Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

Several stories on the science and politics of global warming caught our eye this week:

• The world could face "irreversible" drought and sea level increases in the next century even if greenhouse gas emissions are controlled, warns a new study led by Susan Solomon at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The negative effects of global warming already underway will be felt for centuries to come, the team of scientists concluded in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
• A heat wave is scorching southern Australia, with temperatures reaching a record 111 degrees Fahrenheit in Melbourne. Thousands of commuters were stranded when rail lines buckled and trains were canceled.
• The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times this week both endorsed higher gas taxes as an important policy tool to encourage motorists to buy more fuel-efficient and alternative-fuel vehicles. Revenues could also pay for overdue infrastructure repairs and improvements to public transit and rail networks.
• Calling President Obama's commitment to curbing global warming "tremendously encouraging," the European Union's environment commissioner, Stavros Dimas, suggested that the United States join Europe in a vast carbon trading scheme, similar to the system that has operated in the EU since 2005. "America has the diplomatic and financial resources that, when added to the efforts of the EU, can help bring the rest of the world on board," he said.
• Senator James Imhofe, R-Oklahoma, denounced as "environmental thuggery" President Obama's decision to reconsider requests by California and other states to impose tougher fuel economy standards. In 2003, Imhofe derided warnings about global warming as "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:

• U.S. wind power capacity rose by a record 50 percent in 2008, bringing total capacity to 25,170 megawatts, or enough electricity to  power close to 7 million homes, the American Wind Energy Association said. However,  AWEA CEO Denise Bode called the numbers "both exciting and sobering," citing the weak economy and a lack of financing, along with layoffs at wind power manufacturers. She urged quick action on the stimulus bill in Congress to help the industry. Texas is the No. 1 state in wind capacity, followed by Iowa and California.
• Looking for a biofuel fill-up on your green drive to the Sierra for a ski weekend? Pull over in Sacramento. Startup Propel Fuels has opened five biofuel filling stations in the Sacramento area, offering E85, or ethanol blended to 85 percent, and biodiesel. Propel Fuels is available at four Shell stations in Sacramento, Citrus Heights and Elk Grove, and also at a 76 station in Rocklin. It plans to open two stations in Placerville and Roseville. The company also operates six stations in the Seattle region. Propel CEO Rob Elam told Earth2Tech the company also plans to charge electric and hydrogen vehicles.
• Cisco Systems launched a new software system -- Energy Wise -- to manage power consumption for corporate computers, phones, lights, air conditioners and other building equipment. The system will run on Cisco's Catalyst switches and will be rolled out in three phases through early 2010. Energy Wise was built "in alignment with Cisco's vision of how networking technology can support a low-carbon economy, cut energy use and promote overall environmental sustainability," the company said in a statement.

Posted by: Jennifer Zerwer

Properly disposing of compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) just became easier for residents of Santa Cruz County, Calif. A Take-It-Back Partnership was launched today in collaboration with the County of Santa Cruz, California's Department of Toxic Substance Control (DTSC) and PG&E to facilitate free, convenient CFL recycling at 13 local retailers.

CFLs are a great way to reduce one's energy bill and environmental impact. In fact, they use 67 percent less energy than standard incandescent light bulbs and last up to 10 times longer. However, CFLs do contain trace amounts of mercury, so proper recycling of these energy-efficient bulbs is vital.

Although you can't toss CFLs in with your curb-side recycling, options are growing for convenient drop-off spots. To increase access, PG&E is doing its part by working with DTSC to support Take-It-Back programs throughout its northern and central California service area. One of the largest national CFL recycling program is offered by Home Depot, with drop-offs at all of its 1,973 locations.

Still, despite the energy savings and environmental benefits, many folks have not joined the CFL bandwagon because they find them unappealing. According to Michael Siminovitch, a professor and director of the California Lighting Technology Center at the University of California, Davis, "many manufacturers have been cutting corners and putting C.F.L.s of lesser quality on the market, skewing consumers' perception of the technology."

