatters, only to get kicked out when they were discovered. The shelter is now full every night.

Waiting in line for a cot, Jerry Frazier, 50, a recovering heroin addict, said he received $199 for the month through the county-funded General Relief program. He spent $175 on a month's supply of medication at a methadone clinic, leaving him $24 for the rest of the month. He's been unable to find a job, he said; a former professional musician, he just pawned the last of his 32 guitars.

"This is a working country," he said. "But there are no jobs. Not here."

Once inside, those accepted for a bed were required to bathe, then routed into a line for dinner that snaked through the hall. A volunteer began to pray. "Hats off!" a security guard shouted.

In one corner, Jennifer Schmidt, 19, and her boyfriend, Treavon Henry, 20, ate their food in silence, their twin newborns, Kory and Kody, resting in car seats on the table.

Schmidt and Henry began dating in high school and could not have imagined what has happened since. Schmidt was on the pill but got pregnant anyway. Both lost their jobs. They don't have enough money to get a market-rate apartment and have been on a waiting list for indigent housing since April.

They were living with her mother but were told to leave after Schmidt asked her not to smoke in front of the babies, Schmidt said. Then they moved in with his mother; she kicked them out, too, after Schmidt asked her not to cuss in front of the babies.

Exhausted, they slumped in Hampton's cluttered office as he filled out a voucher for a room at a motel for one night. Then they carried the twins into the chilly night.

With no car -- they sold their Acura a few months back for $500 -- they would have to walk. Each carried a twin, until Schmidt's arms couldn't take any more. Henry picked up both twins and, holding them out to his side, struggled down the street toward the motel, past auto body shops and bail bonds offices.

"It feels like we've been walking forever," Schmidt said.

Finally, they got to the motel. The marquee outside said: "KARAOKE, Sun-Wed." By the time they walked into their room, Kody was crying. He was hungry, Schmidt said, and they were out of formula.

Gold is a Times staff writer.

Dingell ousted

Dingell is part of the reason for Detriot's demise. He cried about CAFE standards and how they would hurt the industry for 30 years. He did eventually update CAFE, but he also put in a loophole that allows car companies to get credit for alternative fuel use in car, even if they don't use them (the so called ethanol loophole).

November 20, 2008
Longtime Head of House Energy Panel Is Ousted
By REUTERS

Filed at 11:01 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON, Nov 20 (Reuters) - Rep. Henry Waxman unseated fellow veteran Democratic lawmaker John Dingell on Thursday to become chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives powerful Energy and Commerce Committee.

The 255-House Democratic conference voted 137 to 122 to accept the recommendation of its steering committee and agreed to replace Dingell, 82, a long-time friend of the U.S. auto industry, with Waxman, a 69-year-old Californian anxious to ease global warming, a top concern of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama.

U.S. Expands Utah Oil and Gas Leasing

See the story here.
The Bush Administration still uses the tactic of flooding out these things while the media is full of other junk. These new maps were released on election day. Another reason to make election day a national holliday.

Now What?

Time to go to work

Maryland climate action activists is "suspected terrorist"

posted on Revkin's blog...

greenspan finally sullied

posted by Dustin

I have never had any faith in the competence of Alan Greenspan, ever since I saw his responses to Bernie Sanders in a banking committee meeting about the repeal of Glass-Steagall. He looked oblivious to the line of questioning. He apparently was.

Watch his video testimony here.

Momentum Slows for Alternative Energy

October 21, 2008

By CLIFFORD KRAUSS

HOUSTON — For all the support that the presidential candidates are expressing for renewable energy, alternative energies like wind and solar are facing big new challenges because of the credit freeze and the plunge in oil and natural gas prices.

Shares of alternative energy companies have fallen even more sharply than the rest of the stock market in recent months. The struggles of financial institutions are raising fears that investment capital for big renewable energy projects is likely to get tighter.

Advocates are concerned that if the prices for oil and gas keep falling, the incentive for utilities and consumers to buy expensive renewable energy will shrink. That is what happened in the 1980s when a decade of advances for alternative energy collapsed amid falling prices for conventional fuels.

“Everyone is in shock about what the new world is going to be,” said V. John White, executive director of the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technology, a California advocacy group. “Surely, renewable energy projects and new technologies are at risk because of their capital intensity.”

Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain both promise ambitious programs to develop various kinds of alternative energy to combat global warming and achieve energy independence.

Mr. Obama talks of creating five million new jobs in renewable energy and nearly tripling the percentage of the nation’s electricity supplied by renewables by 2025. Mr. McCain has run television advertisements showing wind turbines and has pledged to make the United States the “leader in a new international green economy.”

But after years of rapid growth, the sudden headwinds facing renewables point to slowing momentum and greater dependence on government subsidies, mandates and research financing, at a time when Washington is overloaded with economic problems.

John Woolard, chief executive officer of BrightSource Energy, a solar company, said he believed the long-term future for renewables remained promising, though “right now we are looking at tumultuous and unpredictable capital markets.”

Venture capital financing for some advanced solar projects and for experimental biofuels, like ethanol made from plant wastes, is drying up, according to analysts who track investment flows.

At least two wind energy companies have had to delay projects in recent days because of trouble raising capital. Several corn ethanol projects have been delayed for lack of financing in Iowa and Oklahoma since last month, and one plant operator in Ohio filed for bankruptcy protection last week.

Tesla Motors, the maker of battery-powered cars, recently announced it had been forced to delay production of its all-electric Model S sedan, close two offices and lay off workers.

Investment analysts say initial and secondary stock offerings by clean energy companies across global markets have slowed to a crawl since the spring, and for the full year could total less than half of the record $25.4 billion for 2007.

Worldwide project financings for new construction of wind, solar, biofuels and other alternative energy projects this year fell to $17.8 billion in the third quarter, from $23.2 billion in the second quarter, according to New Energy Finance, a research firm in London. The slide is expected to be sharper in the fourth quarter and next year.

In the United States, financing for new projects and venture capital and private equity investments in renewable energy this year might still top last year’s results because so much money was in the pipeline at the beginning of the year, but the pace has slowed sharply in the last month.

The next presidential administration, to make good on campaign rhetoric and continue supporting renewables, will have to choose alternative energy over other programs at a time of ballooning deficits. Analysts say that is no sure thing.

“Government funding for renewables is now going to have to compete with levels of government funding in other areas that were unimaginable six months ago,” Mark Flannery, an energy analyst for Credit Suisse, said.

The central questions facing renewables now, experts say, are how long credit will be tight and how low oil and natural gas prices will fall. Oil and gas are still relatively expensive by historical standards, but the prices have fallen by half since July. Some economists expect further declines as the economy weakens.

Wall Street analysts say most utilities and other builders can profitably choose big wind projects over gas-fired plants only when gas prices are $8 per thousand cubic feet or higher. Natural gas settled Monday at about $6.79 per thousand cubic feet, down from about $13.58 on July 3.

“Natural gas at $6 makes wind look like a questionable idea and solar power unfathomably expensive,” said Kevin Book, a senior vice president at FBR Capital Markets.

Government mandates already on the books, including state rules requiring renewable power generation and federal requirements for production of ethanol, ensure that to some degree, alternative energy markets will continue to exist no matter how low oil and gas prices go. But the credit crisis means some companies that would like to build facilities to meet that demand are going to have problems. “If you can’t borrow money, you can’t develop renewables,” Mr. Book said.

Renewable energy now meets 7 percent of the nation’s energy needs, and public subsidies have promoted a leap for several alternative energy sources in recent years.

Ethanol is sold nationwide as a gasoline additive, and federal legislation aims to replace a major share of the oil now imported into the United States with domestically produced biofuels in the next 15 years. Enough new wind power was installed in the United States to serve the equivalent of 4.5 million households in 2007, the third year in a row the country led all nations in new wind power.

Renewable energy has become a big business worldwide, with total investment increasing to $148.4 billion last year, from $33.4 billion in 2004, according to Ethan Zindler, head of North American research at New Energy Finance. Mr. Zindler said the upward momentum had halted, and that total investment this year was likely to be lower than last.

In the 1970s, just as in recent years, high prices for fossil fuels led to rising interest in renewables. But when oil prices collapsed in the 1980s, the nascent market for renewable energy fell apart, too. Congress eliminated tax credits for solar energy, ethanol could not compete with cheap gasoline and a wind farm boomlet in California failed to catch on in the rest of the country.

