The Wonk Room

The ‘Party Of No’ Becomes The ‘Party Of Slow’ »

Our guest bloggers are Daniel J. Weiss, a Senior Fellow and the Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, and energy team interns Jaren Love and Michael McGovern.

Senate Republicans are demanding lengthy economic analyses of progressive clean energy policy, despite having spent careers voting for and against major energy legislation without such delay. This week the Republican members of the Environment and Public Works Committee boycotted its debate on the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (S. 1733), claiming that the Environmental Protection Agency’s analysis of the economic impacts was not sufficiently thorough. Before they launched their boycott, committee ranking member Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) and Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) demanded a “full analysis” that satisfied their particular requirements:

As we’ve noted in previous letters and requests, getting a thorough, comprehensive economic analysis of the Kerry-Boxer bill is an essential component of a meaningful legislative process. To accomplish that, EPA needs to do a series of model runs examining key provisions in the bill, with a number of sensitivity analyses on critical issues, including, among others, the availability of offsets, potential growth in nuclear power, and the extent of emissions reductions by developing countries. Anything less than a full analysis of this kind will be unacceptable.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), chair of the Senate Republican Conference, piled on: “We want to participate in any clean energy bill, but we’re not willing to do that until we know what it costs.”

“It undermines the credibility of the process,” said Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH). “It’s not constructive to the process to proceed without knowing what it costs.”

On Monday, senators Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) joined Inhofe to demand a “complete and substantive analysis of any bill that attempts to address this issue” and “complete data and a thorough vetting” before the EPW Committee took action.

Yesterday, senators Gregg, Susan Collins (R-ME), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) sent a letter to the EPA saying, “We cannot support legislation” without “a clear picture of the bill’s impacts on our economy,” saying the EPA analysis needs to be completed “prior to any action in EPW.”

Their arguments fall flat, however, because these and other senators routinely voted on energy and global warming bills without any analysis. Since 2001, the Senate has debated at least eight energy or global warming bills where there was no analysis by EPA, Congressional Budget Office or the Energy Information Administration completed in advance of Committee deliberations. In several cases, there was no full analysis before the bill was voted on by the entire Senate: More »« Less

Inhofe Orchestrates Shameless Boycott Of Clean Energy Jobs Act »

Our guest blogger is Josh Nelson, publisher of EnviroKnow.com.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), the most prominent climate change denier in the United States Senate, has concocted a new and innovative strategy to thwart the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, sponsored by Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA). To wit, he and his Republican colleagues on the Environment and Public Works Committee have worked up a plan to simply not show up for this week’s markup:

But Boxer cannot hold the markup unless at least two Republicans show up, and EPW ranking member James Inhofe (R-OK) signaled that he has unanimous support among the panel’s minority members to boycott the session until they get more data on the legislation from U.S. EPA and the Congressional Budget Office.

Late Friday, Inhofe spokesman Matt Dempsey announced “Republicans will be forced not to show up” at the markup hearing scheduled for Tuesday. Sadly, this is a continuation of the GOP’s longstanding strategy of delaying clean energy legislation:

– As Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) shepherded his American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) through the House Energy and Commerce Committee this June, committee ranking member Joe Barton (R-TX) employed multiple parliamentary tricks to “nitpick the bill into legislative oblivion.” Democrats responded to these “nefarious stall tactics” by calling Barton’s bluff, even hiring a speed reader.

– House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) filibustered the final vote on the ACES Act for hours by reading the text of the bill on the House floor.

– Last year during the debate over the Climate Security Act, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) demanded that the entire 491 page bill be read on the floor of the United States Senate. A strategy memo was leaked at the time detailing the Republican strategy for delaying the bill as much as humanly possible.

While this Republican obstructionism is not necessarily surprising, it is especially egregious this time. Here are a few things about this episode that struck me: More »« Less

Sen. Jeff Merkley: Kerry-Boxer Sets The Stage For A Clean Energy Future »

Our guest blogger is Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR), a member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

The Senate is hard at work crafting legislation to create clean energy jobs, reduce our dependence on foreign oil and fight climate change. I am very proud of what we’ve accomplished on the Kerry-Boxer Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act so far and I wanted to let you all know about the progress we’ve made. I want to point out how critical it is that we reach out to folks beyond the blogosphere to let them know why this legislation will benefit all Americans.

We have to face the fact that curbing global warming isn’t the top priority for every American. When I talk to folks back in Oregon who may be skeptical about the scientific consensus on the threat of global warming, I take the opportunity to point out that there is a consensus among Americans when it comes to the many benefits of this legislation:

– This bill will create jobs.
– It will make our air cleaner.
– And it will reduce our dangerous dependence on oil imported from countries like Saudia Arabia and Venezuela.

These are goals we can all get behind. When Americans are presented with the choice of jobs, clean air and self-sufficiency versus a stagnant economy, dirty air and billions sent overseas to purchase foreign fuel, it’s an easy choice.

Senators Kerry and Boxer have put together an excellent framework that adds up to a comprehensive plan that would create a number of new renewable energy and energy efficiency programs. In addition, the bill includes a pollution reduction and investment program that would go beyond what the House proposed, to cut pollution 20 percent by 2020 and more than 80 percent by 2050. It will reduce dependence on foreign oil by helping cities and states plan for cleaner and more efficient transportation infrastructure that reduces the pollution coming from cars and trucks and by investing in clean vehicle technology and electric vehicle deployment.

That’s the overview of why we must pass this bill. But the details are important too: More »« Less

Answers For DeLong About The SuperFreaks, Part Three: Solar Power And Warming Debts »

This is part three of a three-part series. Read parts one and two here.

Blogging economist J. Bradford DeLong has read the “global cooling” chapter of SuperFreakonomics and has asked six wonkish questions about climate science and policy. DeLong’s final two questions were about the lifecycle costs of deploying solar power. In SuperFreakonomics, Dubner and Levitt cite billionaire mosquito-laser inventor Nathan Myhrvold’s argument that solar power is not actually a “good thing” when it comes to tackling global warming.