Even so, the future of energy efficient lighting is bright. Continuing advances in LED technology will ensure a wider breadth of options to meet lighting needs.

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

California's renewable energy outlook caught a rising tide today as the California Public Utilities Commission approved $4.8 million in funding for a major program to develop and demonstrate emerging wave power technology.

The study, called WaveConnect, will be led by PG&E off the coast of Mendocino and Humboldt counties. The program will receive an additional $1.2 million from the Department of Energy.

PG&E's first step will be to conduct meetings with local stakeholders and agencies to learn about their issues and concerns. After completing appropriate environmental reviews and permit applications, which could take a couple of years, PG&E then plans to build an undersea infrastructure, including power transmission cables, to support wave energy demonstration projects. The utility will then invite manufacturers of wave energy devices to install them offshore for testing and comparison.

Ultimately, the demonstration will help promising technology companies find funding and guide PG&E (and other utilities) in choosing which wave power developers to partner with.

Finavera AquaBuoy

There are many different approaches to choose from. Some systems take their power from surface waves, others from pressure changes below the surface. Some bob up and down with the waves, others let waves wash over them. Some even rest on the sea floor. WaveConnect will help sort out the technology whales from the minnows.

"The anticipated cost of wave power compares favorably to the early days of solar and wind," says William Toman, a renewable energy project manager at PG&E. "It will take several stages of design evolution to lower costs and increase reliability."

Last October, the CPUC rejected a 15-year contract signed by PG&E to purchase 2 megawatts of wave power from Finavera Renewables. The commission said the power was too expensive and the technology too experimental for prime time.  (Finavera has since refocused on the development of wind energy in Canada and Ireland.) 

But many experts believe wave power remains a highly promising new source of energy for California. Our 745-mile coastline could produce more than a fifth of the state's energy needs if--admittedly a big if--economic, environmental, land use and grid connection issues don't stand in the way, according to the California Energy Commission. 

Making ocean power technology work reliably and at a competitive price will be the first big challenge. Serving offshore installations with power transmission lines will be another economic and engineering hurdle. Finally, ocean power developers must also convince local communities and government regulators that their installations will not destroy marine life, cause boating collisions or navigational hazards, or degrade ocean views.

Posted by: Katie Romans

Better than a shiny, red apple, PG&E this month announced its Solar Schools Teacher Holiday Wish Grants to 300 teachers chosen for funding at Solar Schools throughout northern and central California.

Facing especially tough economic times, a record 1,100 teachers applied for the $250 grant for classroom supplies. PG&E answered with a commitment of $75,000, triple the amount of the grant program in 2007. Checks were mailed earlier this month.

However, just as your teacher always told you, giving is its own reward:

"From the depths of my heart, THANK YOU! These kids are my life, at Bret Harte Middle School. We have had a need for microscopes since I began in 2002. Thank you again and Happy New Year."  -- Adriana Gilmete

'Tis the season -- earlier this week, Bill Gates provided an overview of the work the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has done in the education arena in recent years, and what we can expect in the upcoming year.

In a letter released Monday, Gates makes the statement, "It is amazing how big a difference a great teacher makes versus an ineffective one. ... If you want your child to get the best education possible, it is actually more important to get him assigned to a great teacher than to a great school."

We couldn't agree more, and we're proud to contribute to those teachers in our communities. Congratulations to our 2008 Solar Schools Teacher Holiday Wish Grant recipients.

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

Many environmentalists would give the Bush administration an "F" for inaction on the single greatest challenge facing humanity: global climate change. Now a celebrated reporter and editor, Eric Pooley, has given his profession only slightly better marks for its handling of the single biggest story of our time.

In a new essay on "The American Press and the Economics of Climate Change," Pooley, an award-winning former editor at Fortune, Time, and New York magazines, claims that too many reporters have muddled their coverage of the debate over what to do about climate change.