The epicenter of investment and development moved to Europe, with its strong government support for renewables, and began shifting back only when heating oil and natural gas prices shot up again in recent years.

There are some differences this time. Coal, another major competitor of renewables, remains expensive and is facing increasing scrutiny over environmental concerns.

Most important, renewable energy entrepreneurs and experts say, is the growing government and public backing for renewable energy in the United States.

“What is driving the market this time is that we’re at war and this is a security issue,” said Arnold R. Klann, chief executive of BlueFire Ethanol, a California company that is planning to make ethanol out of garbage with the help of $40 million in financing from the Energy Department.

In its recent financial rescue package, Congress provided $17 billion in tax credits to promote various forms of clean power, for everything from plug-in electric vehicles to projects that will capture and store carbon dioxide from coal-burning power plants. Production and investment tax credits were extended for wind energy for one year, geothermal energy for two years and for solar energy for a full eight years.

Meanwhile more than 30 states have enacted standards demanding that utilities generate a minimum proportion — typically 10 to 20 percent — of their power from renewable sources in the next 5 to 10 years.

But some analysts say the government supports may not be enough to propel continued growth for renewables, noting that several states have already relaxed their goals.

“When they can’t meet their targets,” Mr. Book said, “they change them.”

Exelon’s $6.2 Billion Bid for NRG Would Create Largest Power Utility in U.S.

October 21, 2008

By MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON — The Exelon Corporation’s unsolicited bid to buy NRG Energy, a power generator based in Princeton, N.J., would create the largest power company in the country, in terms of assets, market capitalization and generation capacity, and would benefit shareholders of both companies, Exelon said on Monday.

“There is simply no doubt that scale is important in turbulent times, and it’s important as the costs of growth continue to rise,” Exelon’s chairman, John W. Rowe, told analysts in a conference call, in which he cited the current credit crisis.

But the deal would raise credit challenges; Exelon is assuming that because of bond covenants, sale of NRG would require Exelon to refinance $8 billion in debt and that interest rates would run into double digits. Executives held out some hope, though, that they might be able to renegotiate with the current bondholders, rather than refinance.

The transaction would depress Exelon’s credit rating but it would remain investment grade, company executives said, and would return within two or three years to its current level.

NRG, with 44 generating stations spread across Southern California, Texas, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New York and Connecticut, had no immediate comment except to say that it was evaluating the offer with its advisers.

continue

Green Policies in California Generated Jobs, Study Finds

October 20, 2008 By FELICITY BARRINGER

OAKLAND, Calif. — California’s energy-efficiency policies created nearly 1.5 million jobs from 1977 to 2007, while eliminating fewer than 25,000, according to a study to be released Monday.

The study, conducted by David Roland-Holst, an economist at the
Center for Energy, Resources and Economic Sustainability at the
University of California, Berkeley, found that while the state’s
policies lowered employee compensation in the electric power industry
by an estimated $1.6 billion over that period, it improved compensation
in the state over all by $44.6 billion.

Built into that figure were increases of $1.2 billion in the light
industrial sector, $11.2 billion in wholesale and retail trade, $7.3
billion in the financial and insurance sectors and $17.8 billion in the
service sector.

“Consumers were able to reduce energy spending,” the study said, adding that “these savings were diverted to other demand.”

“When consumers shift one dollar of demand from electricity to
groceries,” the report said, they create jobs among retailers,
wholesalers, food processors and other businesses.

The study, which examined household spending, comes as state and
regional initiatives on climate-change policies have been gathering
momentum. At the same time, arguments have sharpened over how much it
will cost the economy to cut the emission of greenhouse gases like
carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels, which are linked to climate change.

Roughly half the country’s electric power is generated by burning
coal, the fuel that produces among the highest greenhouse-gas emissions
of any in widespread use.

Some economists focus their studies on the cost of converting the
power grid to run on low-carbon technologies, like wind energy, or the
cost of developing technologies to separate the carbon dioxide from
coal-plant emissions and bury it underground. Others focus on the job
creating potential of new energy industries.

The Berkeley study is different in that it focuses as much on
historical data as on modeling the future. California’s
energy-efficiency policies were adopted in 1978, long before the
widespread push for greenhouse-gas reductions, but the data they
provide is highly relevant to the current economic debate.