Solar panels, Myhrvold argues, create both an “albedo debt” and a “warming debt.” If a “black” solar panel is placed on a light-colored surface, even as it generates electricity it will increase air temperatures. Furthermore, the construction of large-scale solar plants generates global warming pollution, which Myhrvold claims would counteract the benefit of replacing coal-burning plants. He makes the radical claim that the “warming debt” from solar plant construction would make “emissions and global warming worse every year until we’re done building out the solar plants, which could take 30 to 50 years.” DeLong, not surprisingly, finds these claims a bit dubious:

5: “The problem with solar cells is that they are black… designed to absorb light from the sun…. But only about 12 percent gets turned into electricity, and the rest… contributes to global warming.” Surely the heat energy reradiated from a solar panel is a small fraction of the heat trapped by all the carbon dioxide that would be produced by the coal-fired plants that would otherwise generate the electricity, isn’t it?

6: “The energy consumed by building the thousands of new solar plants necessary to replace coal-burning and other power plants would create a huge long-term ‘warming debt’.” I had thought that practically none of the power plants that we will use in 2050 are now in operation, and that building them–whether for open-carbon cycle, closed-carbon cycle, or non-carbon–will cost about the same amount of energy, and thus that there is no significant extra power-plant construction debt from going green in our new power-plant construction over the next forty years as long as it is done gradually. Am I wrong?

Myhrvold has defended his arguments, saying that when he said “black,” he didn’t mean black, just, well, rather dark. Although Dubner and Levitt radically misrepresented Ken Caldeira’s opinions in their chapter, they were spot on with Myhrvold, who blogged:

If we go hell-bent for leather in building solar plants for the next 50 years or so, it is entirely possible that we won’t see much small benefit for 30 to 50 years.

This is nonsense. Take a simplified model of the world that starts with 100 percent high-emission coal plants emitting 10,000 MMT of carbon dioxide a year and no zero-emission solar plants. Let’s assume that the construction of each solar plant has a three-year “warming debt” and that the use of each plant has a two-year “albedo debt,” in line with Myhrvold’s estimates. We’ll also assume slow growth in total energy demand (an assumption which does not affect the results of this thought experiment). If all the coal plants are replaced over a forty-year period (by 2050), the world starts seeing the benefit in only twenty years (by 2030): More »« Less

Obama: ‘It’s Hard To Say’ Why Critics Of Clean Energy Accuse Him Of Socialism

This afternoon at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, President Barack Obama challenged the nation to explore the “new frontiers” of the “clean energy economy of tomorrow.” He praised Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) for working on legislation to make our energy system “more efficient, far cleaner, and provide energy independence for America.” But Obama challenged critics “whose interest or ideology run counter to the much needed action,” saying the status quo “endangers our prosperity” and the “only purpose” of those who question climate science “is to defeat or delay the change that we know is necessary”:

The naysayers, the folks who would pretend that this is not an issue, they are being marginalized. But I think it’s important to understand that the closer we get, the harder the opposition will fight and the more we’ll hear from those whose interest or ideology run counter to the much needed action that we’re engaged in. There are those who will suggest that moving toward clean energy will destroy our economy — when it’s the system we currently have that endangers our prosperity and prevents us from creating millions of new jobs. There are going to be those who cynically claim — make cynical claims that contradict the overwhelming scientific evidence when it comes to climate change, claims whose only purpose is to defeat or delay the change that we know is necessary. So we’re going to have to work on those folks.

Following the speech, the Wonk Room asked President Obama why such critics accuse the president of socialism. Obama replied:

You know, it’s hard to say. Maybe if you have an answer to that, you’ll let me know.

Watch it:

Among the critics of President Obama’s clean energy agenda who say it will destroy the economy are Glenn Beck, Marc Morano, Fox News, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), and even Democratic candidate for the governor of Virginia, Creigh Deeds. Beck believes the White House energy and environment adviser Carol Browner is a socialist. Morano, Inhofe’s former blogger, argued limits on global warming pollution is the “biggest threat to freedom” at the Accuracy in Media conference today. Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer calls the regulation “cap and tax.” Inhofe warns of a “global tax” from the United Nations. And Deeds is now running ads claiming the “cap and trade bill” would “hurt the people” of Virginia.

The reason Obama’s critics accuse him of socialism is because, for reasons of “interest or ideology,” they support a system of economic inequity based on an unsustainable fossil-fuel economy. The current system has reaped great rewards for the ultra-wealthy and the industrial polluters at the expense of the health and welfare of their fellow Americans. To avoid blame for their malfeasance, they must paint Obama as the villain, and his essential reform agenda as even scarier than the status quo, with language that taps into the darkest fears of the American public.

Answers For Delong About The SuperFreaks, Part Two: ‘Global Cooling’ And ‘Economic Suicide’ »

This is part two of a three-part series. Read part one here.

Blogging economist J. Bradford DeLong has read the “global cooling” chapter of SuperFreakonomics and has asked six wonkish questions about climate science and policy. Below are responses debunking Levitt & Dubner’s myth of decreasing temperature, and their claim that moving away from “cheap” coal would cause “economic suicide.”

3: “Then there’s this little-discussed fact about global warming: while the drumbeat of doom has grown louder over the past several years, the average global temperature during that time has in fact decreased…” As best as I can see from http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.txt, this year is: 1/5 of a degree F warmer than last year, the same temperature as 2007 and 2006, 1/7 of a degree F cooler than 2005, 1/10 of a degree F warmer than 2004, the same temperature as 2003 and 2002, 1/7 of a degree F warmer than 2001, 2/5 of a degree warmer than 1999 and 2000, the same temperature as 1998, and warmer than every single other year since the start of the Industrial Revolution–a full degree F warmer than 1960, for example.

How do you get from that temperature record to the statement that “over the past several years… average global temperature… has in fact decreased”?

The assertion that this “decrease” in temperature is a “little-discussed fact” is nonsensical. A search for “1998 cooling global” returns seven million hits. This “little-discussed fact” is one of the most popular canards among global warming skeptics.