Just as the media once gave equal time to global warming deniers, Pooley complains, now they give unjustified attention to critics who make thinly supported claims that programs to address greenhouse gas emissions would cost millions of jobs and cripple the economy.

"Reporters tend to assign equal weight to two sides of an argument even if the two sides aren't equivalent," Pooley observes. "To give their stories drama and a feeling of balance, they seek opposing views even if the majority of experts agree and the dissenters lack credibility."

Pooley makes the same point about coverage of global warming that many media critics made about coverage of Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction": most journalists prefer to play it safe as stenographers, dutifully reporting official claims, rather than investigating for themselves and drawing informed conclusions. As Pooley puts it:

Being a referee is harder than being a stenographer because it requires grappling with the substance of an issue in a way that many time-pressed journalists aren't willing or able to do. By stating conclusions rather than merely hinting at them, referees can make themselves targets, open to attack from aggrieved combatants; some reporters and news organizations aren't comfortable with that. . . . . But in an era when journalism is in danger of being marginalized by the commodification of news . . . survival requires taking risks and adding real value. Doubling down on serious work--by making complex issues understandable and even compelling, by offering honest judgment along with clear supporting evidence--is the best recipe for continued relevance.

Pooley singles out for praise Deirdre Shesgreen of the St. Louis Post Dispatch, who reported both sides of last year's Senate debate over the impact of a cap-and-trade market for greenhouse gas emissions, but then sought an expert independent assessment from Professor Robert N. Stavins, director of Harvard's Environmental Economics Program:

The cost of enacting a cap-and-trade system..."is not going to be free, it's not going to be a job-creation strategy," Stavins said. At the same time, "it's not going to bankrupt the economy or send the economy into a recession." The effect on gas prices, for example, will be "very small" compared to the recent run-up caused by changes in global supply and demand, Stavins said. Then there's the cost of not doing anything about global warming, which proponents of the Senate bill argued could be much higher than the cost of any new regulations. And perhaps more unpredictable, too.

Interestingly, Stavins' assessment finds strong suport from a new report by McKinsey & Co., the noted management consulting firm. It concludes that the cost of curbing greenhouse gas emissions to limit global warming could cost as little as one percent of global GDP by 2030.

Posted by: Jennifer Zerwer

Think your garden is green simply because it's, well, green? Think again. All gardens are not created equal when it comes to sustainability. In fact, storm-water runoff from lawns contributes significantly to the pollution in creeks, lakes, rivers and streams.

Detailed guidance on creating sustainable landscapes can be found in a recent draft report, The Sustainable Sites Initiative Guidelines and Performance Benchmarks. It is a multi-year effort by the United States Botanic Garden, the American Society of Landscape Architects and the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.

Similar to the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System, the report has a point system for rating a landscape and provides such recommendations as plants that reduce erosion, clean the air and shade buildings, among others. The supporting groups hope its point system will be incorporated into LEED in 2011.

Here are some easy steps San Francisco-based Rock & Rose Landscapes recommends to lower the environmental impact of your garden:

• Strategically plant shade trees to cool your house in the summer and provide light in the winter. (PG&E advocates this as well.)
• Go native! Gardens featuring native plants usually require water for the first season only.
• To use water more efficiently, group plants together with similar water needs, use drip irrigation systems and get a rain water catchment.
• Edible plantings help to limit trips to the store and the need to purchase produce that's often shipped from far flung places.
• Install porous hardscapes, like gravel pathways, to allow water to seep back into the ground.
• To keep your garden looking its best, opt for organic fertilizer and manual weed control rather than polluting pesticides and herbicides.
• Consider native grass lawn mixes, which can provide a similar look and feel of standard sod lawns, but require 25% less water.

For more tips on sustainable lawns, visit www.epa.gov.

