Red, Green, and Blue

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GOP candidate John McCain has his eyes on nuclear energy to address our current climate crisis.

Nothing like solving one problem while creating another. I can understand that he may hate the sun for what it does to his pasty white skin. And that he may hate the wind for messing up his well placed comb-over–but if he could just look past all that and see that both the sun and the wind could provide our country free, clean energy he’d have many more fans in the REAL world.

Could it be the one time cost for a wind turbine and/or solar panels that’s keeping the energy industry, John, and many of his right-wing good-old-boys from falling in love with the right alternative? Without the option for a wide base of customers to gouge repeatedly (ie. fuel costs) they all may be thinking–what’s the point?
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This was a big week for our Presidential candidates and energy policy, specifically domestic oil drilling. With the recent decision by a House Sub-committee to continue the ban on more offshore drilling, spirited discussion regarding domestic oil has sprung up everywhere. This week John McCain extended his support for offshore drilling, stating that he thinks the ban should be lifted however he also made the statement that he opposes any drilling of ANWR. Barack Obama opposes lifting the ban on offshore drilling and ANWR drilling.

As Americans, we have a lot to think about. The fact is we do have domestic oil that we are not extracting. Geologists report we have billions of barrels in both the Bakkan Shale and ANWR. Why is John McCain in favor of lifting the offshore drilling ban while at the same time opposed to ANWR drilling? Is it politically convenient? Is it a possible attempt to satisfy both sides of a debate? Why is Barack Obama opposed to all new domestic drilling? Despite the fact that offshore drilling is technologically at its best, we have other options in other areas. Read the rest of this entry »

For the second time this week, the Senate has voted to block progress on a bill designed to extend Renewable Energy Tax Credits. Although the Bill, that enjoys broad cross-party support, gained a majority of 52-44, Republican opposition meant that it fell just short of the 60 votes needed to proceed.

News that progress on the $17.7 billion package of tax breaks could now be delayed until after the presidential elections in November has been greeted with dismay by the renewables industry. Rhone Resch, President of the Solar Energy Industries Association warned that if the tax credits were allowed to expire at the end of this year it will “result in the loss of billions of dollars in new investments in solar.”

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When in Rome, right?

Despite the fact that he supported a moratorium on offshore drilling during his previous run for the White House and he has opposed drilling in Florida, North Carolina, Oregon and elsewhere, McCain will call for the elimination of that moratorium today in Houston.

McCain’s prepared remarks will be be well-received in Houston, arguably the oil capital of America. My point is this: When McCain is in Portland, Oregon he speaks at a Vestas Wind Energy facility and touts the benefits of renewable energy (but offers little policy support to back it up); when McCain is in Houston he calls for a gas tax holiday and lifting the moratorium on offshore drilling.

In short, the part of me that hears Sen. McCain speak about addressing climate change and developing “alternate energy sources” doesn’t jive with the part of me that reads his voting record on this stuff. And apparently, I’m not the only one. Read the rest of this entry »

$1 per barrel increase in the price of oil costs U.S. $130 million

Whenever I’m involved in a discussion about government waste and/or the politics of bureaucratic budgeting, I undoubtedly recount a story that usually leaves people nodding in agreement or shaking their head in disbelief. The story goes like this: A friend of mine we’ll call “Rob,” whom I used to work with during my summer breaks, was coming back to Massachusetts for an unexpected late-September visit. Rob had relocated to Pensacola, Florida where he was learning how to fly jets at the Naval Flight Training School. As Rob lifted the golf clubs out of the nose of the fighter jet he had just flown from Florida to Massachusetts for a one-day visit, he knew his trip was different - and he was a little uneasy about it.

You see, Rob’s day-long visit to play golf in Massachusetts was made possible by an officer (or officers) who rightly feared that ending up with a surplus of fuel at the end of that fiscal year would slash the budget for fuel in the next. Rob’s little visit was back in the early 1990s, but with today’s skyrocketing fuel prices, and the added fuel demands of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the “largest single user of petroleum products in the world” is looking for ways to use less fuel - and more types of it.

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In a blistering attack, Nevada’s Republican senator John Ensign has launched an offensive against solar energy lobbyists, ahead of a crucial vote on renewable energy tax credits.