Levitt and Dubner, like Marc Morano, Prison Planet and the Free Republic, are relying on the UK Met Office Hadley Centre temperature set — which has 1998 as the hottest year on record — as opposed to the NASA temperature set DeLong cites — which has 2005 as the hottest record. However, both sets agree that the temperature of every year since 2001 has been within the 95% confidence interval of 1998’s temperature. On a decadal scale, the average global surface temperature is increasing at a quickening pace.

Moreover, this “fact” of “global cooling since 1998″ is an error based on semantic confusion and misinterpretation of data. “Global warming” refers to the radiative forcing from greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. That effect has been consistently rising as emissions accumulate. It does not refer to year-over-year surface temperatures, which are influenced by solar output and atmospheric-oceanic circulation, both of which contributed to raise the average surface temperature of 1998.

The New Scientist, as Joe Romm has repeatedly pointed out, has a comprehensive analysis of the misunderstanding behind claims of recent cooling. The New Scientist also discusses the differences between the NASA and Hadley datasets:

The main reason is that there are no permanent weather stations in the Arctic Ocean, the place on Earth that has been warming fastest. The Hadley record simply excludes this area, whereas the NASA version assumes its surface temperature is the same as that of the nearest land-based stations.

Based on this exclusion, Romm writes, “it is almost certainly the case that the planet has warmed up more this decade than NASA says, and especially more than the UK’s Hadley Center says.” More »« Less

Seventh Generation Founder: ‘The US Chamber Of Commerce Doesn’t Act In The Best Interest Of Business’

Last week, over 150 business leaders from major American companies came to the capital to tell Congress to “pass comprehensive climate change and energy policy legislation this year.” One of the corporate titans who participated in the We Can Lead effort was Jeffrey Hollender, the co-founder, executive chairman, and “chief inspired protagonist” of Seventh Generation, the leading producer of green household products. In an exclusive interview with the Wonk Room, Hollender had strong words for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, explaining that it made sense for prominent companies like Nike and Apple to cut ties to the chamber over its opposition to climate action:

I think the U.S. Chamber of Commerce doesn’t act in in the best interest of business. They represent what was historically best for business. They represent exactly what’s the polar opposite of the future of business. The chamber is a voice of the energy industry, of the coal industry. As you’ve seen in the last couple of days, Nike gives up its position on the board, Apple resigns — businesses will increasingly abandon the chamber because they are just so wrong on this issue. Not that they’re not wrong on most issues, but they’re more wrong on this issue than they usually are.

Watch it:

Hollender further described membership in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as a “reputational risk“:

These companies, like Nike and Apple, are taking a leadership position with their own energy efficiency initiatives. They don’t want to see a playing field where companies who abuse and pollute get benefits, and companies that are more efficient don’t. So, part of it is making sure the playing field is leveled. But I also think it’s undeniably important that the consumers of these companies would be embarrassed if they knew that Nike was sitting on the board of the chamber. I mean, I think it’s a reputational risk to be associated with the chamber, given their behavior.

Pausing in the Russell Senate building between meetings with senators from some of the 20 states in which Seventh Generation has manufacturing facilities, Hollender explained why capitalists like himself support the efforts of Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) to craft legislation with a cap-and-trade and energy efficiency provisions to cut global warming pollution and promote clean energy investment. Responding to critics who claim that advocates of a green economy are “socialists” who want to “kill capitalism,” he said, “the fact that we should be responsible for the effect we have on other people, anyone who tells you that’s anti-capitalist is crazy.”

Hollender concluded that Congress should pass clean energy and climate legislation immediately, because it’s “right for business, right for the economy, right for jobs, and good for the future of the country.”

PG&E CEO: We Left The U.S. Chamber Of Commerce Because They Lied To Us About Climate Policy

Tom Donohue, the embattled president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, today defiantly defended the attacks on clean energy legislation and climate science that have caused a mass exodus of companies from his organization. Donohue told reporters, “We’re not changing where we are,” saying of critics, “Bring ‘em on.” One of the chamber’s sharpest critics is Peter Darbee, chairman, president, and CEO of electric utility Pacific Gas & Electric, which was the first company to quit the chamber after they called for “monkey trials” on climate science. In a recent interview with E&E News, Darbee explained that his company quit the chamber after they repeatedly lied about their approach to climate policy:

The reason for our departure from the chamber is that we had repeated discussions with the chamber about how the direction they were on was not consistent with our position, in fact, very much at odds. And their response was, “We’ll take care of it. Really, our position and yours, PG&E, are much closer than you believe them to be, and don’t be concerned about that.” And we went down a road over several years, and there was fact after fact, development after development that caused us to believe that fundamentally we had entirely different positions.

Watch the video at E&E News.

The Chamber claims that federal regulation to limit global warming pollution would “strangle the economy.” and has even called for a “Scopes monkey trial” on the science of global warming. Darbee, not surprisingly, called that “extreme language, certainly not language that we at PG&E were comfortable with.”

American Companies Tell The Senate: ‘We Can Lead’ On Clean Energy

Hundreds of business executives are descending on Washington this week in support of a clean energy economy. Calling for investment in American jobs instead of global warming pollution, the CEOs participating in the Business Advocacy Day for Jobs & Competitiveness — an effort organized by the new We Can Lead coalition — will tell the Senate to take action with strong climate legislation like the Clean Energy Jobs Act introduced last week by Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA). Several of these companies have written a public letter to Congress and the administration calling for “comprehensive legislation to cut carbon pollution”:

We need you to swiftly enact comprehensive legislation to cut carbon pollution and create an economy-wide cap and trade program. We support this legislation because certainty and rules of the road enable us to plan, build, innovate and expand our businesses. Putting a price on carbon will drive investment into cost-saving, energy-saving technologies, and will create the next wave of jobs in the new energy economy.

Carol Browner, the director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy and EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency are confirmed speakers before the We Can Lead companies, who will be lobbying Congress on Wednesday, October 7 on behalf of strong climate legislation. Many of the participants in the lobby day have endorsed the House legislation, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, and others have called for even stronger action. In addition, the CEOs are “scheduled to eat dinner with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Tuesday, and to hold a White House meeting with Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke on Wednesday morning.”