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

Several stories on the science and policy of climate change caught our attention this week:

• Higher temperatures and scarcer water supplies linked to global warming have doubled the death rate of trees in Western U.S. forests over the past three decades, according to a study by 11 scientists published in Science magazine.
• Contrary to previous belief, Antarctica is warming along with the rest of the planet, according to new findings published in the journal Nature. West Antarctica is warming twice as fast as the eastern portion of the continent, but nude sunbathing has not yet caught on.
• Scientific consensus around the reality and causes of global warming appears to be be strong. A survey of more than 3,000 earth scientists, undertaken by a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and published by the American Geophysical Union, found 82 percent in agreement with the proposition that human activity has been a significant factor in changing average global temperatures.
• However, the scientific consensus around global warming seems not to impress the American public. According to one recent survey, 44 percent of U.S. voters believe warming is caused by longterm planetary trends, compared to 41 percent who blame human activity. That marks a reversal from July 2006, when 46 percent of voters pointed to human activity as the cause, versus 35 percent who cited planetary trends. Only a fifth of Republican voters acknowledge human activity as the primary cause.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:

• The Presidential Inaugural Parade in Washington this week didn't have room for electric car group Plug In America so the organization put on a parade of 74 electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles in Santa Monica under the banner "greenest procession of its kind." The parade included Toyota RAV4 EVs, Tesla Roadsters, Zero Motorcycles, Chevy 2-10s, a Solectria, a school bus, and a Hummer converted to batteries and displaying a "Hope" poster of President Obama.
• Planning to move? Think green. More moving companies are using plastic crates and other reusable containers to transport household goods, but if you can't find one here are a few  tips from Green Inc. Pack with previously used boxes; ask the moving company to return to pick up boxes and clean wrapping paper or put the wrapping paper in recycling bins; substitute kitchen towels for wrapping paper; and use string or bungee cords instead of packing tape.
• A German research institute has developed a robot to carry out damage inspections of onshore or offshore wind power turbine blades. The robot pulls itself up a rope system on turbines of any size to discover damage too small to be seen by the human eye. Developed by Germany's Fraunhofer Institute for Factory Operation and Automation, the robot includes high-resolution cameras to detect flaws in the turbine blades.

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

If you're lucky enough to own a home and have some savings, now may be a good time to talk to a solar installer about putting solar panels on your roof. Recently extended federal tax credits and falling prices for solar modules make the economics very attractive for those who can afford the investment. (PG&E's website provides resources and information on the solar process and state incentives.)

Homeowners who install solar systems are now eligible for a federal tax credit of up to 30 percent of the total system price. State incentives, including rebates administered by PG&E in its service territory, further sweeten the deal. And prices for rooftop solar systems have fallen about 10 percent since October, according to USA Today, making the investment even more attractive.

"The financial return from a solar installation can be up to 15 percent after tax," says Bob Winn, owner of Sky Power Systems in San Ramon, which has installed several hundred rooftop solar generators around the Bay Area. "Today you are lucky to get two or three percent pretax with traditional investments."

In these troubled times, not surprisingly, many interested homeowners and businesses are still sitting on the sidelines.

"I see one foot on the gas and one on the brake," Winn says. "Tax credits have caused a lot of people who were on the fence to pull the trigger. But uncertainty around the economy means a lot of people who should be doing it for financial reasons are holding off."

Data from PG&E's interconnection team show that many customers still see value in making the investment. Despite the weakening economy, the number of customer solar interconnections rose from 6,532 in 2007 to a record 6,574 in 2008.

And following passage of the extended federal tax credits, PG&E received more than 1,300 solar interconnection requests in December alone--a sign of significant pent-up demand.

To date, PG&E has interconnected more than 27,200 solar customers and paid out more than $446 million in incentives. Another 3,700 residential and 450 commercial projects are in the pipeline. PG&E ranks number one among all utilities in the United States for solar electric capacity on the customer side of the meter.

