Wednesday, April 25, 2012
DesMoinesDem’s Bleeding Heartland Blog
DesMoinesDem is a suburban mom writing about Iowa politics and encouraging community discussion to hold public officials more accountable. In her “Iowa faith leaders call for action to limit climate change” blog this week, DesMoinesDem discusses 56 religious leaders having signed an appeal for Iowans to take actions to limit global climate change and prepare for the consequences of the damage to the global climate that has already been done:
“The faith leaders mention a recent warning to Iowa legislators from 44 scientists representing 28 Iowa colleges and universities. Unfortunately, even when Democrats controlled the state House and Senate, lawmakers did almost nothing to implement the Iowa Climate Change Advisory Council’s recommendations.
. . . On a related note, the 2011 Iowa Farm and Rural Life Poll indicated that 68 percent of Iowa farmers believe climate change is happening, 5 percent do not believe it is happening, and 28 percent are not sure. About 45 percent of that survey’s respondents said human activities are partly or mostly responsible for changing climate patterns.”
The Scoop: DesMoinesDem’s post discusses how faith leaders are speaking out in Iowa about climate change and calling for solutions-oriented actions by Iowa’s political leaders, who are not yet stepping up. Thanks DesMoinesDem for your post and your call to action directed to state legislators.
Read the whole story here: http://www.bleedingheartland.com/diary/5458/iowa-faith-leaders-call-for-action-to-limit-climate-change
Monday, January 23, 2012
According to this Jan. 22nd article in the Chicago Tribune: “Illinois’ largest single corporate polluter is Midwest Generation, the company that owns the Crawford and Fisk coal plants in Chicago and four more in the suburbs of Joliet, Romeoville and Waukegan and in Pekin in central Illinois. Burning coal from Wyoming and other Western states, the plants emitted more than 31 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2010, an amount equivalent to the tailpipe emissions of about 6 million cars.” Read the article.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
On June 20th, the U.S. Supreme Court decided against the rights of six states, New York City and three private land trusts to sue under federal common law to prevent global warming. The Justices stated that the Clean Air Act ‘speaks directly’ to emissions of carbon dioxide from coal plants.
Some are trying to spin this decision as a defeat for environmentalists, but the reality is that the Court’s opinion reaffirms the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority use the Clean Air Act to reduce greenhouse gas pollution. The decision should speed up EPA’s implementation of greenhouse gas standards by making legal challenges to the effort more difficult.
Read more about this recent decision in American Electric Power, et al. v. Connecticut et al. in ELPC Executive Director Howard Learner’s recent Huffington Post blog entry.
Also read about the case in Forbes Online or Grist.org.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
The Environmental Law & Policy Center is actively engaged in activities throughout the Midwest to reduce global warming.
Midwest-focused solutions are critical. Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin account for 20% of the nation’s carbon pollution. The Midwest alone is responsible for more global warming pollution than any country, except China, India, Russia and Japan. That’s because the Midwest has the largest concentration of old, dirty coal plants that produce large amounts of carbon dioxide which cause global warming, and because we are the hub of the U.S. transportation industry.
Much of our work focuses on environmental solutions that can dramatically reduce global warming pollution:
CLEANER ENERGY: 32% of our country’s global warming pollution comes from generating electric power. How we produce that power, and how much we generate, has a profound impact on global warming.
- Creating Markets for Renewable Energy. Renewable energy resources are the fuel of the future and passage of renewable portfolio standards (RPS) in every Midwestern state is a critical step to building a clean energy future.
- Cleaning Up Dirty Coal Plants. The Midwest still depends on coal-fired power plants for more than 75% of its electrical power. Coal plants are among the dirtiest sources of power. ELPC is working to bring these older plants up to modern pollution control standards.
- Promoting Farm Energy. Producing energy from biofuels, biogas, wind power, and solar energy can reduce our demand for foreign oil, create jobs in America’s heartland, and reduce carbon pollution.
TRANSPORTATION: Motor vehicles consume almost 75% of the oil we use and produce about 26% of our global warming pollution.
- Promoting High-Speed Rail. Trains are three times as efficient as cars. By promoting fast, frequent rail service, we can reduce our dependence on cars and planes.
- Advocating Cleaner Cars. Under new federal standards, average fuel economy for passenger cars will increase from 27.5 mpg in 2009 to 37.8 mpg by 2016 – an improvement of nearly 40 percent.
