Tuesday, November 18, 2008
ELPC President and Executive Director Howard Learner outlines the public policy changes that the Obama administration and the new Congress should focus on to grow the green economy and create a cleaner environment in this article on the Huffington Post:
“It’s time to gear up to seize the opportunities to advance a greener economy and cleaner environment with the new Administration and new Congress. The Midwest and Great Plains states can become business and economic winners in growing the new green economy… Moreover, when it comes to public policy changes, the nation’s Heartland is also a linchpin to reform…
“…Let’s not kid ourselves; achieving this agenda won’t be easy. Ideological opponents are seizing on our country’s economic crisis as a reason to put off action. But the scientists tell us that we must start now to seriously reduce global warming pollution. We can’t just hit the “pause” button and hold off on corrective actions until the economy gets better. Besides, energy efficiency saves us money, and clean energy solutions can create jobs and grow the green economy.”
Read the full post here.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Let’s face it. America’s economy is bad shape. Some will seize upon the troubled times to argue that we should cut back on investing in clean energy and environmental protection. But that’s the wrong direction both for today and for the future.
For today, energy efficiency makes even more sense in tight financial times. Businesses can’t afford to waste energy and drain their bottom lines from high energy bills, while causing more pollution to our environment. Improving energy efficiency is an investment that can achieve a healthy return. Smart businesses view their energy efficiency investments as a profit-center.
ELPC’s colleagues at the Alliance to Save Energy explain this well. “Industry accounts for one-third of all energy use in the U.S. Energy-intensive industrial plants typically have enormous energy bills, sometimes running into the millions of dollars annually. Energy efficiency improvements offer the potential for a significant return on investment for the industrial energy consumer in the form of lower utility bills, as well as for the public in the form of reduced pollution and energy prices.”
The same is true for improving energy efficiency in our homes. “Investing in a home on your street could be more profitable than investing on Wall Street,” says the energy team at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. These days — no kidding! Energy efficiency lightens the load on our energy bills and bank accounts. It’s a safe and sound investment.
The U.S. is beginning to invest more heavily in clean renewable energy technologies and cleaner, more fuel efficient cars of the future. Let’s invest in the clean wind power and solar technologies of the future and not cede the next generation’s global leadership to other countries. Let’s produce the innovative clean cars here that can get 50 miles per gallon or better and reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil. Let’s gain the green jobs of the future in a carbon-constrained economy, and not cling only to the declining jobs of old-technology cars and trucks with declining sales.
We should invest more in upgrading energy efficiency because it saves us money, creates jobs and avoids pollution today and over the next twenty years. America should invest in achieving technological breakthroughs with solar energy, greater utilization of wind energy, and gaining advances in new, more efficient battery technologies. America should invest in getting more domestically manufactured plug-in electric hybrids and other clean cars on the road as soon as possible. In today’s challenging economic times, these investments are even smarter, more sensible and more necessary going forward.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Clean Water: Thirty-five years after the federal Clean Water Act passed, most Midwestern states still have not adopted all of the water quality standards required by the Act. The consequence: polluted rivers and lakes that harm aquatic life and fail to achieve our quality of life goals. ELPC Senior Attorney Albert Ettinger and Staff Attorneys Jessica Dexter and Brad Klein are achieving slow, but steady, progress in advancing key nutrient, phosphorus and antidegradation standards in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Kentucky to help clean up the Mississippi River and its tributaries.
ELPC gained a big victory on September 3rd. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed and remanded the U.S. EPA’s approval of Kentucky’s flawed administrative rules in an opinion that will significantly affect state obligations to maintain and protect water quality under the Clean Water Act’s antidegradation policy that is designed to “keep clean waters clean.” ELPC attorneys represented plaintiffs Kentucky Waterways Alliance, Sierra Club Cumberland Chapter, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, and Floyds Fork Environmental Association.
In summary, the Court found that the U.S. EPA’s approval was “arbitrary and capricious” because it did not require Kentucky to prove that the multiple exceptions contained in the proposed antidegradation rules would cause only insignificant, or “de minimis,” degradation of the state’s rivers, lakes and streams. Instead, the U.S. EPA merely accepted Kentucky’s unenforceable commitments to protect water quality, even though the plain language of state’s rules gave blanket exemptions to several categories of polluters, including the coal industry.
The Court’s Opinion sends Kentucky’s rules back to the U.S. EPA for further review. Kentucky likely will have to significantly revise and improve its rules in order to comply with the Court’s decision. ELPC’s persistent legal and policy advocacy is important to improve water quality and protect our Midwest natural heritage.
Clean Air: ELPC achieved a second victory on September 12th when the U.S. EPA granted key claims in our petition challenging Kentucky’s issuance of a Clean Air Act permit for Louisville Gas & Electric’s new Trimble 2 coal plant. This plant will emit huge amounts of global warming pollution, as well as mercury, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. ELPC attorneys Faith Bugel and Meleah Geertsma represent the Sierra Club, Save the Valley and Valley Watch in the challenge.
We argued, and U.S. EPA agreed that, the plant is required to include all periods of operation when setting pollution limits under the Clean Air Act. The air permit must now be rewritten by the state agency to comply with the U.S. EPA’s decision. A new and more stringent permit will result in better air quality, especially for people living near this new coal plant. ELPC will continue to scrutinize the permitting process and bring future challenges to enforce full compliance with Clean Air Act requirements.
One week – two victories for cleaner water and cleaner air in Kentucky.
Kentucky’s pollution of the Ohio River flows affects neighboring Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and downstream Mississippi River states. Likewise, air pollution from coal plants in Kentucky reaches the Great Lakes and people in many surrounding states. ELPC and our local environmental group colleagues and clients are making headway in fighting for clean water and clean air in Kentucky, where more environmental advocacy resources are needed.
