energy policy

Sarah Palin gave a 2,585-word energy policy speech today in Ohio, and didn't breathe the words "climate" or "global warming," according to the prepared remarks available on the McCain campaign Web site.

She mentioned "energy independence," "energy security" and similar phrases dozens of times, and repeatedly promised to increase drilling for oil and natural gas, champion coal mining and "clean coal" technology, build new nuclear power plants ... and, to round out the "all of the above" approach, support renewable energy.

Though she was speaking to workers at the Toledo, OH, solar firm Xunlight Energy, she mentioned renewable energy less than any of the other options.

The most remarkable phrase in the speech may have been this one, because it comes so close to being worthy of praise:

Energy security, she said "tests our ability to confront and solve hard problems in Washington, instead of constantly putting things off. And it brings together so many other issues -- from the value of our pay checks to ..."

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A "new energy economy" is emerging in the United States. Now.

That's the way Lester R. Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute and one of the most influential voices on buidling a sustainable economy, sees it. Here's a look at the bones of his latest argument, which I've organized into seven ways to feel hopeful on a Monday:

1. Texas
   Texas is the richest oil state in the United States, and yet it has become the nation's biggest producer of wind, and has the biggest plans to expand wind energy production. Within years, it will have 45,000 megawatts -- the equivalent of 45 coal-fired power plants -- generating all the electricity consumed by homes in the largest state in the lower 48.

2. South Dakota
   The world's largest wind farm, with the electrical output of about five coal-fired power plants, is being built in South Dakota. Not only will that Clipper Windpower and BP wind farm produce five-times as much energy as the state's homes consume. But the project also includes a transmission line through Iowa into Indiana, where there's industrial hunger for power. Experts have said that improving the electric grid will be key to tapping into vast stores of energy in the relatively sparsely populated Heartland.

3. Wyoming
   Similarly, Colorado billionaire Philip Anschutz has secured the rights to build not only a 2,000-megawatt wind farm in Wyoming, but the rights to build a high-voltage transmission line to California. Another line could run to Colorado, and both Kansas and Oklahoma are looking to export wind energy to the power-hungry Southeast via new transmission lines.

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The Environmental Protection Agency Tuesday published standards for protecting health and the environment at the proposed nuclear waste storage site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, where the nation may bury radioactive waste from its fleet of 100+ nuclear power plants, and from Defense Department nuclear weapons sites.

The details -- how many millirem of radiation can safely leak out -- would be meaningless to most people, who don't often think about their daily dose of radiation.

The bottom line on that, according to EPA as quoted by the Las Vegas Sun, is that the standards are in line with international radioactive waste management guidelines. Nevada's senators and other opponents of the Yucca Mountain storage plan vociferously objected to the rules, calling them dangerous and based on flawed science.

For argument's sake, assume that the millirem limit is safe. What still gives skeptics pause about a central waste storage site, and nuclear power in general, is the time scale it must remain secure.

The EPA set a low leak limit for the first 10,000 years, and then set a standard more than six times higher for the next million years (though still less than one-third the average annual dose of radiation that Americans receive from the sun and other sources today).

A million years.

That's how long radioactive waste from nuclear power plants remains dangerous, how long it must be safely stored, how long people must be wary about coming into contact with too many millirem of radiation.

It may well be, however, that global warming can't be solved without making this bargain with future generations. ...

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In a story, fittingly, featured in the Charleston Gazette, in West Virginia's coal country, about people are puzzling over how John McCain and Barack Obama really feel about coal.

They both say they support "clean coal" -- a code word for yet-to-be-developed technology that would either turn coal to gas before burning, or else bury the carbon emissions deep underground after burning. It's a way for politicians to embrace an abundant domestic fuel source that employs blue-collar workers, without embracing the pollution that comes along with it.

About 50 % of U.S. electricity comes from burning coal, and it's a leading source of greenhouse gas emissions, as well as pollution of toxic mercury, acid rain gases, smog and soot. In a word: dirty.

Coal is, along with oil, the central figure in our energy picture. Yet, the candidates focus energy talking about it. ...

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Oil giant Shell has been slapped down for a momentous bit of greenwashing.

In a British advertising blitz, Shell referred to its development of the Alberta oil sands and its construction of the largest U.S. oil refinery as "sustainable," statements that the U.K. Advertising Standards Authority, responding to a complaint by WWF, said were untruthful and unsubstantiated because they implied these projects were environmentally benign.

The key question was: What is sustainable?

Shell, in its arguments to the ad authority, defined the concept as providing cheap energy to meet social and economic needs of future generations, while the ad clearly implied that sustainability had everything to do with protecting the environment. ...

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Sometimes the dots just don't get connected.

It used to be they might not get connected on the same page of the same newspaper, but now we're more apt to get our news delivered one headline at a lightning flash time. The disconnection can be overwhelming.

The headline today is President Bush Lifts Executive Ban on Offshore Drilling (in the Washington Post's formulation. The reasons cited: High gas prices, and politics. The rationale: Drill more oil domestically, and eventually you get cheaper gas at the pump, and highlight the issue now and you favor Republican John McCain over Democrat Barack Obama in November's presidential election.

The story's a wee bit bigger than that, though.

Start by connecting it to another, smaller story making some news today, Polar base evacuated as ice melts early, in the CNN formulation. Russian researchers abandoned their outpost on an Arctic ice floe more than a month ahead of schedule because the ice is melting so rapidly. Some have predicted the North Pole will go ice-free for the first time in history this summer, a year after the most extensive melt ever witnessed.

Drilling for oil means burning oil, means releasing carbon dioxide means more global warming means more ice melting. Consider those dots connected.

President Bush, while agreeing with world leaders last week that we ought to collectively cut our greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2050 (50% from what level? they didn't say), has otherwise kept his administration's hands off the switch and tied behind its back. The capstone of this achievement of stalling came last week, when the EPA announced it would continue to take public comment on the potential health impacts of global warming for a few more months, effectively ensuring that the next president would be the decider when it comes to carbon dioxide regulation.

It was 1990 (2 years after Congress was first warned about global warming, incidentally) that President Bush's father, George H.W. Bush imposed the executive branch ban on offshore drilling. Congress has its own ban, and seems content to keep it.

The decision whether or not to drill for oil off the coast of the United States is a question of long-term strategy, sort of ...

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When dollar figures reach into the millions, eyes tend to widen. Wow! That's a lot of money.

When they reach into the trillions, eyes tend to glaze over. Wow! That's just too big a number to comprehend.

The International Energy Agency said Thursday the world must spend $45 trillion over the next 40 years or so on an "energy technology revolution" if it is to find alternatives to oil and slow or stop global warming.

That's something like $3 billion a day, which brings the enormity of the task into focus. Somewhat. For context, Congress has proposed a U.S. budget that amounts to spending more than $8 billion per day in 2009 ($3 trillion for the whole year).

This spending isn't like a rent check. It doesn't just disappear. It's more like an investment in a new business. This is money put into new industries, new research, new technologies. You can't transform the way we generate energy without paying scientists to study, factory workers to assemble, engineers to operate and construction crews to install. ...

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