Politico reports that “28 companies and labor and green groups — including United Technologies, Johnson & Johnson, GE, Weyerhauser, the Nature Conservancy and the Environmental Defense Action Fund — are launching” a million-dollar ad campaign “in support of comprehensive clean energy and climate change legislation.”

We Can Lead is a collaboration between the Clean Economy Network, Ceres, and other business groups including:

– Arkansas Business Leaders for Clean Energy Economy
– Apollo Alliance
– Business Council for Sustainable Energy
– Business Forward
– Environmental Entrepeneurs
– EDF – Less Carbon More Jobs
– Indiana Businesses for Clean Energy Economy
– National Venture Capital Association
– Ohio Business Council for a Clean Economy
– Pennsylvania Business Leaders for a Clean Economy
– Renewable Energy Business Network
– TechNet
– US Climate Action Network

Kerry-Boxer Clean Energy Jobs Act Strengthens American Power

Today, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) introduced the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, comprehensive legislation to stave off catastrophic global warming by investing in clean energy. This environment committee proposal, in concert with the renewable energy bill drafted by the energy committee, represents the Senate version of the American Clean Energy and Security Act, the green economy legislation passed by the House of Representatives this June. Incorporating the efforts of a number of senators, the Kerry-Boxer legislation has strengthened a number of provisions:

EMISSIONS LIMITS: As Sens. Ben Cardin (D-MD), Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) requested, the 2020 target for greenhouse pollution reductions has been strengthened to 20 percent below 2005 levels, instead of Waxman-Markey’s 17 percent target. “At the end of the day, what happens early on is what’s most important, not what your goals are 50 years from now,” Sanders told E&E News. “That’s a significant step forward.” Reflecting the fact that emissions are already 8.5% below 2005 levels, these stronger standards will spur greater investment in clean-energy jobs.

GREEN TRANSPORTATION: Kerry-Boxer includes Sen. Tom Carper’s (D-DE) push for green transportation, devoting “a guaranteed share of revenues from carbon regulation to transit, bike paths, and other green modes of transport.” The SmartWay Transportation Efficiency Program is modeled on the Clean, Low-Emission, Affordable, New Transportation Efficiency Act (S. 575 / H.R. 1329), co-sponsored by Sens. Arlen Specter (D-PA), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), and Ben Cardin (D-MD).

COAL PLANT GREENHOUSE GAS REGULATION: Kerry-Boxer follows Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s (D-NY) call that “the EPA has to have authority to regulate coal plants under the Clean Air Act.”

Kerry-Boxer includes placeholder language for carbon market regulation, to be provided by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME). Sen. Boxer plans to hold hearings on the legislation over the following weeks, with the aim of reporting the bill out of committee by the end of the October.

At the behest of a bloc of senators from states with major natural gas reserves — Michael Bennet and Mark Udall (D-CO), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Mark Begich (D-AK), Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and David Vitter (D-LA), Arlen Specter (D-PA), Sam Brownback (R-KS), and Tom Udall (D-NM) — Kerry-Boxer also includes provisions that provide extra rewards for coal plant owners to switch to natural gas. Murkowski, Landrieu, Vitter, and Brownback are still expected to oppose the legislation as a job-killer.

Several senators, led by Sens. Tom Udall (D-NM) and Mark Udall (D-CO), are hoping to reform and strengthen the federal renewable energy standard included in the Energy Committee companion bill when debate reaches the Senate floor.

A number of senators have committed to passing strong climate and clean energy legislation, including Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD), who is “optimistic we can turn energy potential into reality and help create new job opportunities at home by producing more clean energy in the United States.” After telling a global warming skeptic that “climate change is very real,” Stabenow was eviscerated by the right wing. Both Brown and Specter have committed to voting against a Republican filibuster of climate legislation — a key move for President Obama’s progressive energy agenda.

Defenders of a pollution-based economy are already attacking the legislation. Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) called the strengthened 2020 target “problematic” because of his state’s reliance on coal. “At a time when our businesses are struggling, when we want to create jobs, not lose jobs, I think this is a very bad bill at this particular time,” said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX). She falsely claimed that “your home electricity bill will go up 90 percent because of this legislation.” In fact, the EPA estimates that electricity bills will go down.

Bingaman Rejects Appeasement: Don’t Add Polluter Subsidies To Clean-Energy Legislation

Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), the influential chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, opposes efforts to add coal and nuclear subsidies to win votes for climate legislation. In an interview with Grist, Bingaman disagreed with Sen. Joe Lieberman’s (I-CT) strategy to make the Senate version of the American Clean Energy and Security Act “more attractive to Republicans and conservative Democrats” by “including greater funding for coal and nuclear energy,” saying that instead climate leaders should put forward “a proposal people are confident will work“:

Frankly I don’t believe that gaining support of conservative Democrats depends upon putting more money into nuclear and coal power…. I think what’s really needed to get conservative Democrats supporting cap and trade legislation is to be able to put forward a proposal that people are confident will work and that people are confident will not impose an undue burden on rate payers or on our overall economy.

Watch it:

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and John Kerry (D-MA) intend to introduce their climate legislation to the Senate on Wednesday. Senators such as John McCain (R-AZ), Russ Feingold (D-WI), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Mark Udall (D-CO), and Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) have implied they will only support climate legislation that includes increased subsidies for the nuclear, coal, or agribusiness industries. However, as Sen. Bingaman indicates, the only successful strategy to overcoming a Republican filibuster of clean energy reform is to convince the Senate that reform will create jobs, expand the economy and preserve and create prosperity.

Fortunately for advocates of reform, each day brings new evidence that a clean-energy future is just what America needs to rebuild our economy and prevent catastrophe. The UK Meteorological Office has found that global warming is accelerating. Military analysts warn “climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions.” The “Chinese decision to go green,” New York Times columnist Tom Friedman argues, “is the 21st-century equivalent of the Soviet Union’s 1957 launch of Sputnik.” And despite the ideological rantings of polluters who have crippled the global economy, non-partisan analyses repeatedly find that the tremendous benefit of halting global warming by investing in American jobs comes at a pricetag of a postage stamp a day.