- Opposing Wasteful Highway Spending. ELPC partners with local environmental groups to oppose unnecessary highway projects, such as I-69 in Indiana, which promote sprawl and encourage more fuel consumption.
GREEN BUILDINGS: Heating, cooling, and lighting buildings is a major source of carbon pollution. That’s why ELPC works to promote green buildings that reduce our demand for fossil fuels.
- Implementing Energy Efficient Building Codes. Doing energy efficiency “right” at the new construction and major rehab stage is by far the most cost-effective time to make these pro-environmental and energy cost reduction investments. ELPC was instrumental in getting a commercial energy efficiency building code passed in Illinois in 2004 and a residential energy efficient building code in Illinois in 2009.
Learn more about global warming and how you can make a difference at GlobalWarmingsolutions.org, our comprehensive website focused on climate change in the Midwest.
We publish one of the Midwest’s most important online information hubs on global warming; visit us at GlobalWarmingSolutions.org.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Des Moines Register - December 10, 2008
Guest Column by Howard A. Learner
Solving our global-warming problems is the moral, economic, policy, political and technological challenge of our times. Fortunately, there are smart, clean renewable-energy and energy-efficiency developments and clean-car innovation strategies that are good for the economy, create new green jobs and improve the environment.
The naysayers keep arguing that reducing global-warming pollution is too expensive and too difficult. 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 wouldn’t really reduce pollution and would make cars unaffordable. Reducing sulfur dioxide that causes acid rain would 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 lives, reduced the severity of accidents and lowered insurance costs.
- Catalytic converters have greatly reduced harmful health impacts from dirty air, and lowered health-care costs.
- The 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, 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 engineering tweaks and fixes – that have reduced acid rain. Instead of costing the industry’s estimated $2,000 to $3,000 per ton, sulfur-dioxide pollution credits are now trading at just $136 per ton. This pollution-reduction strategy has resulted in demonstrable environmental improvements for our rivers, lakes and forests, and reduced public-health harms.
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, consider the facts, history and American capacity for technological innovation – especially with the right mix of regulatory and financial-market incentives.
Solving global warming may be very painful for the more polluting industries and their workers. But it won’t always be difficult and costly. There will be economic winners, too, in the growing green economy.
Consider the example of lighting-efficiency improvements. Here’s what happens when Americans convert their old incandescent bulbs to compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs).
CFLs use 75 percent less electricity than incandescent bulbs to produce the same amount of illumination, saving us money on electricity bills. They reduce carbon dioxide and other pollution from coal plants, improving our health and environment, and they last seven to 10 times longer.
Replacing incandescent bulbs with CFLs will reduce overall electricity demand by about 5 to 6 percent. Since coal plants cause about 40 percent of the region’s global-warming pollution, this one change alone – which saves people money – will reduce overall carbon-dioxide pollution from 2 percent to 2.5 percent.
That doesn’t even include the additional economic savings and pollution reductions achieved when businesses, city halls, hospitals, schools, parks and sports facilities install more efficient lighting. Commercial light technologies for offices today are much more energy efficient, with high-tech control systems and ballasts.
Coming to market next are super-efficient light-emitting diodes (LEDs), which will last longer and can produce light in any color. LEDs are now marketed as a high-end product, but prices will fall soon.
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.
Lighting technologies alone won’t be nearly enough to solve our global-warming problems. But they are a good start, and point the way toward additional opportunities and innovations for global-warming solutions that are good for the economy.
What’s next? Watch for surviving (we hope!) American automakers to pivot to market plug-in electric hybrids and other clean cars sooner than previously advertised, for breakthroughs in solar energy and for 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.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
By: Howard A. Learner
Executive Director, Environmental Law & Policy Center
The confluence of multiple economic and policy factors creates a huge strategic opportunity to advance solar power installations in the Midwest. This window of opportunity will likely be open for about two years while solar photovoltaic (PV) module prices are very low due to excess global supply. Soon after, hoped-for technology curve improvements will reduce module costs and key policy drivers, such as Illinois’ solar procurement legislation, will kick in. Here are the combined factors that are driving today’s solar PV opportunities:
Þ Solar PV module prices have come down to $3 per watt, or less, due to the excess supply in global markets. For several years, solar-friendly policies in Germany, Spain and other countries drove new global manufacturing plant investments to ramp up supply for the expected markets. Germany and Spain shifted their subsidy policies – designed to catalyze markets, not support mature markets – just as ramped up manufacturing came on line. The current excess supply has driven down solar PV panel prices to the lowest level in years.
