[Sosfbay-discuss] The New Energy Debates: Will the new Congress act to change our disastrous energy policy?

[JamBoi]

http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Jan2007/tokar0107.html
January 2007 Volume 20 Number 1

Green Tide

The New Energy Debates
Will the new Congress act to change our disastrous energy policy? 

By Brian Tokar

One of the most pressing issues facing us all, including the new
Democratic-controlled Congress, is what to do about energy policy and
climate change. With sweeping changes in the leadership of key
congressional committees and heightened public concerns about the
consequences of disruptive climate shifts, the time appears ripe for
significant changes in U.S. policy. Environmental lobbyists in
Washington, however, are bracing themselves for only minimal steps.
California Senator Barbara Boxer, the new chair of the Environment and
Public Works Committee, is planning comprehensive hearings on climate
and energy policy—a departure from the approach of her predecessor, the
notorious right-wing climate-denier James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who
called global warming “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on mankind,”
and included popular fiction writer Michael Crichton among his “expert”
witnesses. But with many congressional Democrats beholden to
automobile, agribusiness, and other corporate interests, Capitol Hill
is ready for only  incremental changes. 

The consequences of inaction on climate have become much clearer over
the past year, from ever-more disturbing changes in the daily weather
to unprecedented droughts and floods in many locations. Al Gore’s
self-promoting, but strikingly graphic and substantive film, An
Inconvenient Truth, helped bring the issues to the forefront of popular
attention last summer and the consensus predictions of climate experts
worldwide continue to point toward impending catastrophe. 

In a particularly noteworthy New York Review of Books article last
July, NASA climate expert James Hansen reported that a
business-as-usual scenario would result in at least 5 degrees
(Fahrenheit) of global warming this century and a concomitant 80-foot
rise in world sea levels. This would be enough to flood the homes of 50
million people in the U.S. (inundating most East Coast cities), as well
as 250 million in China, 150 million in India, and 120 million—almost
the entire population—in Bangladesh. Perhaps equally disturbing, the
lines on the map that link regions of equal temperature would double
their rate of movement toward the poles from 35 to at least 70 miles
per decade. The rate of migration of plant and animal species is only
about four miles per decade. In this scenario, more than half the
earth’s living species could become extinct, leading to widespread
ecological collapse. 

In October the British government released the results of a 16-month
climate study predicting significant declines in world food production
and water shortages affecting as many as 4 billion people, along with
coastal flooding, species extinctions, and a rapid fall in the world’s
standard of living. The study, led by Britain’s chief economist Sir
Nicholas Stern, was front page news across the UK—the Independent
proclaimed “The day that changed the climate” when the report was
released—while the New York Times relegated it to page 15. Stern and
his colleagues projected a cost of at least $7 trillion to the world’s
economy for failing to take steps within the next decade to
significantly ameliorate global warming. Per capita consumption would
fall at least 5 percent on a global average basis; in practice, the
less well-off will bear a far greater burden. On the other hand, steps
toward stabilizing the climate could save as much as $2.5 trillion per
year. 

The U.S., with only 4.6 percent of the world’s population, is now
responsible for 23.5 percent of global emissions of carbon dioxide, the
primary greenhouse gas responsible for alterations in climate. U.S.
emissions per capita are twice that of Germany and Japan, three times
France and Italy’s, and five times the world average, according to
International Energy Agency statistics. During the 1970s and early
1980s, the U.S. economy made significant strides toward more efficient
use of energy. Economic growth became decoupled from energy use and
nearly as much energy was saved every year as a result of cumulative
conservation measures and efficiency improvements as was produced by
burning oil. Since 1979, however, public investment in energy research
and development has fallen by more than half and private spending has
also declined steadily, reaching its lowest level since the early
1960s. Per capita energy consumption has increased by half. While many
European economies have struggled to meet Kyoto Protocol requirements,
stabilizing and in a few cases reducing CO2 emissions, U.S. emissions
have steadily increased. 

What Is To Be Done? 

