Green Energy War on GigaDial Public: Recent Episodes
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The inimitable John Geesman files 3-4 minute dispatches from the long twilight struggle of our time. Backed by accomplished studio musicians, his vocal patrols the same frontier captured in writing by the recondite blog, GreenEnergyWar.com/
The most active front in the Green Energy War this past decade has been the international crescendo of alarm about climate change. The Fourth Assessment Report published by the IPCC in November, 2007 defines the time frame by which governmental actions should be evaluated. As summarized by DEFRA, the environmental agency of the UK national government, the relevant points are:
The presence of abundant deposits of coal in China, India, the United States -- and its general lower cost as a feedstock compared to other energy sources -- creates a presumption that, one way or another, this resource is likely to be used over time. Soldiers on the climate front of the Green Energy War are insistent that this only be done with full capture and sequestration of the associated carbon emissions, also known as CCS.
Carbon capture and sequestration, the waste disposal technology underpinning the clean coal vision, is perceived by many as a strategic weapon in the Green Energy War's climate front -- if for no other reason than to accommodate the seemingly irrevocable commitment China and India have made to coal to fuel their economic development.
Nothing in the Green Energy War has stirred the hyenas of talk radio more than Big Government's move to override the marketplace's judgment about lightbulbs. The energy legislation signed into law by President Bush last December sets efficiency standards for lighting which will begin phasing out the incandescent bulb -- a technology largely unchanged since the 1880s -- in favor of compact fluorescents, halogens and LEDs.
By almost universal consensus, improvements in energy efficiency represent a core strategy in the Green Energy War. Because price signals alone have not prompted efficiency improvements to a level policymakers consider economically rational, there also exists a broad consensus that a legitimate role for government is to correct this market failure and establish minimum efficiency standards for key energy-using appliances.
Perhaps the most controversial question among climate activists worldwide is what role to assign nuclear power in the Green Energy War. The answer from the Labour Party government in the UK, with full support from the Tory opposition in Parliament: a very big one.
The second largest operator of nuclear power plants in the US, the New Orleans based company known as Entergy, is trying to secure regulatory approval to spin off five of its 10 nuclear plants into a separate, publicly traded company initially called SpinCo. This would create the first pure play nuclear company in the U.S. stock markets at a time of growing enthusiasm in some quarters over the role for nuclear on the Green Energy War's climate front.
In the Green Energy War, renewable energy is generally considered to be the ultimate weapon against whatever adversary is identified: energy security, climate change, escalating fossil fuel prices, etc. Significant disagreement exists about time frames, scalability, and costs, but a broad consensus exists among policymakers that promoting greater reliance on renewables is a desirable priority for government.
World War I saw an escalating, though not particularly effective, use of poison gas by the combatants. Because of the horrific effect on victims, more often wounded than killed, the Geneva Convention of 1925 banned the use of such weapons. Considerable opprobrium has attached to their deployment ever since.
The zeal of the renewable energy movement is one of the wild cards in the Green Energy War. Opinion surveys show exceptionally broad do-it-now support in many countries. The depth and commitment of such support, and its ability to knock down barriers of institutional inertia, will ultimately determine the pace and scope of any transition away from fossil fuels.
The past several years have seen considerable, and wishful, attention paid to the role of so-called enlightened corporate leaders in pushing the U.S. federal government into a more activist stance on climate issues. Some of this has been calculated political strategy, a dry-eyed search by environmentalists for middle-of-the-road message carriers. More of it has been naive sentimentality, reinforced by massive advertising expenditures designed to boost company image.
The energy security front in the Green Energy War is broad and deep. Countries all over the world profess a desire to move away from oil -- some out of concern for the environment and climate change, many from a desire to sidestep the debilitating economics of petroleum dependence, most with growing apprehension about continued reliance on OPEC exporters.
The rhetorical fight over nuclear power continues to rage. It will retain a certain shadowboxing feel, at least in the US and EU, until markets or governments begin making the massive financial commitments necessary to construct new units.
The California Air Resources Board, widely regarded as the most aggressive technology-forcing regulatory agency in the world, has made a shambles of its zero emissions vehicle program since first mandating in 1990 that 10 percent of all new cars be pollution free by 2003 (roughly 100 - 150 thousand vehicles per annum). This week, in the fifth revision to the requirement, it reduced that target to 7,500 over the three-year period 2012-2014.
The private sector routinely outsources its most perplexing analytic challenges to management consultants. In that extremely competitive profession, the global blue chip standard is widely considered to be McKinsey Company. Policymakers caught up in the debate over what contribution to expect from energy efficiency in the Green Energy War should give careful consideration to a McKinsey report recently presented to 450 institutional investors, Wall Street leaders, and CEOs from around the world.