Þ Solar will find a niche supplying peak power in Midwest electricity markets. Solar is available at peak times when regional power market prices are highest. As the Midwest power market has transformed from vertically-integrated utilities to a wholesale market dominated more by merchant generators and power auction-type processes, prices for generation are increasingly reflect time-of-day and time-of-year. In short, solar energy matches well at pricey peak demand times.
Þ Fairly lush federal subsidies for solar energy through the Investment Tax Credit, loan guarantees and various other tax credits and grants are making a difference. Recent federal energy legislation and the economic stimulus package provide significant price support and investment value for solar projects.
Þ Federal and state policy support for solar energy is making a difference. For example, the Illinois RPS “solar carve-out” in the state’s renewable energy procurement standard will drive a new market for 700 MW – 750 MW of solar power supply in 2015. Net metering standards and interconnection standards in several Midwest states are creating more favorable pricing for distributed solar-generated power. Expanding net metering policies to cover larger projects will boost solar even more.
Þ Solar development is finding a sweet spot with 10 MW – 20 MW projects on former industrial sites with nearby substations. These projects are large enough to achieve economies of scale on module purchases and installation costs. Locating systems on older industrial sites provides ready low-cost access to transmission substations in open areas with little blockages to sunlight. In some cases, brownfield redevelopment, recovery bonds and other tax credits and subsidies are available. In addition to SunPower’s 10 MW solar project on the old U.S. Steel site on the South Side of Chicago, there are at least three more developers seeking to move forward with 10 MW – 20 MW solar projects in Illinois. These solar projects are big enough to obtain economies of scale, but small enough to fit onto the transmission grid as well as provide grid support when needed most.
Þ Skilled electrical and other workers are available in the current economic downturn for solar installation “green jobs.” With the 10 MW – 20 MW projects, there is enough volume to bring down the per panel installation costs and, thereby, improve the overall economic robustness of projects. Moreover, in some cases, various federal and state job creation grants, subsidies and credits are available, as are federal job training programs directed to new “green jobs.” Because of the excess worldwide manufacturing capacity, the solar green jobs opportunities are predominantly installation jobs, rather than new manufacturing jobs in the Midwest. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers is (re-) training new skilled solar installers at facilities in Illinois, Indiana and other states.
Þ Solar intensity in the Midwest is better than that of both Germany and Japan, the world’s largest solar markets. All right, Illinois and Nebraska are not the same as Arizona and Nevada, but there are some good solar sites here.
Þ New state policies can provide continued support for solar expansion as module prices increase after about two years when there is less excess supply. The Environmental Law & Policy Center and our colleagues are advocating a new ramp-up in 2010 – 2014 prior to the 700 MW – 750 MW Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard (RPS) solar carve out now set to begin in Illinois in 2015. We are working on feed-in tariff models in Michigan and with colleagues in Iowa to improve the state’s net metering policies. As Wisconsin considers boosting its RPS in 2010, there may also be opportunities to include solar provisions. We have a two-year window of opportunity to gain solar policy improvements as the unusually low module prices, combined with federal economic stimulus incentives, can drive significant new development.
Solar PV is primed for take-off in the Midwest, and especially in Illinois. Let’s seize these strategic opportunities and move forward with solar power development that creates new jobs, spurs economic growth and helps to solve our global warming pollution problems.
Howard A. Learner is the executive director of the Environmental Law and Policy Center, the Midwest’s leading environmental and economic development advocacy organization. www.elpc.org and www.globalwarmingsolutions.org
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Monday, September 21, 2009
ELPC Senior Policy Advocate Allen Grosboll spoke about the potential for renewable energy at a conference at Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota. Mr. Grosboll was joined by representatives from Repower America and the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission.
All speakers agreed that tapping South Dakota’s renewable energy potential would benefit the state’s economy and help to address the growing threat of climate change. Mr. Grosboll said that the American Clean Energy and Security Act would be an effective way to reduce carbon pollution and would create over one million clean energy jobs across the country and in South Dakota.