“The carbon-based free lunch is over,” Exelon CEO John Rowe explained today. “But while we can’t fix our climate problems for free, the price signal sent through a cap-and-trade system will drive low-carbon investments in the most inexpensive and efficient way possible.” Rowe also announced his company was severing ties with the right-wing U.S. Chamber of Commerce because of its opposition to clean-energy investment.

Exelon Ditches U.S. Chamber Of Commerce Over Climate Denial

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is the largest lobbying force in the nation, promoting a right-wing agenda as the “voice of business.” The Chamber claims that federal regulations to limit global warming pollution would “strangle the economy” and has even called for a “Scopes monkey trial” on the science of global warming.

Today, Exelon CEO John Rowe announced that his company — the largest electric utility company in the United States — would not renew its membership in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce because of its opposition to global warming action. In his keynote address to the annual conference of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), the nation’s largest association of energy efficiency experts, Rowe said that the Chamber’s multi-million-dollar campaign against clean energy legislation is incompatible with Exelon’s commitment to climate change leadership. As Rowe said when he accepted a leadership award from the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce in 2008:

Exelon has staked out an industry-leading position on the issue of climate change and, in the spirit of Daniel Burnham, we have launched our own “not so little plan” to eliminate the equivalent of our entire carbon footprint by the year 2020. I do not know if it will stir men’s souls, but I hope it will stir policymakers and others in our industry to action.

Confirming Exelon’s decision to ThinkProgress, a spokesperson explained that “Exelon is a big supporter of climate legislation.” Exelon is the third energy company to sever ties with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in the past week, joining Pacific Gas & Electric and PNM Resources.

Cross-posted at ThinkProgress.

Ira Magaziner On ‘Creative Destruction’: From Buggy Whips To The Global Warming Imperative

Editor’s note: The Wonk Room is reporting from the Clinton Global Initiative conference this week. This is our sixth post.

On the final day of the Clinton Global Initiative, the Wonk Room caught up with Ira Magaziner, the senior advisor for policy development in the Clinton White House and now the chairman of the William J. Clinton Foundation’s Climate Initiative. We discussed the Clinton Climate Initiative’s approach to the challenge of global warming, including its work to advance energy efficiency projects in the world’s cities from the Empire State Building to Lagos, Nigeria. Magaziner also directly addressed why critics argue that advocacy of clean energy is a socialistic economy killer, citing Adam Smith’s recognition of the need for governmental action to address market externalities. As we neared the conclusion of the interview, Magaziner tied all the threads of the conversation together into one impressive discourse on building a clean-energy economy.

Watch it:

CREATIVE DESTRUCTION — PAST VS. THE FUTURE

MAGAZINER: Schumpeter — yet another capitalist economist — talked about creative destruction. Periodically, as new technologies develop and new needs arise, business systems and economic systems need to be remade — creatively destroyed and remade. We don’t need a buggy whip industry any more. We’ve got automobiles. And the buggy whip guys may not like it, but they ought to switch to making automobiles if they’re going to have a future.

What always happens in those periods of transformation is that some people oppose and some people see the future. We went from mainframe computers to minicomputers to PCs. And as we went through those transformations, different companies succeeded. DEC and Wang and companies that were the minicomputer companies didn’t understand the potential of the PC. So you had the Dells and others who developed them. In some cases, companies do make the transformation and they go with the future instead of the past.

We have a similar situation with clean energy and energy efficiency. You have some companies now, like GE, and there’s a bunch of others, who are saying, “I want to go with the future, and I’m going to invest in wind, I’m going to invest in solar. I’m going to invest in these things that I know are going to eventually be the future.” And you’ve got others who say, “I’m going to defend the past and stick with what I’ve got,” and fight Congress to prevent the future from coming.

BRINGING THE FUTURE FASTER

MAGAZINER: I think, in this case, in the case of clean energy, we have a public interest in bringing the future faster, because of global warming. We know that if we don’t bring the future faster with clean energy and with energy efficiency, that it’s going to have a tremendous economic and social cost. Therefore, we have to accelerate the process of that future coming.

That’s why government has to especially play a role in this revolution. I mean, it played a stimulative role in the Internet revolution, but in this revolution it has to play a much more active role. Because the negative consequences of not doing so are going to cause governments and people and economies tremendous unhappiness.

There have been so many reports written. The thousands of scientists in the International Panel on Climate Change established that the world is warming, they’ve established what the impacts can be, and there’s only now a few dissident scientists left. The overwhelming 99.9 percent opinion is very clear on this.

Economists like Nicholas Stern who have done serious work on this have said we can lose 5 to 10 percent of GDP in the next ten years, fifteen years if we don’t act, because of all the major dislocations. And if we spend one percent of our GDP to bring the transformation faster, we’ll save ten percent or 15 percent of our GDP. So there are enough studies out there.

THE CLINTON CLIMATE INITIATIVE

MAGAZINER: What we’re trying to do with the Clinton Climate Initiative is to make it real.

It’s very important that global leaders, the political leaders agree to set targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It’s very important they pass legislation to put a price on carbon — because it does have a price for society — to help speed the transformation.

What we’ve said, what we’re doing, is say, even after that’s done, what you’re going to still need projects that demonstrate in large scale how to do this, what the business models are what the government models should be, so that government money gets spent well, carbon credit money gets spent well, and ultimately businesses can move into this in an accelerated way to make this happen. And so that’s why we’ve focused on these projects.

We’ve worked on energy efficiency, clean energy, and the third area we’re working on is forests, preserving forests around the world. What we as a human race have been doing is at the same time we’re putting all this CO2 into the air — which is poisoning the atmosphere — we’re cutting down the forests — which are nature’s way of taking carbon dioxide out of the air. We’re making the problem worse on both ends.

So we have major projects that we’re doing in Indonesia, and Cambodia, Guyana — Africa and the tropical countries — to help preserve forests and create economic value in preserving forests.

So that’s what we’re up to and we’re trying to make our contribution. That’s going to require a lot of different groups working in a lot of different ways to make a contribution.