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

Yesterday's post on the prospects for a third dry year in California only addressed one aspect of the state's water problem. Another issue is the longterm impact of global warming, which is causing mountain snowpacks to melt earlier, leaving soils with less moisture in the early summer and putting more demands on the state's reservoirs to manage water supplies.

Now it turns out that the primary cause of global warming--the burning of fossil fuels--also shortens the snow season by producing fine particles of soot. The dirtier snow becomes from these particles, the more solar radiation it absorbs and the faster it melts.

According to a new study by scientists at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, soot deposits increase surface air temperatures over snowfields in the western United States an average of 0.1 and 1.0°C. Reduced carbon emissions, they conclude, would help snowpacks hold their water longer and reduce the need for complex and expensive water engineering.

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

The view from my window is not pretty today: cloudy, gray and damp. It would actually be a lot prettier, to my eye, if it were pouring rain.

That's because the state desperately needs more precipitation to break two years of drought, going on three. Unless we see a dramatic change in the weather, we'll likely suffer another rash of early season fires that scorch forests, grasslands and homes.

Residential and agricultural water users will feel the pinch of tighter rationing. Already, 21 water agencies across the state have imposed water rationing, and more will surely follow.

We'll also have less water for hydro generation, forcing PG&E and other utilities to rely more on fossil fuels for power. That will mean more greenhouse gas emissions and (other things being equal) higher rates. (Last year the utility's hydropower output was only about three-quarters of normal.)

One drought year is manageable. But water runoff has been low in California the previous two years--only 53 percent of average in 2006-7 and 60 percent of average in 2007-8. At the end of December, Oroville Reservoir was at the lowest level in history, and other major reservoirs are desperately low as well.

With the dry start to 2008-9, simply working our way back to an average runoff year would take another 10 feet to 20 feet of snow in the Sierra Nevada, according to the state Department of Water Resources.

The good news, says Gary Freeman, PG&E's principal hydrologist, is that weather fronts should bring some precipitation to northern and central California almost every day from now to the end of January.

The bad news is that "the amount of wetness will probably be small," Freeman says. "These storm fronts won't amount to much."

With half of our precipitation season yet to run, there's still a chance of turning the current dry spell into a normal or even wet year. But the probability of that happening is receding every day.

"Even if precipitation is normal going forward, we'll only end up at 80 percent of normal for the year," Freeman says. "That's pretty dry."

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

The U.S. wind energy industry employs about 80,000 people and created an estimated 9,000 manufacturing jobs last year, according to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA). But the financial downdraft from the worldwide economic recession has slowed progress and prompted layoffs in the wind energy industry along with nearly every other sector.

Earlier this month, wind tower manufacturer DMI Industries announced a 20 percent reduction in its workforce at plants in North Dakota, Oklahoma and Ontario. Two days later, Danish wind turbine manufacturer LM Glasfiber said it would lay off more than 150 workers at its facility in Little Rock, Arkansas. Only last fall, the company was hiring 60 to 70 workers a month for projects that have since been scaled back for canceled.

On the heels of those and similar announcements, AWEA and the Solar Energy Industries Association warned that their industries' record-breaking performance last year will become a distant memory without legislation to make federal tax credits refundable to companies that are losing money and thus have no tax liability.

"We can continue to grow through this difficult period only if the new Administration and the 111th Congress act immediately to make renewable tax incentives refundable so they can work as they are intended to - even in the current financial context," said AWEA CEO Denise Bode. "This is a critical first step to building the new, clean energy economy."

Fortunately, crystal-ball gazers see a bright future for the industry, which has enormous room to expand in new markets like China.

Speaking yesterday at the World Future Energy Summit om Abu Dhabi, Steve Sawyer, secretary general of the Global Wind Energy Council, said the industry today employs 400,000 people worldwide and continues to grow even in the face of economic hard times.

"We would expect it to reach one million by the end of the decade at least," he predicted.