Read coverage in the Rapid City Journal
Monday, September 21, 2009
ELPC Executive Director Howard Learner said that federal climate legislation will create job growth and economic progress in his address at a Climate Change and Green Jobs conference at the University of Wisconsin.
“There may be a negative impact on the coal industry or on a company that owns a lot of coal plants, and you may hear them howling,” said Learner. “But on the other hand there’s a large number of winners who are creating jobs and that’s a boost to our economy.”
The event was part of the University of Wisconsin’s graduate program in sustainability and was covered by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Read the article here
Friday, September 18, 2009
At a public hearing before the Iowa Utilities Board on September 18th, a broad coalition of Iowa citizens called for the Iowa Utilities Board to stand up to utility pressure on climate change. Through previously submitted written comments and personal testimony at a workshop, these citizens made the scientific, economic and personal case for why Congress should pass the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES).
Several of the groups submitted analyses that showed how Iowa will benefit from clean energy legislation through job growth and income in manufacturing, renewable energy and energy efficiency. Others showed that the moderate costs of the bill are miniscule compared to the threat of global climate change.
As ELPC Senior Attorney Rob Kelter said, “There is so much more at stake here than minor changes in electric rates. Clean energy can be a major driver of economic growth in Iowa, but we have to stand up to the utilities to make it happen.”
Read more at Iowapolitics.com
Monday, August 17, 2009
Clean Renewable Energy & Energy Efficiency
Clean Transportation
Clean Buildings
Learn more about global warming
and how you can make a difference
at GlobalWarmingsolutions.org, our
comprehensive website focused on
climate change in the Midwest.
Clean Renewable Energy & Energy Efficiency
About one-third of our country’s global warming pollution comes from generating electric power. How we produce that power, and how much we generate, has a profound impact on global warming. ELPC is a leader in the Midwest working to:
- Create Markets for Renewable Energy. Renewable energy resources such as wind and solar are the fuel of the future, and passage of renewable portfolio standards (RPS) in every Midwestern state is a critical step to building a clean energy future.
- Clean Up Dirty Coal Plants. The Midwest still depends on coal-fired power plants for more than 75% of its electrical power. Coal plants are among the dirtiest sources of power. ELPC is working to bring these older plants up to modern pollution control standards.
- Promote Farm Energy. Producing energy from biofuels, biogas, wind power, and solar energy can reduce our demand for foreign oil, create jobs in America’s heartland, and reduce carbon pollution.
Clean Transportation
Motor vehicles consume almost 75% of the oil we use and produce about 26% of our global warming pollution. ELPC is a leader in the Midwest working to:
- Advance High-Speed Rail. High-speed trains in the Midwest would be three times as energy efficient as cars and six times as energy efficient as planes. Choosing rail travel over driving or flying will decrease our dependence on foreign oil and reduce air pollution that causes global warming and harms public health.
- Create a Market for Cleaner Cars and Electric Cars. Under new federal standards, average fuel economy for passenger cars will increase from 27.5 mpg in 2009 to 37.8 mpg by 2016 – an improvement of nearly 40%. What’s more, electric vehicles are next generation clean cars — with smart strategies and the right locations, these vehicles present an exciting opportunity to reduce air pollution, save drivers up to $1,200 per year on gasoline, and reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
- Oppose Wasteful Highway Spending. ELPC partners with local environmental groups to oppose unnecessary highway projects, such as I-69 in Indiana, which promote sprawl and encourage more fuel consumption.
Clean Buildings
Heating, cooling, and lighting buildings is a major source of global warming pollution. ELPC is a leader in the Midwest working to:
- Implement Energy Efficient Building Codes. Doing energy efficiency “right” at the new construction and major rehab stage is by far the most cost-effective time to make these pro-environmental and energy cost reduction investments. ELPC was instrumental in getting a commercial energy efficiency building code passed in Illinois in 2004 and a residential energy efficient building code in Illinois in 2009.
- Demonstrate Modern, Sustainable Green Design. In 2010, ELPC moved into a state-of-the-art green office that combines open design and modern technology. It features efficient lighting, plumbing, heating and cooling, and toxic-free paints and adhesives. ELPC also chose affordable, off-the-shelf products that help demonstrate the practicality of green offices.