THE MULTIPLIER EFFECT

MAGAZINER: What we do is: we do these projects and can measure the direct impact, and say there’s this many millions of tons less of CO2 going into the air because of the projects we have done. And then we’re creating these models which we can spread to others, so that we can have a multiplier effect that multiplies the impact of what the direct projects we’re doing can accomplish.

That’s why when we show that we can do an integrated waste management project in Delhi — in a very complicated, large city that’s never had integrated waste management — what we did in Delhi is the first integrated waste management project in the whole of southern Asia. We showed that it can work, it’s actually returning a profit to the commercial developers, it’s saving the city money, and it’s working in terms of making Delhi a cleaner place.

And now there are ten other cities that are ready to do it. As soon as we finish the project in Lagos — Lagos, Nigeria is a place with 21 million people in that city, growing a million and a half people per year — and they had no waste system. We’re putting the first integrated waste system there. We’re now doing it in Dar Es Salaam and Tanzania. We have requests from a number of other African cities. So our goal is to create these models and then spread them, because that’s really where we’re going to get at the problem.

The Clean-Energy Investment Agenda

Our guest bloggers are Center for American Progress CEO John Podesta, Vice President for Energy Policy Kate Gordon, Senior Fellow Bracken Hendricks, and Policy Analyst Benjamin Goldstein.

The United States is having the wrong public debate about global warming. We are asking important questions about pollution caps and timetables, carbon markets and allocations, but we have lost sight of our principal objective: building a robust and prosperous clean energy economy. This is a fundamentally affirmative agenda, rather than a restrictive one. Moving beyond pollution from fossil fuels will involve exciting work, new opportunities, new products and innovation, and stronger communities. Our current national discussion about constraints, limits, and the costs of transition misses the real excitement in this proposition. It is as if, on the cusp of an Internet and telecommunications revolution, debate centered only on the cost of fiber optic cable. We are missing the big picture here.

Let’s be clear: Solving global warming means investment. Retooling the energy systems that fuel our economy will involve rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure. We will create millions of middle-class jobs along the way, revitalize our manufacturing sector, increase American competitiveness, reduce our dependence on oil, and boost technological innovation. These investments in the foundation of our economy can also provide an opportunity for more broadly shared prosperity through better training, stronger local economies, and new career ladders into the middle class. Reducing greenhouse gas pollution is critical to solving global warming, but it is only one part of the work ahead. Building a robust economy that grows more vibrant as we move beyond the Carbon Age is the greater and more inspiring challenge.

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions to avert dangerous global warming is an environmental challenge, but it is also an economic, national security, societal, and moral imperative. The “cap and trade” provisions, which will set limits on pollution and create a market for emissions reductions that will ultimately drive down the cost of renewable energy and fuel, represent a very important first step and a major component in the mix of policies that will help build the coming low-carbon economy. But limiting emissions and establishing a price on pollution is not the goal in itself, and we will fall short if that is all we set out to do. Rather, cap and trade is one key step to reach the broader goal of catalyzing the transformation to an efficient and sustainable low-carbon economy. With unemployment at 9.5 percent, and oil and energy price volatility driving businesses into the ground, we cannot afford to wait any longer. It is time for a legislative debate over a comprehensive clean-energy investment plan. We need far more than cap and trade alone.

Importantly, many elements of this positive clean-energy investment framework are already codified within existing legislation such as the American Clean Energy and Security Act, passed by House of Representatives earlier this year. But with all the attention given to limiting carbon, too little attention has been placed on what will replace it. These critical pieces of America’s clean-energy strategy should be elevated in the policy agenda and political debate as we move forward into the Senate, and used to help move legislation forward that advances a proactive investment and economic revitalization strategy for the nation.

Read the Center for American Progress report, The Clean-Energy Investment Agenda.

Congressional Budget Office Debunks Glenn Beck’s ‘Lies’: Clean Energy Economy Costs Only A Postage Stamp A Day »

Written by Brad Johnson and Daniel J. Weiss, a Senior Fellow and the Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Last night, Glenn Beck accused President Obama of “outright lies,” engaging in a “coverup” of the cost of his green economic agenda. Beck claimed that “buried” Treasury documents from March show that the cost of a cap-and-trade carbon market to regulate global warming pollution is $1,761 per household per year, despite the president’s assurance to the American public in June that “the price to the average American will be about the same as a postage stamp per day“:

I have a question. Did the President of the United States tell the people in Congress about this? Facts are stubborn. Don’t they suck? It is always the coverup that gets you. March 9. June 25. Mr. President, did you tell Congress about prior estimates? That, you know, that you knew about? Or did you just kind of keep it secret and hide it away from them and those pesky American people? I want to show you something that I said a few weeks ago. I was talking directly to the Democrats. I was telling them wake up. “Democrats in Congress, wake up! You are being played and you’re being bypassed.”

Watch it:

In reality, Beck’s figure of $1,761 per household for the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) is not actually based on secret Treasury documents, but on the confabulation of a right-wing blogger at CBSNews.com. Although the Treasury Department has called this story “flat out wrong,” conservatives and the oil industry have heavily promoted this inflated number, much in the same way they wildly overestimated the number of Tea Party activists who attended the Glenn Beck rally in Washington, D.C. last weekend.

On June 19th, the Congressional Budget Office analyzed the ACES Act — legislation crafted by Congress, not by “czars” in the White House — and determined “that the net annual economywide cost of the cap-and-trade program in 2020 would be $22 billion—or about $175 per household.” Yesterday, the CBO — a Congressional research arm independent of the “spooky” executive branch — released an updated analysis that lowered its previous cost projection to “$160 per household.” In other words:

The average household would spend 44 cents per day – the price of a postage stamp.

The revised analysis also determined that the least well off Americans would receive a greater net benefit than its previous projections. “CBO estimates that households in the lowest income quintile in 2020 would see an average gain… [of] about $125” per household. By 2050, this net gain would increase to “$355 measured at 2010 income levels.”

A clean energy economy would enjoy massive growth, according the the CBO:

CBO projects that real (inflation-adjusted) GDP [Gross Domestic Product] will be roughly two and a half times as large in 2050 as it is today.