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:

• Green cars were in the spotlight at the Detroit auto show this week, with Toyota's small electric car -- the Furure Toyota Electric Vehicle, or FTEV -- attracting a lot of attention. The FTEV is to go on the market in 2012, Toyota's first electric car in the U.S. since an electric version of its RAV-4 sport utility vehicle was around between 1997 and 2003. Toyota is aiming the FTEV at the growing market for car-sharing such as CityCarShare in San Francisco and Zipcar, but setting up enough recharging stations could be a  hurdle.
• Stanford University is adding a $100 million energy research institute to its climate and energy efficiency projects, with the financing coming from three alumni. The new Precourt Institute for Energy will develop new solar cells, other energy technologies and ways to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Stanford also has a $225 million climate and energy center funded by Exxon Mobil, General Electric, Toyota and Schlumberger.
• A 10-megawatt solar powr plant, the largest in the Middle East, will supply the first electricity to Abu Dhabi's $22 billion Masdar City, a planned carbon-neutral "green" home for 50,000 people and 1,500 businesses. The $50 million plant would save 15,000 tons of carbon emissions a year. No cars will be allowed in the desert city. U.S.-based First Solar Inc. will supply half of the plant's solar panels and power production is to begin this year.

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

Several stories on the science and politics of climate change caught our attention this week:

• The urgency of addressing climate change was a hot topic in Washington, D. C., with the Obama administration poised to take office. Hillary Clinton, the nominee for secretary of state, agreed with Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that climate change represents a "national security threat."  And Steven Chu, nominated as secretary of energy, told senators during his confirmation hearing, "It is now clear that if we continue on our current path, we run the risk of dramatic disruptive changes to our climate system in the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren."
• The Edison Electric Institute, representing the nation's major investor-owned utilities, this week endorsed an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, through programs such as cap-and-trade markets, energy efficiency investments, and greater reliance on renewables. EEI's proposal had many points in common with the blueprint for action put forward by the U.S. Climate Action Partnership.
• The House Appropriations Committee this week called for an $825 billion economic stimulus package, including $54 billion to transform the nation's energy transmission, distribution, and production systems by promoting a  smarter grid, new investment in energy efficiency and renewable power, and cleaner coal technology.
• Food shortages caused by climate change could afflict half of the world's population by the end of this century, a team of scientists warned. "The stresses on global food production from temperature alone are going to be huge, and that doesn't take into account water supplies stressed by the higher temperatures," said David Battisti, a University of Washington atmospheric sciences professor.

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

As the nation awaits a critical transition of power in Washington, a heavyweight coalition of  major U.S. corporations and national environmental organizations today seized the moment to unveil a comprehensive set of policy recommendations addressing the peril of global climate change in an effective and economically sustainable way.

The document released by U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP)--A Blueprint for Legislative Action--is notable not only for its substance, but perhaps even more for its demonstration that stakeholders with widely different interests and priorities can build a meaningful consensus.

The organization's 26 corporate and five environmental members include PG&E, Alcoa, ConocoPhillips, Dow, DuPont, GE, Shell, Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, and others of similar stature.

USCAP's new report, two years in the making, builds on its 2007 Call for Action, which urged "prompt enactment of national legislation in the United states to slow, stop and reverse the growth of greenhouse gas emissions over the shortest time reasonably achievable."

USCAP's latest white paper endorses the national goal of slashing greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050, set by President-elect Barack Obama in a speech on November 18. The principal tool it recommends is an economy-wide cap-and-trade program for greenhouse gas emissions, which would effectively set a price on carbon.

To minimize the hit to consumer pocketbooks and business balance sheets, the organization favors initially freely allocating a substantial portions of emissions allowances to affected industries, phasing out the free distribution of allowances over time.

To protect utility customers specifically, USCAP calls for the value of emissions allowances to go to local distribution companies. There, regulators can ensure it is used to help lower bills by flowing funds directly back to customers or to efforts that enable residents and businesses to lower their energy usage, such as utility energy efficiency programs.