Professor Roland-Holst said that he based his calculations on
residential spending on electricity over the last 30 years, factoring
in both the decrease in per-capita demand for electricity — now 40
percent below the national average — and the increase in California’s
electrical rates, which were about 40 percent above the national
average in June, the latest month for which data is available.
Household spending represents more than 70 percent of the gross state
product.

Historically, Professor Roland-Holst said, the decrease in
per-capita demand for electricity outstripped the increase in rates.
Much of the economic growth, the study said, was driven by both
efficiency standards for large appliances like refrigerators and for
residential and commercial buildings.

In an interview, Professor Roland-Holst said, “What I wanted to do
to support the forward-looking vision is go back and look at the
evidence we have in front of us.”

In two months, California is set to adopt broad policies to enforce
a new cap on greenhouse gas emissions signed into law two years ago.
More detailed regulations will then be developed; that process is
likely to be contentious, as it divides the overall costs of the new
program among competing sectors of the state’s economy.

Soros on the clean energy economy

It is interesting that Soros' idea about injecting the banks directly with capital ended up being the chosen bailout plan.

His argument is that the motor of global growth over the past 30 years has been the american consumer who spends more than he saves. He suggests that the clean energy economy could replace it. Check out the podcast on Moyer's show.

sanders on the bailout

Sanders Op-Ed: Why I voted against the bailout -- 10/04/2008

By Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

The Bush administration and Wall Street bankers got what they wanted -- a $700 billion bailout with all the risk.

To me, it is grossly unfair that the middle class, whose standard of living is declining, is forced to pick up the tab for Wall Street's greed and irresponsibility, and not the top 1 percent who have benefited from Bush's reckless policies. While the middle class has declined under President Bush's failed economic policies, there has been a massive transfer of wealth from working families to the very rich. Incredibly, for the first seven years of Bush's tenure, the wealthiest 400 individuals in our country saw a $670 billion increase in their wealth. That is just 400 families.

That is why I proposed raising the tax rate on any individual earning $500,000 a year or more or any family earning $1 million a year or more by 10 percent. It would have raised $300 billion in the next five years, almost half the cost of the bailout. If what all the supporters of this legislation say is correct, that the government will get back some of its money when the market calms down and the government sells some of the assets it has purchased, then $300 billion would have been sufficient to make sure that 99.7 percent of taxpayers do not have to pay one nickel for this bailout.

Let me be clear: In the midst of the severe financial crisis facing our country, Congress had a duty to act, but this legislation does not accomplish what must be done.

This bill does not effectively address the issue of what the taxpayers of our country will actually own after they invest hundreds of billions of dollars in toxic assets.

This bill does not effectively address the issue of oversight because the oversight board members have all been hand-picked by the Bush administration.

This bill does not effectively deal with the crisis of foreclosures and addressing that very serious issue, which is impacting millions of low- and moderate-income Americans, in the aggressive way that we should be.

This bill does not effectively deal with the issue of executive compensation and golden parachutes. Under this bill, the CEOs and the Wall Street insiders will still, with a little bit of imagination, continue to make out like bandits.

This bill does not deal at all with how we got into this crisis in the first place and the need to undo the deregulatory fervor that created trillions of dollars in complicated and unregulated financial instruments such as credit default swaps and hedge funds.

This bill does not address the doctrine of "too big to fail." In fact, within the last several weeks we have sat idly by and watched gigantic financial institutions like the Bank of America swallow up other gigantic financial institutions like Countrywide and Merrill Lynch. Well, who is going to bail out the Bank of America if it begins to fail?

This bill does not deal with the absurdity of having the fox guarding the hen house. Maybe I'm the only person in America who thinks so, but I have a hard time understanding why we are giving $700 billion to the secretary of the Treasury, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, who along with other financial institutions, actually got us into this problem.

This bill does not address the major economic crisis we face: growing unemployment, low wages, and the need to create millions of decent-paying jobs rebuilding our infrastructure and moving us to energy efficiency and sustainable energy.

Congress must act, but this bill was the wrong way to go.

This piece appeared in The Burlington Free Press.

Where were all the progressives?

The reaction by all political parties on the $700 billion was very disappointing. This failure of the left is the culmination of a 20 years siding with the Republicans on economic issues. The progressive movement's failure here is an embarrassment.