Investing in efforts to prevent catastrophic climate change, the CBO concluded, would reduce this GDP by as little as one cent per dollar. CBO concluded that the impact of the ACES Act on the overall economy would be “modest.” However, the CBO did not analyze elements of the legislation that would increase our energy independence and household savings further:

The analysis does not include the effects of other aspects of the bill, such as federal efforts to speed the development of new technologies and to increase energy efficiency by specifying standards or subsidizing energy-saving investments.

Glenn Beck is spinning a paranoid fantasy in which Democratic members of Congress are either puppets of — or conspirators with — an out-of-control, “racist” and “spooky” President. In the real world, the Congressional Budget Office has repeatedly found that a clean energy future can be ours for less than a (real) postage stamp a day.

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Supposedly ‘Green’ Printing Company Sponsoring Oil Front Group Conference

In October, corporate front group Americans for Prosperity is hosting its annual “Defending the American Dream” conference. The get-together will feature right-wing notables such as Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), CNBC’s Larry Kudlow, and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC). The keynote address will be given by Newt Gingrich, who was propelled back into the media spotlight last year with his “Drill Here, Drill Now” pro-oil campaign.

One of the “Gold Sponsors” of AFP’s global warming denying conference is the “green” print and paper company TrayPML. TrayPML markets itself as a company that makes “active strides to protect the planet.” On its website, TrayPML also boasts about its ability to help companies “go green.” The company touts its environmental credentials by publicizing the World Wildlife Fund as an esteemed client. AFP, of course, mocks the protection of endangered wildlife, and argues for increased drilling in Alaska’s preserved lands.

AFP is supported largely by money derived from the Koch Industries polluter empire. David Koch, the billionaire VP of Koch Industries, sits on the board of the AFP Foundation and helped found its predecessor, Citizens for a Sound Economy. Koch Industries has an abysmal environmental record that includes both major oil spills and several instances where Koch pipelines leaked millions of gallons of toxic crude into ponds, lakes and streams across the country. Supporting Koch’s polluter agenda, AFP runs various organizing efforts to discredit global warming science, and mobilizes opposition to clean energy legislation. Not only that, but AFP’s Phil Kerpen, as ThinkProgress has noted, is waging an all out war against the concept of green jobs.

By sponsoring AFP’s anti-environmental conference, TrayPML wipes out any possible credibility that the firm is a friend of the “green” movement.

Waxman-Markey Creates $1.5 Trillion In Benefits

Our guest blogger is Daniel J. Weiss, a Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

A new analysis of clean energy legislation finds that it will produce likely economic benefits of $1.5 trillion. The finding by the New York University School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity explains that the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) is “cost‐benefit justified under most reasonable assumptions about the likely ’social cost of carbon.’” In “The Other Side of the Coin: The Economic Benefits of Climate Legislation,” the Institute for Policy Integrity finds that the “benefits of H.R. 2454 could likely exceed the costs by as much as nine-to-one”:

Using conservative assumptions, the benefits of H.R. 2454 could likely exceed the costs by as much as nine-to-one, or more. The estimated benefits do not include a significant number of ancillary and un‐quantified benefits, such as the reduction of co‐pollutants (particularly sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide), the prevention of species extinction, and lower maintenance costs for energy infrastructure. Due to those limitations, the benefits estimates should be considered to be very conservative.

The cost-benefit analyses of environmental safeguards generally favor the costs since they are relatively easy to measure. The economic benefits, however, of reduced pollution are much harder to calculate. The price of a scrubber to reduce sulfur and particulate pollution from a coal fired power plant is easy to calculate, but it is much harder to account for the value of a protected stream or restored vista.

Even the federal government often projects costs while ignoring benefits of clean energy proposals. For instance, the Congressional Budget Office’s assessment of the American Clean Energy and Security Act notes that its analysis “does not include the economic benefits and other benefits of the reduction in GHG emissions and the associated slowing of climate change.”

The “social cost of carbon” is the “the monetary valuation of incremental damage from each ton of greenhouse gas emissions.” The new IPI analysis employs a recent Department of Energy estimate that the “monetary values of the benefits of carbon dioxide emission reductions, otherwise known as the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) [are] …$19 per metric ton of carbon dioxide.” This estimate was developed by an interagency task force, and was employed in a Department of Energy rule for more energy efficient vending machines issued on August 31st.

Using the value of $19 per ton of carbon pollution avoided, the authors determined that the total midrange projection of Waxman-Markey’s benefits is $1.5 trillion total between 2012-2050. Projections estimate that the legislation would require $660 billion in investment during this time, which means that benefits are at least two times greater than costs:

At the SCC values preferred by the Department of Energy, the direct benefits of H.R. 2454 are more than double the costs. Using SCC values that have a more appropriately low discount rate built in (EPA’s 2% figures), direct benefits are nearly eight to nine times greater than costs.

Even these projections are very low because the estimated SCC employed in the analysis excludes the value of a number of important benefits. It excludes the reduction of other harmful pollutants released along with greenhouse gases from coal fired power plants, such as soot and mercury. It does not estimate the cost of fewer tropical diseases or respiratory ailments from smog, or less political unrest in volatile regions.

Special interests that defend the status quo and oppose clean energy programs are quick to trot out their studies predicting economic Armageddon due to enormously inflated costs. Never mind that most of these industry studies are riddled with false assumptions and ideologically driven guess work, and are often proven wrong over time.

Until now, advocates of progress have had few estimates of economic benefits of action. This is a credible estimate of the benefits of action, and it far outweighs the investment cost of building a clean energy economy. The Environmental Protection Agency must take the next step by conducting a more thorough, rigorous analysis of benefits to conclusively demonstrate that Americans will have a net economic benefit from clean energy and global warming legislation.

Van Jones Seeks A ‘Healing For Our Politics’: ‘Let’s Be One Country’ »

White House green jobs advisor Van Jones is under attack from Fox News as an “avowed radical revolutionary communist” and from ABC News as a “truther” with a “history of incendiary and provocative remarks.” In an attempt to assassinate the character of Van Jones, the right-wing media are distorting his past political activism and cherry-picking Jones’s critiques of the pollution and injustice that still haunt this nation. However, Jones’s true record is one of turning away from anger and finding hope, abandoning division and seeking consensus.