The emerging consensus is that emissions reductions of 60 to 80 percent
are needed to forestall the worst case scenarios, and that meaningful
steps toward these emissions goals need to begin almost immediately. Is
this possible? James Hansen and other analysts have posited an
alternative scenario in which CO2 production levels off by the end of
this decade and begin to decline rapidly as new technologies kick in by
mid-century. This would slow warming to less than 2 degrees, still
insufficient to prevent massive habitat losses or the submersion of
numerous island nations, but enough to reduce the projected sea level
rise to only 15 feet or so. Some economists, however, predict a
30-to-40-year turnover time for significant capital investments on a
large scale. So the question remains: can anything be done to head off
impending disaster? 

Hansen’s confidence that this can occur draws partly on the successful
phasing out of chloroflurocarbons (CFCs), once the world learned of
these chemicals’ decisive role in the thinning of the earth’s ozone
layer, as well as in furthering global heating. “If
growth of CFCs had
continued just one more decade,” Hansen reports, “the stratospheric
ozone layer would have been severely depleted over the entire planet
and CFCs themselves would have caused a larger greenhouse effect than
CO2.” But when voluntary measures proved ineffective in curbing the use
of CFCs, especially for refrigeration, the U.S. and Europe took the
lead in negotiating the 1987 Montreal Protocol, which completely phased
out the chemicals and promoted the rapid development of alternative
refrigerants, coatings, and propellant compounds. 

Energy guru Amory Lovins, the founder of Colorado’s Rocky Mountain
Institute, has been a leading advocate for drastically reducing energy
use since the 1970s. He believes we can rapidly lower the energy
intensity of the world’s economies and save millions in doing so. His
data suggests that the efficiency of oil use can be doubled once again,
as it was in the 1970s, mainly through changes in the transportation
sector. Ultralight vehicles and biofuels, as well as the retooling of
buildings and factories, can dramatically lower energy consumption
without requiring dramatic lifestyle changes, he argues. Lovins
proposes a mix of fees and consumer rebates designed to favor the most
efficient vehicles in each size class, along with targeted changes in
government procurement, loan guarantees, and other “market-oriented”
measures. He suggests that a $180 billion investment over ten years can
eventually produce net savings of $70 billion per year, a significant
boon to investors. 

Energy experts interviewed by the New York Times in October proposed an
equally ambitious research agenda aimed toward major improvements in
the efficiency of solar panels, as well as batteries able to store
large quantities of energy. These areas have languished since the
“energy crisis” years of the 1970s. Battery technologies, for example,
barely changed at all from the beginning of the 20th century to the
dawn of the hybrid car era, but they are essential for storing energy
from intermittent sources like the sun and wind, capturing energy when
it is most available and releasing it when needed. 

Lovins acknowledges that such changes in technology are “fundamentally
disruptive to current business models,” yet he insists that business be
in the lead in implementing these necessary changes. While he supports
shifts in government procurement toward more efficient technologies—and
even large-scale buyouts of people’s old gas guzzlers —he implies that
the sum of individual business decisions will be largely sufficient to
show the way forward. However, as the history of automobile fuel
economy standards shows, industries only alter their behavior on a
large scale in a short amount of time when they are mandated to do so
and all manufacturers have to follow the same rules. 

Are Biofuels The Answer? 

Of all the possible solutions to our current energy problems, biofuels
are by far the most aggressively promoted today. Stories in all the
major newspapers and national magazines, even ads from major auto
makers, suggest that ethanol fuel and biodiesel are the keys to
conserving oil, reducing pollution, and preventing climate change. Bill
Gates, Sun Microsystems’ Vinod Khosla, and other major venture
capitalists are investing hundreds of millions in new biofuel
production, whether in the form of ethanol, mainly derived from corn in
the U.S. today, or biodiesel, mainly from soybeans and canola seed.
It’s literally a “modern day gold rush,” as described by the New York
Times, paraphrasing the chief executive of Cargill, one of the main
beneficiaries of increased subsidies to agribusiness and tax credits to
refiners for the purpose of encouraging biofuel production. 

The Times reported last summer that some 40 new ethanol plants were
then under construction in the U.S., aiming toward a 30 percent
increase in domestic production. Archer Daniels Midland, the company
that first sold the idea of corn-derived ethanol as an auto fuel to
Congress in the late 1970s, has doubled its stock price and profits
over the last two years. ADM currently controls a quarter of U.S.
ethanol fuel production and recently hired a former Chevron executive
as its CEO. 

