The Mustache (as Grist.org has taken to calling Tom Friedman) had a column in the NY Times this week about Senator McCain’s failure to show up for all 8 of the votes in the Senate for a bill to renew the tax credits for wind and solar power. Due to strong Republican opposition to the bill, it has stalled, and we are now facing a situation where these tax credits will expire at the end of the year. If this happens, it will be a major setback for attempts to build a meaningful renewable energy industry in our country.
McCain, who has faced significant criticism this year for his voting record (or lack thereof) on the environment, continues to emphasize his green credentials, even showing majestic images of windmills in his campaign commercials running this week during the Olympics. However, as Friedman points out, not only did McCain not vote all eight times on this issue, but for one of them, “he was even in the Senate and wouldn’t leave his office to vote.”
With that said, Senator Obama has proved only slightly more genuine on this matter, having missed the most recent vote on July 30, but making the previous three. However, given how the candidates have been wasting their time bickering over tire pressure and off-shore drilling lately, it is funny (and sad) to see that not only are they not voting to support their positions, but their campaigns are using almost identical windmill footage to promote those “policies.”
The Mustache really puts it best by stating:
Without taxing fossil fuels so they become more expensive and giving subsidies to renewable fuels so they become more competitive - and changing regulations so more people and companies have an interest in energy efficiency - we will not get innovation in clean power at the scale we need.
That is what this election should be focusing on. Everything else is just bogus rhetoric designed by cynical candidates who think Americans are so stupid - so bloody stupid - that if you just show them wind turbines in your Olympics ad they’ll actually think you showed up and voted for such renewable power - when you didn’t.
Tom Friedman had a recent column about Shai Agassi, an Israeli entrepreneur Friedman describes as a mixture of Henry Ford and Yitzhak Rabin. Agassi aims to revolutionize the way that cars are powered in Israel (and indirectly, the world). Friedman describes Agassi’s company, Better Place, as follows:
Better Place, and its impressive team would run the smart grid that charges the cars and is also contracting for enough new solar energy from Israeli companies — 2 gigawatts over 10 years — to power the whole fleet. “Israel will have the world’s first virtual oilfield in the Negev Desert,” said Agassi. His first 500 electric cars, built by Renault, will hit Israel’s roads next year.
His goal, said Agassi, is to make his electric car “so cheap, so trivial, that you won’t even think of buying a gasoline car.” Once that happens, he added, your oil addiction will be over forever.
Friedman also draws a parallel between Agassi and oil-man turned oil-iconoclast, T. Boone Pickens. A major distinction in their two efforts is their respective governments’ support (or lack thereof). In Israel, the government is backing Agassi’s efforts, being fully motivated to lessen that country’s dependence on foreign oil and to take a leadership position in the clean technology industry. However, here in the United States, our government still cannot pass meaningful energy reform.
Friedman, paraphrasing Pickens, notes that “Congress must adopt clear, predictable policies, with long term tax incentives and infrastructure, so thousands of investors can jump into clean power, [or] we’ll never get the scale we need to break our addiction.”
Of course both Friedman and Pickens are correct. The question now is: will the federal government get behind leaders like Al Gore and Pickens, like Israel has with Agassi, or will it continue to get in the way?
One of the major problems with our national power grid is antiquated and inefficient transmission lines. This is one of main issues that must be addressed in order for recent proposals, like the Gore and Pickens Plan, to be viable solutions. The State of Texas took a big step forward last week in addressing these concerns by giving preliminary approval to a $4.9 billion plan to build new transmission lines. The proposed lines will substantially increase the ability to transmit electricity from outlying regions that produce much of the state’s energy to the urban centers.
Specifically, this would allow existing, as well as proposed wind farms in West Texas to deliver their renewable electricity to the population centers. It is becoming more and more clear that the State of Texas is the leading example on how to effectively provide leadership and direction in the quest for clean energy generation and development.
One issue that we have not looked at with respect to Al Gore and T. Boone Pickens’ recent proposals to decrease our consumption of oil, is the unintended effect that these plans might have on oil use in developing countries like China and India. Our concern is that if the United States is successful in dramatically reducing our consumption of oil, the resulting decrease in demand and price on the global market could allow developing nations to continue, or even increase, their own reliance on oil.
While it may not sound fair, if the rest of the developing world follows the irresponsible path that America and other developed countries took, there will be dire climate consequences. Therefore, we should not only be concerned with decreasing our own consumption of oil, but we should be aware of the effects of any potential easing of global demand and price on oil consumption in these countries.
While we must shift off of fossil fuels domestically, we should also attempt to involve the rest of the world in the process. Hopefully the next president will be able to undue the ill will created by our rejection of the Kyoto Treaty, and will be able to begin the process of creating some sort of global agreement on steps necessary to shift the entire planet away from the burning of fossil fuels. Otherwise, we may win the battle but lose the war.
Not surprisingly, Gore is opposed to the gas tax holiday, as being misguided, and he opposes the lifting of the ban on offshore drilling, as being merely a “drop in the bucket.” We were also interested to hear Gore speak positively about the Pickens Plan, but he felt that instead of shifting our vehicles to natural gas, as Pickens proposes, that we should instead focus on moving towards all electric cars.
Regarding his own proposal, Gore indicated that his intention and hope is that “when we have the political will to act, there’s a concrete plan in place to really shift over to renewable energy.” He said recent technological developments in renewable energy generation and transmission, as well as the steep prices resulting from increasing world demand for coal and oil, have finally created a situation where widespread renewable energy generation is not only possible, but economically competitive.
One of the main themes of this blog is the idea that our country is desperately in need of public and private leadership that is committed to forcing change in the unsustainable status quo. Gore, through his efforts to educate the public about climate change and to motivate positive change through his leadership, clearly meets these criteria.
The more we learn about the Pickens Plan, the more we are impressed. The video clip above is of Pickens giving a quick 5 minute overview of our oil problem and his proposed solution. The crux of that solution is to replace the 22% of the energy that is currently being generated through the burning of natural gas with energy produced from the high wind corridor that sits in the middle of America. That natural gas resource would then be transfered to power automobiles, thereby dramatically reducing our consumption of oil.
According to Pickens, the key to this plan’s success will be having the right leadership, and having the ability to get the entire country on board and to “march in the same direction.” It seems to us that Pickens has provided us the answer, whether we implement it is now up to us and the leaders we choose.