USCAP also recommends allowing companies to lower the cost of compliance by purchasing emissions offsets, so long as they are "environmentally additional, verifiable, permanent, measurable, and enforceable."

At a press conference held by USCAP today, PG&E's CEO, Peter Darbee, emphasized promotion of energy efficiency as a critical weapon against global warming.

"From virtually every angle--be it cost, or technology readiness, or the size and value of the benefits--one of the best strategies to attack the climate problems is improving energy efficiency," he said in prepared remarks.

Based in part on PG&E's 30 years of experience with some of the world's most effective energy efficiency initiatives, Darbee added, tax, regulatory and educational policies to promote efficiency will not only lower emissions, but increase economic investment, jobs, and consumer savings.

USCAP pointedly noted that delaying enactment of a national program to control greenhouse gas emissions will simply increase the economic costs and social disruption caused by climate change, as well as the cost of programs to address them.

Congressman Henry Waxman, whose House Energy and Commerce Committee heard testimony from USCAP today, vowed to move legislation before Memorial Day. "That is an ambitious agenda, but it is an achievable one," he said. "We cannot afford another year of delay."

Opposition will likely come from the dwindling band of climate-change skeptics, proponents of a carbon tax instead of cap-and-trade, and various interest groups that may dispute whatever emissions allocation formula is proposed in draft legislation.

Still, if giant oil companies, major utilities, large industrial energy customers, and some of the nation's most credible environmental organizations can agree on a detailed framework for legislation, surely there's hope for early action by the new Congress.

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

If you really want to be environmenally pure, stop reading this item and turn off your computer.

The fact that computers use energy apparently came as a new revelation to some this weekend, when Harvard University physicist Alex Wissner-Gross seized his fifteen minutes of fame by claiming that two Google searches on a desktop computer produce 14 grams of carbon dioxide, roughly as much as boiling water in an electric tea kettle.

The culprit, he claimed, is Google's intense use of mega-data centers to return the fastest possible search results.

"Google isn't any worse than any other data center operator," he said. "If you want to supply really great and fast result, then that's going to take extra energy to do so."

Google fired back, insisting that a typical search consumes only 0.0003 kilowatt hours of energy, equal to a mere 0.2 grams of CO2. Your body consumes the same amount of energy in about 10 seconds, according to CNET.

Another Google defender, Jason Kincaid of TechCrunch.com, argued for a little perspective before assigning guilt. Think of all the energy saved by doing a Web search instead of driving to the library to look up a fact in some book, he observed, not to mention that producing a book creates around 2,500 grams of CO2, hundreds of times more than a Google search.

Looked at this way, Google--and computer technology more generally--may actually be helping the environment.

That said, more efficient use of computers is clearly a high priority. Google co-founded the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, a non-profit consortium that aims to slash energy consumption in computers enough to reduce global CO2 emissions by 54 million tons per year. "That's a lot of kettles," the company declared.  (Full disclosure: PG&E supports the group as an Associate member.)

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

Watching the Super Bowl on a super big screen TV can be super fun but a super waste of energy.

With big LCD sets using 43 percent more power than conventional sets, and plasma TVs hogging three times as much, "TVs in the state collectively suck up the equivalent of 40% of the power generated by the San Onofre nuclear power station running at full capacity," according to a recent story in the Los Angeles Times.

The paper reports that the California Energy Commission, for many years a champion of energy efficiency, may soon require TV manufacturers to sell more miserly models starting in 2011. The story quotes PG&E's Duane Larson, director of customer energy efficiency, as noting that tighter energy standards for televisions will lower customer bills and help the state meet its ambitious goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The Consumer Electronic Association is highly displeased by the prospect of higher production costs discouraging sales, particularly in the current economic environment. But Noah Horowitz, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, told The New York Times' Green Inc. blog that industry concerns are overblown. "There are over 100 models today that would meet the proposed California standard," he said.