Several well-respected analysts have raised serious concerns about this
increasing diversion of food crops toward the production of fuel for
automobiles. WorldWatch Institute founder Lester Brown, long concerned
about the sustainability of world food supplies, says that fuel
producers are already competing with food processors in the world’s
grain markets. “Cars, not people, will claim most of the increase in
grain production this year,” reports Brown, a serious concern in a
world where the grain required to make enough ethanol to fill an SUV
tank can also feed a person for an entire year. Others have dismissed
the push for ethanol fuel as little more than the subsidized burning of
food to run automobiles. 

The biofuel rush is having a significant impact worldwide as well.
Brazil, often touted as the the most impressive biofuel success story,
is using half its annual sugarcane crop to provide 40 percent of its
auto fuel, while increasing deforestation to grow more sugarcane and
soybeans. Malaysian and Indonesian rainforests are being bulldozed for
oil palm plantations—threatening endangered orangutans, rhinos, tigers,
and countless other species—in order to serve the booming European
market for biodiesel. 

Are these reasonable tradeoffs for a troubled planet or merely another
corporate push for profits? Two recent studies aim to document the full
consequences of the new biofuel economy and realistically assess its
impact on fuel use, greenhouse gases, and agricultural lands. One
study, originating from the University of Minnesota, is moderately
hopeful in the first two areas, but offers a strong caution about land
use. The other, from Cornell University and UC Berkeley, concludes that
all domestic biofuel sources—the ones currently in use as well as those
under development—produce less energy than is consumed in growing and
processing the crops. 

The Minnesota researchers attempted a full lifecycle analysis of the
production of ethanol from corn and biodiesel from soy. They documented
the energy costs of fuel production, pesticide use, transportation, and
other key factors and also accounted for the energy equivalent of soy
and corn byproducts that are available for other uses after the fuel is
extracted. Their paper, published in the July 25, 2006 edition of the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concluded that ethanol
production offers a modest net energy gain of 25 percent, resulting in
12 percent less greenhouse gases than an equivalent amount of gasoline.
The numbers for biodiesel are more promising, with a 93 percent net
energy gain and a 41 percent reduction in greenhouse gases. 

The researchers cautioned, however, that these figures do not account
for the significant environmental damage from increased acreages of
these crops—including the impacts of pesticides and nitrate runoff into
water supplies—or the increased demand on water, as “energy crops” like
corn and soy displace more drought tolerant crops such as wheat in
several Midwestern states. 

The most serious impact, though, is on land use. The Minnesota research
paper reports that in 2005, 14 percent of the U.S. corn harvest was
used to produce nearly 4 billion gallons of ethanol, equivalent to 1.7
percent of current gasoline usage. About 1.5 percent of the soy harvest
produced 68 million gallons of biodiesel, equivalent to less than
one-tenth of 1 percent of gas usage. This means that if all of the
country’s corn harvest was used to make ethanol, it would displace 12
percent of our gas; all of our soybeans would displace about 6 percent
of diesel use. But if the energy used in producing these biofuels is
taken into account—the fact that 80 percent of the energy goes into
production in the case of corn ethanol and almost 50 percent in the
case of soy biodiesel—the entire soy and corn crops combined would only
satisfy less than 3 percent of current gasoline and diesel use. This is
where the serious strain on food supplies and prices originates. 

The Cornell study is even more skeptical. Released a year earlier, it
was the product of an ongoing collaboration between Cornell
agriculturalist David Pimentel and engineering professor Ted Patzek of
the University of California at Berkeley and was published in the
journal Natural Resources Research. This study found that, on balance,
making ethanol from corn requires 29 percent more fossil fuel than the
net energy produced and biodiesel from soy results in a net energy loss
of 27 percent. Other crops, touted as solutions to the apparent
diseconomy of current methods, offer even worse results. 

Switchgrass, for example, can grow on marginal land and presumably
won’t compete with food production (recall George Bush’s mumbling about
switchgrass in his 2006 State of the Union speech), but it requires 45
percent more energy to harvest and process than the energy value of the
fuel that is produced. Wood biomass requires 57 percent more energy
than it produces and sunflowers require more than twice as much energy
than is available in the fuel that is produced. “There is just no
energy benefit to using plant biomass for liquid fuel,” said David
Pimentel in a Cornell press statement. “These strategies are not
sustainable.” 