Breaking ranks with the the state’s increasingly important solar industry, Ensign said that efforts by the Solar Energy Industry Association to force his hand on tax breaks had in fact had the opposite effect of “personally alienating” him and other senators.

In a scathing letter, later released to the press, Ensign accused the lobby group of squandering goodwill by accusing him of favouring “billionaire hedge fund managers” over job creation in Nevada. Indicating the depth of his feelings on the issue, he went on to say “It is rare to have such overwhelming bipartisan support in today’s political climate but the solar industry had it and your association’s leadership squandered it.”

Nevada solar executives had privately become increasingly unhappy with the Senator’s record of voting against bills containing the tax credits. Ensign said that he opposed the bills because the funds for tax breaks would have been raised by increasing the burden on the oil and gas industry. Earlier this spring, he co-sponsored an alternative approach, calling for tax credits without the corresponding offsets. It made it through the Senate by a vote of 88-8, but has become bogged down in the House.

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Here is a line of thinking that I have heard several times recently - oil prices have increased so rapidly recently that the market has become overheated and will pop like a bubble. Comparisons to Dutch tulips, Dot Com stocks, and housing prices abound on TV, on the radio, on the web, and around water coolers. There is one major difference that causes me some grave concern - oil, unlike all of those other investment manias that exploded, is a commodity with visible, experienced hands on the controls.

The reason that I am concerned is that I believe that high oil prices are hurting nearly everyone and the pain will increase as time goes on. The hands on the controls, however, are feeling no pain.

The Organization of Oil Exporting Countries (OPEC) is an internationally recognized cartel established in September, 1960 that holds well publicized meetings on a regular basis to discuss production allocations that are specifically designed to maintain a market price that members agree best meets their internal and external needs. Many of the country representatives to that meeting have spent lengthy careers thinking deeply about oil prices and how best to manage them to benefit the people who send them to the meetings and pay their generous salaries.

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I can’t believe I have yet to do a cartoon with Cheney as the subject. Actually, now that I’ve done one I can safely say I’d never like to do another. Staring at his picture for roughly 15 minutes (in order to draw him correctly) was enough to make my blood boil. This man is concentrated greed and evil. He made headlines again this week with some more quote-worthy material. Some more good old xenophobic (this time) fear mongering (all the time)…
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Following on from Monday’s article from Low Impact Living, “Who’s the Greenest? Obama vs. McCain”, I’ve decided to take a bit more of an in depth look at their policies. But all of this has a little bit of a twist, because unlike most political pundits around here, I’m from Australia, and can’t vote! Sadly, because, not surprisingly, I’d vote Obama all the way peoples!

The American political season is now in full swing, and with Barack Obama finally securing the nomination for Democratic Presidential nominee, the games can really begin to heat up. One of the big topics – alongside or just underneath the economy – will be the environment, and how to best preserve it (or resurrect it after George W. Bush is finished with it).

And, not surprisingly, a lot of the end results being pitched by Senator Obama and Senator John McSame McCain are looking mighty similar. However how they want to get there are bipolar at best.

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[UPDATE 1: The Consumer First Energy Act which would impose a 'windfall profits tax' on big oil companies, and the Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act both failed to move on. The second of those two contained a one year extension of the Production Tax Credit. The votes were largely along party lines. Kate Shepard at Grist provides a good review of the two bills in this report.]

The PTC has been the single biggest policy driver of renewable energy development in the U.S., and the short one and two year extensions (as well as the absence of those extensions) have produced a ‘feast-or-famine‘ cycle of renewable energy growth in the United States, where all new development is virtually frozen in place, awaiting a tax incentive. As it currently stands, the PTC will expire at the end of 2008.

According to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), studies show that 116,000 jobs and more than $19 billion in clean energy investment are at risk from a failure to extend the PTC and other renewable energy tax credits.

Thus far, the biggest hangup for extending the renewable energy tax credits has been the question of funding. Ironically, the Democrats have become the party of fiscal responsibility in Congress, and do not want to pass the bill without a way to pay for it.

Last week at WINDPOWER 2008, I had the opportunity to sit down with Greg Wetstone, Senior Director of Government and Public Affairs for AWEA, and Tom Gray, the Deputy Executive Director. The pair told me that the tax credit issue was really one of fiscal ideology. And that unfortunately, many in Congress had been using the renewable energy tax credits as a “political football.” Read the rest of this entry »