Green Wombat

The non-profit Environmental Integrity Project has released a list of the most planet-warming power plants in the nation. The watchdog group, headed by former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency enforcement official Eric Schaeffer, analyzed EPA records to rank the 50 power plants that emit the most pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt of electricity generated.
The plants contributing the most to global warming in terms of total tons of C02 emitted – electric utilities account for 40 percent of the U.S.’s greenhouse gas emissions – are concentrated in a dozen states: Texas,  Pennsylvania, Indiana, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, West Virginia, Wyoming, Florida, Kentucky, and New Mexico. The nation’s dirtiest plant in total C02 emissions is Southern’s (SO) Scherer facility in Georgia, according to the report.  Texas is home to the most dirty power plants – five – including two owned by TXU (TXU). The study reports that CO2 emissions have held steady over the past five years but notes that "a wave of new coal-fired power plants are being permitted and built across the country" that will result in an estimated 34 percent spike in greenhouse gas emissions between 2005 and 2030. "If any new coal plants are built, they must be required to dramatically reduce carbon dioxide emissions from current levels," the report’s authors state. The study also tracks the most polluting plants in terms of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury emissions.

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photo: johnny blood
Energy-related greenhouse gas emissions in the United States declined 1.3 percent last year, according to a report released today by the U.S. Department of Energy. The survey by DOE’s Energy Information Administration notes that 2006 saw the biggest drop in the economy’s "carbon intensity" – carbon dioxide emissions per dollar of gross domestic product – since 1990. Good news to be sure but climate change skeptics and ExxonMobil shouldn’t get too excited. Weather conditions and the vagaries of the economy played a big role in the emissions remission. Meanwhile, the long-term prognosis remains grim: Between 1991 and 2006 U.S. energy-related greenhouse gas emissions rose 18 percent. And yesterday a report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed that global C02 emissions are accelerating rapidly, with the growth rate tripling between 2000 and 2004. That’s due in part to the runaway Chinese economy.

In 2006, the U.S. benefited from a warmer winter and a cooler summer, which meant fewer people were turning up the thermostat or cranking the air conditioning. "The resulting decrease in carbon intensity … was driven by increased use of natural gas, the least carbon-intensive fossil fuel, and greater reliance on non-fossil fuels," the DOE states. The report does offer a glimmer of hope for the future: Although industrial output grew by 3.9 percent in 2006, related greenhouse gas emissions dropped by an estimated 1.2 percent.

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User-generated legislation? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is appearing on Yahoo Answers this week to crowdsource ideas to include in bills to combat global warming. Yahoo Answers lets people throw out questions on just about any topic and get replies from the service’s 90 million members. The San Francisco Democrat’s virtual one-way town meeting is part of Yahoo’s (YHOO) "Be a Better Planet" campaign. As of this writing, more than 27,000 people have posted responses to Pelosi’s query on what they would like to see included in global warming legislation. Yahoo Answers participants rate each others’ responses, and at the moment some of the top suggestions recommend that Congress impose a national greenhouse gas emissions cap; mandate increased vehicle fuel efficiency; and promote mass transit and bicycling to discourage suburban sprawl. Then there’s the usual flamers and yahooism. (One top-rated answer urges the speaker to reject "ecomarxism.") Interestingly enough, posts by environmental experts like sustainability guru Lester Brown and eco-celebrities like TV environmental journalist Simran Sethi were given the thumbs-down by Yahoo Answers users, tagged "Answer hidden due to its low rating."

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photo: California Governor’s Office
Utah today became the latest western state to join a regional compact to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Utah Governor Jon Huntsman and fellow Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger of California signed the agreement to include Utah in what may eventually result in a western carbon trading market. The Western Regional Climate Action Initiative includes Arizona, California, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington.  The alliance aims to develop a regional cap on greenhouse gas emissions. That will prove a challenge, given the dependence of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah on coal-fired power plants. But those states will soon lose California has a market, given that regulators have banned utilities PG&E (PCG), Southern California Edison (EIX) and San Diego Gas & Electric (SRE) from signing long-term contracts to buy electricity from out-of-state coal-fired plants.