The Cornell/Berkeley study has drawn the attention of numerous critics,
some of whom suggest that Ted Patzek’s background in petroleum
engineering disqualifies him from objectively assessing the energy
balance of biofuels. Needless to say, in a field where both oil and
agribusiness companies are vying for public subsidies, the technical
arguments can become rather furious. An earlier analysis by the
Chicago-area Argonne National Laboratory (once a Manhattan Project
offshoot) produced data much closer to the Minnesota results, but a
response by Patzek pointed out several potential flaws in that study’s
shared assumptions with an earlier analysis by the USDA. In another
recent article, Harvard environmental scientist Michael McElroy
concurred with Pimentel and Patzek: “[U]nfortunately the promised
benefits [of ethanol] prove upon analysis to be largely ephemeral.” 

Even the extraction of ethanol from Brazilian sugarcane, touted as the
world’s model for conversion from fossil fuels to sustainable “green
energy,” raises questions. The energy yield appears beyond question: it
is widely suggested that ethanol from sugarcane may produce as much as
eight times as much energy as it takes to grow and process. But a
recent World Wildlife Fund report for the International Energy Agency
challenges this approach to future energy independence. It turns out
that 80 percent of Brazil’s greenhouse gas emissions come not from
cars, but from deforestation—the loss of embedded carbon dioxide when
forests are cut down and burned. A hectare of land may save 13 tons per
year of carbon dioxide if it is used to grow sugarcane, but the same
hectare can absorb 20 tons of CO2 if it remains forested. If sugarcane
and soy plantations continue to encourage deforestation, both in the
Amazon and in Brazil’s Atlantic coastal forests, any climate advantage
is more than outweighed by the loss of the forest. 

Genetic engineering—which has failed to produce healthier or more
sustainable food and also fails to create a reliable source of
biopharmaceuticals without threatening the safety of our food supply—is
now being touted as the answer to more sustainable biofuel production.
Besides manipulating crops for nominally more efficient conversion to
fuel, biotech companies are proposing huge plantations of fast-growing
genetically engineered trees to temporarily sequester carbon and
ultimately harvest them for ethanol. Genetically engineered trees, with
their long life cycle, as well as seeds and pollen capable of spreading
hundreds of miles in the wild, are potentially a far greater
environmental threat than engineered varieties of annual crops (see Z
Magazine, March 2006). Even Monsanto, long the most aggressive promoter
of genetic engineering, has opted to rely instead on conventional plant
breeding for its biofuel research, according to the New York Times. 

Despite all these concerns, however, biofuels still prove advantageous
in many local applications, such as farmers using crop wastes to fuel
their farms and people running cars on waste oil that is otherwise
thrown away by restaurants. New innovations, such as extracting a
diesel substitute from pools of oil-rich algae, may also make an
important difference in certain settings. But as a solution to
long-term energy needs on a national or international scale, the costs
of a society-wide conversion to biofuels may far outweigh the benefits.


Promoting A Transition 

Whichever alternatives prove to be the most viable for addressing our
nearand longer-term energy needs, their development and full deployment
will require massive investments of labor and capital, as well as a
dramatic shift in investment priorities in both the public and private
sectors. How can such a transition come about? 

Proposals for financing a transition to a low-energy scenario tend to
hinge on one or more widely advocated approaches, including energy
taxes, capand-trade systems for CO2 emissions, renewable portfolio and
performance standards, and public works programs or incentives
mandating specific changes in technology. A full economic analysis of
these alternatives is beyond the scope of this discussion, but some
general comments on their differing political and environmental
implications are clearly in order. 

Energy taxes are a proposed solution long favored by many
environmentalists and some politicians. Al Gore, for example, has
proposed a gradually increasing tax, proportionate to each fuel’s level
of carbon dioxide emissions. He suggests decreasing social security
taxes at the same time so as to make the overall result
revenue-neutral. One difficulty with energy taxes, though, is that it
is difficult to design a system that doesn’t disproportionately hurt
those who are less well-off and invariably spend a much larger
proportion of their income on energy. A recent study from economists at
Stanford and NYU suggests that energy demand is sufficiently inelastic
that price increases would have to be three to four times greater than
a straightforward policy analysis might suggest. 