Speaking at the National Clean Energy Summit 2.0 in Las Vegas this August, Van Jones argued that “for all of the battleground politics that’s going on,” energy policy should be “the one place that should be a safe harbor for all of us.” Van Jones praised the “bipartisanship” of Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, who as a representative from Los Angeles succeeded in getting “the first president ever to sign into law a green jobs act, President George W. Bush.” He recognized that the summit participants came to find a “healing for our politics” in a “common ground agenda”:

Many of you have taken chances to start companies, you’ve written books, you’ve been grassroots champions for the change that we need. And I think you’re seeking not just a healing for our economy or a healing for our planet, but a healing for our politics. And I want to acknowledge that many of us are here because we are seeking something deeper. This is the common ground agenda. It should be the common ground agenda. We should be able to come together as a country on this one. Finally.

Watch it:

Jones then explained that “the values that underlie this clean energy conversation” are “the common ground values of America.” Underlying the call for clean energy is the value that “clean air is better than dirty air for the health of our children.” Underlying the call for energy efficiency is that value that treating our country’s resources “with wisdom and respect is more important than wasting them.” And “if we have the opportunity to fight both poverty and pollution by putting people to work in these new industries, we would be wise as a country to do that.”

To extended applause, Van Jones explained that the Obama administration has committed $5 billion to improving the energy efficiency of low-income households because the same investment “that cut unemployment and cut an energy bill and cuts greenhouse gases is also going to cut asthma, and take asthma inhalers out of little girls’ and boys’ pockets.”

Jones discussed in further detail how President Obama’s clean energy agenda tears down traditional ideological divides by “asking questions progressives like” but “giving answers that conservatives should like”:

We’re asking questions progressives like but we’re giving answers that conservatives should like. We’re asking questions about how to move the needle on poverty and pollution and how we create more economic opportunity especially for people in the lower part of our economy. But the answers are answers that conservatives should like. We’re not talking about expanding welfare, we’re talking about expanding work. We’re not talking about expanding entitlements, we’re talking about expanding enterprise and investments. We’re not talking about redistributing existing wealth, we’re talking about reinventing an existing sector, and creating new wealth by unleashing innovation and entrepeneurship. This should be common ground. We should be able to stand together and be one country on this.

Jones concluded by again making the call for us to “be one country” and connect “the people that most need work” to the “work that most needs to be done”:

There is so much work that needs to be done in this country to retrofit America, to cut these energy bills. And there are so many people who need work. This is our opportunity as a country — and it comes around very rarely — to take the people that most need work, and connect them to the work that most needs to be done, to fight pollution and poverty at the same time, and be one country. Let’s be one country.

During the applause at the conclusion of Jones’s speech, prominent Republican oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens — who in 2004 funded the Swift Boat attacks on Sen. John Kerry — turned to Jones and shook his hand.

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Department Of Energy Eviscerates Right-Wing Spanish ‘Green Jobs’ Study

A Spanish paper that claimed support for green jobs “may destroy two jobs for every one created” has been debunked by an official publication of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The paper’s conclusions — led by Exxon-funded libertarian Gabriel Calzada — have been cited by GOP leaders, Fox News, right-wing columnists, conservative think tanks, and Big Oil front groups to attack President Obama’s green economic agenda. However, the DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) finds that the Spanish authors’ claim that renewable support kills jobs “is not supported by their work“:

The analysis by the authors from King Juan Carlos University represents a significant divergence from traditional methodologies used to estimate employment impacts from renewable energy. In fact, the methodology does not reflect an employment impact analysis. Accordingly, the primary conclusion made by the authors – policy support of renewable energy results in net jobs losses – is not supported by their work.

NREL reveals that what Republicans have called a “50-page empirical study” could have been written by ten-year-olds. All the study does is calculate two ratios of Spanish economic figures — renewable subsidies vs. private capital and subsidies vs. average productivity — and then draw extravagant conclusions not only about the Spanish economy, but project them onto the United States. Here are a few of the fundamental limitations, technical errors, and false assumptions drawn from NREL’s takedown of Calzada’s work of pseudo-economics:

The metrics used in the Spanish study are not jobs impact estimates. The primary conclusion of the report is that the Spanish economy has experienced job loss as a result of its RE installations. However, comparing the RE subsidy per job with the Spanish economy’s average capital per job and average productivity per job is not a measure of job loss.

The report lacks transparency and supporting statistics. It is striking that the authors’ calculations with two very different economic metrics generate the same result. The authors claim this increases their confidence in their result. However, because there is no statistical analysis, it does not seem reasonable to draw conclusions regarding confidence in either result. The authors also fail to justify their chosen methodology or cite others who have applied a similar methodology.

The authors assume that a dollar spent by the government is less efficient than a dollar spent by private industry and that it crowds out private investment. Government spending may be more or less efficient than private investment. To the extent that government spending is a correction for market failures (e.g., existing fossil fuel subsidies, environmental externalities), it is less likely to represent an inefficient allocation of resources. Furthermore, there is no justification given for the assumption that government spending (e.g., tax credits or subsidies) would force out private investment. This assumption is fundamental to the conclusion that Spain’s renewable energy policy has resulted in job loss.

Calzada also “fails to account for technology export potential,” “relies on jobs estimates that were developed in 2003 and do not reflect Spain’s RE industries in 2009,” and “relies on jobs as the sole metric to assess the value of renewable energy.” NREL’s Suzanne Tegen, a Ph.D. energy market analyst, and Eric Lantz conclude with a summary of what serious economic analysis of the impact of renewable energy investments has found:

In general, comprehensive analyses show that net employment impacts are sensitive to assumptions regarding future energy prices, strategies for addressing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions, and the capacity to export technology. With increased awareness of potential energy price scenarios, recent research has found that it is only when conventional energy prices are forecast to be very low that net employment impacts from RE investments are negative.

In other words, unless you live in a world where global warming and oil spills don’t exist, and fossil fuels remain cheap forever, government investment in renewable energy creates jobs — just what our nation needs now.

(H/T Pete Altman)