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photo: green wombat

Green Wombat is in Norway this week. Today is the Scandinavian country’s national holiday – commemorating its independence from Denmark in 1814 – and it seems the whole of Oslo is gathered at the Royal Palace (photo above) for the festivities. Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg recently declared a different sort of independence: "In the period up to 2050, Norway will undertake to reduce global greenhouse  gas emissions equivalent to 100 percent of our own emissions," he said in a speech last month. "This does not mean no emissions …. But it does mean that each tonne of greenhouse gases emitted is to be offset by an equivalent reduction elsewhere. This adds up to zero emissions." Norway finds itself in the particular situation of a country that obtains some 95 percent of its electricity from a renewable source – hydro power – yet is the world’s third-largest exporter of oil after Saudi Arabia and Russia. North Sea oil has made Norway exceedingly wealthy yet also fuels global warming. Stoltenberg was sketchy on the details of how Norway would become 100 percent clean and green. But his government has begun a project to develop carbon-capture technology for a natural gas plant, and Norway sequesters C02 from some North Sea gas production under the seabed. The country also offers significant tax breaks for electric cars – which makes the $92,000 Tesla Roadster an affordable car in this country. But maybe Norway will get some advice from the Governator: An Oslo newspaper yesterday reported that the Norwegian environment minister has invited Arnold Schwarzenegger to a climate change summit in August.

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General Motors today became the first automaker to call for a mandatory cap on greenhouse gas emissions and legislation to reduce the threat of global warming. GM (GM) and 11 other industrial behemoths joined a coalition of big corporations and environmental groups that form the United States Climate Action Partnership, or USCAP. Also coming on board were oil giants Shell (RDS-B) and ConocoPhillips (COP), insurance company American International Group (AIG), aluminum maker Alcan (AL), medical instruments company Boston Scientific (BSX), farm equipment maker Deere (DE), Dow Chemical (DOW), pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), financial services firm Marsh (MMC), PepsiCo (PBG), and electronics company Siemens (SI). The Nature Conservancy and the National Wildlife Federation joined USCAP today as  well. The addition of a wide cross-section of the nation’s industrial might – with a collective $1.7 trillion in revenues – to the coalition furthers boxes in the Bush administration as Congress prepares to pass legislation to impose a national cap on greenhouse gas emissions followed by some sort of carbon trading market. If your core consistency – the titans of industry – are calling for regulation, it gets a bit difficult to argue that mandatory greenhouse gas reductions will hurt the economy.

GM’s call for a gas cap is a watershed. It, along with the other automakers, have fought to quash efforts to regulate vehicle carbon dioxide emissions in California and elsewhere and have long opposed efforts to raise fuel efficiency standards. How GM will reconcile such campaigns with its new call for laws to do what it has opposed for so many years will be interesting, to say the least. “GM is very pleased to join USCAP to proactively address the concerns and applauds its members for recognizing the important role that technology achieving an economy-wide solution,” said GM chairman Rick Wagoner said in a statement. “A central element as we see it is energy diversity – being able vehicles that can be powered by many different energy sources and advanced to help displace petroleum and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

With this many Fortune 500 companies wanting a seat at the climate change table, a national greenhouse gas law is inevitable. But Democrats and environmentalists will undoubtedly face pressure to water down legislation to make it amenable – and less costly – to corporate America. Set your greenwashing detectors on high.

More on GM’s Move

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photo: reeflections

Hawaii has become the second U.S. state to pass legislation capping greenhouse gas emissions. Modeled after California’s landmark law, Hawaii’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2007 requires the island state to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. A task force would have until the end of 2009 to devise a regulatory plan to achieve the greenhouse gas emissions limits. Like California, Hawaii will consider a carbon trading market as one way to meet the targets. The Democrat-controlled Legislature passed the global warming law late last week by a huge margin, with only four legislators voting against it. Republican Governor Linda Lingle has until July 10 to act on the legislation.

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Sustainable Silicon Valley is a coalition of tech firms and other companies that have joined local governments and agencies to work toward reducing the Valley’s greenhouse gas emissions 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2010. The organization has released a survey of what its members are doing to help employees go carbon neutral, given that in the sprawl that is Silicon Valley most people’s greenhouse gas emissions are produced driving or while at home. (Only frequent fliers who travel more than 50,000 miles a year emit more.) "To radically reduce CO2 emissions, businesses must think outside the box of the workplace," wrote Bruce Karney of KM-Experts, the consultant that conducted the survey. It asked 14 questions, ranging from whether companies encourage telecommuting to whether they offer charging stations for electric cars.

