Sen. Mark Udall Pushes National RES. But Where Is The Bipartisanship?

Sen. Mark Udall has done a functional job in his first term as Colorado’s senior Senator.  Far from leveraging his huge bases of support in the Denver-Boulder metro area, Sen. Udall has made more effort to reach across the aisle to the psychotic Cons of the 111th Congress who have ground the U.S. Senate to a near halt.  I have argued in numerous posts in plain and simple terms why this is such a bad idea.  To date, and in extreme summary form, we have a half-assed Stimulus Bill, a Health Care Insurance Bill Giveaway, a Wall St. Reform Scott Free Bill and no Climate and Energy Bill.  This situation largely exists because people like Sen. Udall and President Obama want to spend more time chasing the Holy Bipartisan Grail than passing powerful progressive legislation that might actually move this country forward in this 21st century.  To be clear, I do not consider either man to be a progressive; nor did I consider them to be so prior to the 2008 election.  The place I’m arguing from is that this country badly needs progressive legislation and we’re ill-served by the current crop of politicians who don’t care that the Senate is broken.

Recently, Sen. Udall announced that he really, really badly wants a National 25% Renewable Energy Standard by 2025 bill passed during this session of Congress.  That’s fair enough, I suppose.  Sen. Udall did establish some credentials as an environmental advocate in the state of Colorado and during his time as 2nd district Representative in the House.  But, as I’ve also argued in numerous posts, the U.S. Senate is where good legislation goes to die.  By moving from his base of support and joining the Quest for the Holy Bipartisan Grail in the Senate, I challenge the Senator on his calls for an RES.  If he’s not serious about truly enacting such a policy, or if he wants to give utilities policies they support in return for weakening the RES in any way, I’m not interested in listening to his announcements.

Recent Climate Change Milestones & Goals From Around The World

The UK is expected to exceed their Kyoto targets.  Their goal was a 12.5% below 1990 levels by 2010.  The expected number is 23% below 1990 levels.  Another goal is a 34% reduction of 1990 emissions by 2022.  There is, of course, some questions as to which industries are included in those numbers.  Even if some sectors are left out, the UK is clearly making progress – and their economy isn’t being destroyed because of it.

China is talking about a 15% renewable energy standard by 2020 as an official goal.  Having set that goal, there is also talk that 20% would be necessary and attainable – a sentiment with which I agree.

India wants 20,000MW of solar capacity by 2020, 100,000MW by 2030 and 200,000MW by 2050.  It’s a little confusing to see capacity increase by 80,000MW in 10 years (2020 to 2030), but then only an additional 100,000MW in 20 years.  In any event, barring major economic or physical disasters, these goals are laudable and will almost certainly be raised once the price of deployment for PV drops.

Scotland has passed legislation that sets a more ambitious goal than the UK: 42% below 1990 levels by 2020!  Thus, Scotland has passed, to date, the most ambitious climate pollution bill in the world.  Given the fact the Scotland, the UK and the European Union are at a minimum near to achieving their Kyoto Protocol targets, the 2020 and 2050 targets should be within reach.

So how about the U.S., supposedly the most technologically advanced and entrepreneurial country in the world?  As passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, our climate bill (still a long way from full Congressional approval) is setting a carbon emissions goal of 17% reduction of 2005 levels by 2020!  This would be equivalent to a 4% reduction of 1990 levels – a big deficit to the UK’s ~34% or Scotland’s 42% by the same date.  That’s one important reason to pay attention to the baseline year!!!  ACESA also includes a renewable electricity standard (not a renewable energy standard – another important difference) of 20% by 2020.  China’s 15% renewable energy standard goes further – a goal that I already mentioned the Chinese will likely surpass.

How do the policy numbers compare to the science numbers?  The IPCC says that in order to keep global average temperature rise below 2°C we need to make emission reductions from 1990 levels of 25-40% by 2020.  If ACESA passes Congress with the weak targets currently in place, I hope we cut our emissions more than what the legislation demands.  The state of our planet depends upon it.

Efficiency Standard Would Take Bite Out Of Higher Energy Costs

Reading about a national energy efficiency standard made me remember the full-page, color package of lies advertisement I wrote about just over a week ago.  A group spun efforts by Congress to consider reducing greenhouse pollution as a direct tax on the American people.  The pollution must be reduced – the sooner the better.  No matter the manner in which Congress works to introduce the first nationwide effort to reduct that pollution, for-profit energy corporations will do their best to pass on any new costs directly to consumers.  I suppose there is nothing intrinsically wrong with those costs being passed along – it’s the nature of corporations to do so, after all.  What I object to is the morality of doing so when easily implementable solutions are available to those corporations.  That’s where citizen activism comes in – if the corporations refuse to think outside their little box, other people can and will.

It would be relatively straightforward to alleviate cost increases to both energy providers and energy users.  How?  Implementation of Energy Efficiency Standards.  Renewable Energy Standards have been implemented in a number of states (Colorado was the first) and will be done nationally as well.  That’s only part of the energy equation.  Energy efficiency, as I’ve written before, provides a low-cost method of significantly reducing our energy requirements.  People can and have already done so in individual cases.  It’s time to direct energy providers to do the same on a much larger scale.  Imposing costs on greenhouse gas polluters merely introduces a situation in which it makes even more sense to implement Energy Efficiency Standards on a national-scale.

The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy provides the following argument for enacting a national-scale EES:

Currently, new conventional base-load production sources generate electricity at a rate between $0.073 and $0.135 per kilowatt-hour.  At a cost of $0.03 per kilowatt-hour saved, efficiency improvements are significantly less expensive than building new plants and power lines and burning more fuel.

More power is going to be requested by users in the future.  Efficiency technologies today can offset 85% of projected 2030 demand.  85% of projected demand could cost half or one-fourth as much as what energy corporations are going to want to charge Americans.  The potential savings are estimated at nearly $170 billion per year by 2020 if an EES is put in place.  Why wouldn’t we implement such a strategy?

Locally in Colorado, HB07-1146 was one of the first pieces of legislation to reflect the vision of Governor Ritter’s New Energy Economy.  Colorado is currently one of 18 states nationally to have adopted energy efficiency standards.  That effort would be strengthened by a national effort.  Implemening a national energy efficiency standard would improve the efficacy of a national renewable energy standard, something else Colorado has enacted.

Such an effort is underway:

The Campaign for an Energy-Efficient America supports a federal EERS, a target that would require utilities to reduce electricity demand by 15 percent and natural gas demand by 10 percent by 2020. This EERS is included in both House and Senate versions (H.R. 889 and S. 548) of the Save American Energy Act, introduced by Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) and Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-NY).

I would really like to see this effort make its way through the Congress with a minimum of fuss or change.  The globe could use some relief from our greenhouse forcing.  Energy efficiency is a highly reachable method of doing that in the short term.  It would mean energy corporations would receive less money in the future than they would if their lies to Americans were to beat this effort back.  I don’t plan on letting that happen.  I want to save money in the future and save the climate now.

Cross-posted at SquareState.