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Wednesday, September 17, 2008
The naysayers keep arguing that reducing global warming pollution is too expensive, too hard, will cost too much money and will irreparably harm our economy. But the facts say otherwise, ELPC President and Executive Director Howard Learner argues over at Huffington Post:
“We’ve heard this refrain before. Seat belts supposedly would dramatically increase the costs of cars, make no safety difference and wouldn’t be used by drivers and riders. Catalytic converters supposedly wouldn’t really reduce pollution and would make cars unaffordable. Reducing sulfur dioxide that causes acid rain supposedly would cost electric utilities $2,000 - $3,000 per ton, cause electric rates to skyrocket and not help the environment very much….
“…So when you hear that economic disaster will somehow befall the United States if we step up and act to help solve our global warming problems, think about the facts, the above history, and Americans’ capacity for technological innovation, especially when given the right mix of regulatory and financial market incentives.”
Read the full post here.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
The naysayers keep arguing that reducing global warming pollution is too expensive, too hard, will cost too much money and will irreparably harm our economy. We’ve heard this refrain before. Seat belts supposedly will dramatically increase the costs of cars, make no safety difference and Americans won’t use them. Catalytic converters supposedly won’t really reduce pollution and will make cars unaffordable. Reducing sulfur dioxide that causes acid rain supposedly will cost electric utilities $2,000 - $3,000 per ton, cause electric rates to skyrocket and not help the environment very much.
Well, look what happened: Seat belts are an incidental car cost component, have saved many, many, many lives, and all of us have gotten used to snapping on our seat belts because it’s sensible, as well as legally required. Catalytic converters have, indeed, reduced a lot of air pollution from cars, and there aren’t many complaints today. Both have avoided added health costs and insurance costs.
The federal Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, which set up the cap-and-trade program to reduce sulfur dioxide pollution from coal plants, triggered a wave of technological advances, as well as simple at-the-coal-plant engineering tweaks and fixes, that have reduced acid rain, leading to demonstrable environmental improvements in our rivers, lakes and forests, as well as less public health harms. Sulfur dioxide pollution credits are trading today around $150 per ton, instead of the utilities’ inflated arguments that they would cost 15-20 times more. (Yes, Indiana would be better off if more utilities had installed scrubbers on their coal plants, rather than switching to lower-sulfur western coal.)
So when you hear that economic disaster will somehow befall the United States if we step up and act to help solve our global warming problems, think about the facts, the above history, and Americans’ capacity for technological innovation, especially when given the right mix of regulatory and financial market incentives.
No, it won’t be easy. And, it won’t always be cheap, and it may be painful for some of the more polluting industries and their workers. But it won’t always be difficult and costly. Let’s look at one good example.
The Indianapolis Zoo is right on target with its My Carbon Pledge goal of engaging people to “change one million incandescent bulbs to compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs in the state of Indiana in 2008.” Here’s happens when Americans convert their old incandescent bulbs to CFLs.
First of all, you know the basic numbers. CFLs use 75% less electricity than incandescent bulbs to produce the same amount of illumination (thereby saving you money on your electricity bills), avoid CO2 and other pollution from coal plants (thereby improving our health and environment), and last 7-10 times longer than incandescent bulbs (thereby sparing us time and energy to reach up to keep changing those ceiling bulbs).
Second, because of various state and proposed federal laws, as well as market factors, incandescent bulbs are likely to be largely phased out over the next five years. When you go to shop at Loew’s (the My Carbon Pledge co-sponsor), most of what you’ll being seeing on the shelves are modern CFLs, not incandescent bulbs.
Third, here are the numbers that might knock your socks off. Residential consumers account for about 40% of the electricity demand in many communities, and lighting accounts for about 20%-25% of their electricity use. That means around 8% of overall electricity demand is due to residential lighting. Replacing incandescent bulbs with CFLs, which use 75% less electricity, will thereby reduce overall electricity demand by about 6%. Since coal plants are responsible for about 40% of the region’s global warming pollution, this one residential sector change alone – which saves people money – will reduce overall CO2 pollution by about 2.5%
That doesn’t even take into account what business, city halls, hospitals, schools, park facilities, religious houses of worship, and sports stadiums can do with more efficient lighting. A quiet market revolution is taking place through sophisticated lighting technologies and more efficient appliances, computers, motors and controls. We’re at a tipping point, as higher energy prices and technological advances kick in.
As I mentioned in my blog last month, commercial lighting technologies today are much more energy efficient, with high-tech control systems and ballasts. The paybacks are robust, and financing is widely available for building improvements. It is practically property management malpractice to ignore these opportunities in downtown office buildings. Constructing new buildings without state-of-the-art energy efficiency makes little economic sense.
What’s more: Super-efficient light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are coming into the market. They are far more efficient than incandescent bulbs, last longer than CFLs and can produce light in any color. LEDs are now marketed as a high-end product, but prices will soon be falling.
Of course, CFLs, LEDs and other lighting efficiencies, alone, won’t be nearly enough progress to solve our global warming problems. But they are a good start, and this is indicative of additional opportunities and technological innovations that can advance global warming solutions that are good for the economy, can create new green jobs and are good for the environment.
What’s next? Keep an eye on what’s happening with Detroit automakers pivoting to market plug-in electric hybrids and other clean cars sooner than previously advertised, technological breakthroughs with solar energy, and advancements in new, more efficient battery technologies. It won’t be easy, but we can get going faster and further on global warming solutions than the naysayers are arguing.