Subsidizing the purchase of a hybrid or other fuel-efficient car has increasingly become a green fringe benefit in the valley. ETM Electromatic and Hyperion (recently acquired by Oracle (ORCL) ) give workers $5,000 while Integrated Archive Systems dangles a $10,000 incentive to get employees to ditch their SUVs. Google (GOOG) uses internal social networking sites to coordinate carpools while software company Ideas offers preferred parking for hybrids. Drug developer Alza, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) and PARC give employees $1 for each day they bike, walk or carpool to work. PARC – the fabled Palo Alto Research Center – also offers $100 toward a bicycle purchase and maintenance. On the home front, Santa Clara University has distributed a thousand energy-efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs while two renewable energy companies – Akeena Solar and 3 Phases Energy – subsidize employees’ installation of solar panels.

Despite the much-publicized greening of Silicon Valley, only 25 companies bothered to respond to the survey. Big name Sustainable Silicon Valley "C02 Pledging Partners" who were no-shows include Cisco Systems (CSCO), eBay (EBAY), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Oracle, and Sun Microsystems (SUNW).

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If you happen to be driving through Marin County, California, on Saturday, here’s the 411 on why people in polar bear suits are waving signs outside a San Rafael Chevrolet/Hummer dealership. As part of what is being billed as a National Day of Climate Action across the U.S., a "Clean Car Caravan" of hybrids and other green vehicles will cross the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco and deliver petitions to the auto dealership urging General Motors (GM) "to plug in the hybrid and pull the plug on the Hummer." (Though around here you’re just as likely to see a ’72 Mercedes running on vegetable oil as an H2.) The national event is being organized by Step It Up, the brainchild of noted environmental writer Bill McKibben, to drive a grass-root movement to pressure Congress take immediate action on climate change. Earlier in the day, Bay Area organizers will hold  a clean
car rally in San Francisco’s Presidio to show off plug-in hybrids, all-electric cars, bio-diesel vehicles and solar-powered buses. Kids can throw pies at a Hummer and make masks of polar bears – whose habitat, as we all know, is fast melting away as climate change intensifies. The San Francisco event is being run by a coalition that includes Working Assets, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Plug In America, NRDC and other environmental groups. Of course in the Bay Area, we’ll protest just about anything at the drop of a hat. But what intrigues Green Wombat is whether we’re seeing the emergence of a mass protest movement around global warming – a summer of green – one that demands, in part, green tech solutions to climate change.

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Big Oil is looking less monolithic today with the defection of ConocoPhillips (COP) to a coalition of corporations and environmental groups pushing for a mandatory national cap on greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. The oil company joins BP (BP) in breaking ranks with the industry over global warming. ConocoPhillips chief Jim Mulva said Wednesday that the company would become a member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership.  The coalition includes the CEOs of such old-line industrial behemoths as Alcoa (AA), Caterpillar (CAT) DuPont (DD) and General Electric (GE) as well as financial services firm Lehman Brothers (LEH). Other companies in the coalition are utilities PG&E Corp. (PCG), FPL (FPL) and Duke Energy (DUK). Joining them are the Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Defense, World Resources Institute and the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. "In addition to taking actions in our own businesses, we believe it is important that business should step forward to help devise practical, equitable and cost-effective approaches to address the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at both a national and international level," Mulva said in a statement. "We believe that a mandatory national framework that links to international programs is most likely to achieve meaningful impact on global greenhouse gas emissions.”

Like his fellow Fortune 500 CEOs, Mulva probably hasn’t been born again green. But he, like a growing number of business leaders, have seen climate change bearing down on Corporate America like a Bengali Typhoon, Category 5. Better to have a seat at the table when it comes to regulating greenhouse gas emissions then be swept away by the whirlwind of global warming legislation now before Congress. That presents a dilemma for environmentalists: their new-found friends in pinstripes can provide the heft to finally get climate change legislation passed, if not enacted by this president. But what’s it going to cost?

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