Michael Kanellos of GreenTechMedia comments that regulation of other consumer appliances to increase overall energy efficiency has proven effective time and again, contrary to industry warnings. And he quotes energy commission estimates that the average utility customer will save $18 to $30 a year on their power bills if new TV standards are enacted. With that kind of money in your pocket, you'll be able to afford an extra case of your favorite beverage during the Super Bowl.

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

Driving your car may become a guilt-free pasttime once again if an Israeli inventor manages to turn roads into generators that can recharge clean electric vehicles.

How's that? Haim Abramovich, an engineer at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, came up with the novel idea of embedding road surfaces with special piezoelectric crystals that convert pressure from the weight and vibration of passing cars into electricity. The crystals could be applied during normal road maintenance, eliminating the need for special construction.

If all goes according to theory, a one-kilometer stretch of four-lane highway could produce up to 400 kilowatts, reportedly enough energy to run eight Ford Fiestas. One unknown is whether the new road surface will slow down cars in some way, reducing net energy production.

Abramovich's Haifa-based spin-off firm, Innowattech, plans to test the system on a short stretch of road in Northern Israel this month. The firm also hopes to apply the same technology to railroads and airport runways.

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

Several stories on the science and politics of climate change caught our attention this week:

• Canada's enormous forests, covering 1.2 million square miles, are one of the world's major storage reservoirs of carbon. Unfortunately, scientists are concluding that, instead of slowing global warming by trapping CO2, the forests have become net emitters of greenhouse gases due to fires and lethal beetle invasions. Ironically, global warming is blamed both for drying out the forests, making them more susceptible to fires, and for making winters milder, allowing pine beetles to proliferate.
• The huge German reinsurer Munich Re AG said in its annual review that total economic losses last year jumped to $200 billion from $82 billion in 2007. One reason cited was the impact of weather-related natural disasters, including a series of deadly hurricanes in the Caribbean. "Climate change has already started and is very probably contributing to increasingly frequent weather extremes and ensuing natural catastrophes," board member Torsten Jeworrek said in a statement. "These, in turn, generate greater and greater losses because the concentration of values in exposed areas, like regions on the coast, is also increasing further throughout the world."
• The National Commission on Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing, a 15-member panel created by Congress, is expected to call this month for a 50 percent increase in federal gas and diesel fuel taxes to pay for underfunded highway construction and repairs. The proposal, which would have the side benefit of encouraging motorists to favor more fuel-efficient vehicles, won surprising endorsement from Adrian Moore, vice president of the anti-tax Reason Foundation in Los Angeles. "I'm not excited about a gas tax increase, but the reality is our current gas tax doesn't pay for upkeep of the system we have now," he said. "We can either let the roads go to hell or we can pay more." 
  

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:

• California is beginning the new year with a requirement for new 2009 cars sold in the state to display a sticker that shows information on the vehicle's environmental impact. The sticker will provide a global warming score and a smog score on a 1-to-10 scale, with 10 the best score and 5 the average. The California Air Resources Board has set up a consumer Website with more information on the cleanest and most efficient cars.
• Toyota Motor Corp. is said to be secretly developing a solar-powered car. Toyota is working on an electric vehicle that will get some of its power from solar cells equipped on the vehicle, and that can be recharged with electricity generated from solar panels on the roofs of homes, Japan's Nikkei newspaper says. Toyota also plans a car powered totally by solar cells on the vehicle.
• Two electric utilities in Europe are offering their customers plans to purchase carbon-free electricity generated at nuclear power plants. Germany's R.W.E. utility is marketing a purchase plan that promises customers 70 percent of their power will come from nuclear generation with the remainder from hydroelectricity and renewable energies. Finland's Fortum power company offers two plans for business customers in Finland and Sweden -- Fortum Carbon Free, a mix of nuclear and hydropower, and Fortum Renewable, a blend of renewable resources.