The problems with emissions trading have been discussed in detail
elsewhere (see Z Magazine, February 2006). It is the solution favored
by advocates of “free market environmentalism,” and was enshrined in
the Kyoto Protocol on climate change following then-Vice President
Gore’s intervention in the proceedings. Carbon trading creates an
entirely artificial “carbon market” on a global scale, one highly prone
to manipulation and abuse. It also encourages environmental damage,
such as the conversion of native forests to faster-growing commercial
tree plantations by companies and governments seeking to profit from
carbon credits or offsets. In the global South, this invariably leads
to displacement of peoples whose livelihood depends on the forest. The
wholly voluntary, corporate-supported carbon trading system currently
operating in the U.S., under the auspices of the Chicago Climate
Exchange, has been criticized for inflating the benefits of very small
changes in emissions and offering credits for some practices that make
no real difference for the climate at all. 

Performance and portfolio standards appear more promising, but have
high political hurdles to clear. They can require increased public
intervention in the hallowed “free market,” something that has become
politically unfashionable in recent decades. Performance standards
include mandated fuel economy goals for automobiles—which have not
changed in the U.S. since the late 1980s—and standards for the
efficiency of household appliances, which have steadily improved over
the past two decades despite efforts by the Bush administration to slow
the process. Portfolio standards are a more recent invention and have
been adopted by more than 20 U.S. states, mandating utilities to obtain
a certain minimum percentage of their power from renewable energy
resources. 

The 2005 federal energy bill mandates that at least 7.5 billion gallons
of automotive fuel be obtained from renewable sources by 2012. The most
tangible expression of this policy is a 51 cents per gallon subsidy for
ethanol, which could be expanded to promote a much wider range of
renewable technologies. Public investment to support advances in energy
efficiency, as well as solar and wind energy technologies, could prove
far more cost effective than subsidies targeting ethanol production.
One new study commissioned by the International Institute for
Sustainable Development reports, with no intended irony, that current
U.S. biofuel subsidies could purchase 30-140 times as much savings in
greenhouse gas emissions if invested in existing “carbon markets.” 

In recent years the most innovative steps toward reducing energy use
and promoting renewables have come from the state and local levels.
California’s recent energy legislation—which helped Arnold
Schwarzenegger bolster his environmental credentials prior to the
November election—mandated reductions in carbon dioxide emissions from
industries and automobiles and required builders to offer photovoltaic
roofing tiles, among other measures. California utilities are now only
allowed to enter into long-term power contracts with facilities that
meet the highest emissions standards. While many state-level programs
also emphasize emissions trading, including a recent program that
includes seven northeastern states, they allow a variety of approaches
to be implemented and tested, challenging two decades of inaction at
the federal level. 

“I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy,” the inventor Thomas
Edison told a colleague shortly before his death in 1931. “I hope we
don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”
Seventy-five years later, solar energy is still considered too
speculative by conventional capitalist standards. Despite his large
investments in subsidized ethanol production, venture capitalist Vinod
Khosla told the New York Times that he would not back solar power
because it did not show a profit without subsidies. Genuinely
forward-looking energy technologies are still at a significant
disadvantage compared to “quick fixes” like ethanol. 

Similarly, no one has yet figured out how to make a fortune on
conservation and efficiency. While Amory Lovins and others have
demonstrated for 30 years that it is possible to reap huge savings at
minimal cost from investments in energy efficiency, corporations prefer
to seek even greater short-term gains from worker layoffs, outsourcing
production, and other socially disruptive measures. As predictions for
climate changes become ever more severe, we need to confront the
reality that the needs of the planet, and of a genuinely sustainable
society, remain in fundamental conflict with the demands of wealth and
profit.

Brian Tokar directs the Biotechnology Project at Vermont’s Institute
for Social Ecology (social-ecology.org). His books include Earth for
Sale (South End, 1997) and Gene Traders (Toward Freedom, 2004).  

___________________

JamBoi
Jammy The Sacred Cow Slayer

"Live humbly, laugh often and love unconditionally" (anon)
http://dailyJam.blogspot.com


 
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