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"Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war." -- Shakespeare
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The inimitable John Geesman files 3-4 minute dispatches from the long twilight struggle of our time. Backed by accomplished studio musicians, his vocal patrols the same frontier captured in writing by the recondite blog, GreenEnergyWar.com/
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The inimitable John Geesman files 3-4 minute dispatches from the long twilight struggle of our time. Backed by accomplished studio musicians, his vocal patrols the same frontier captured by the recondite blog, GreenEnergyWar.com/
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Episodes
1 - Efficiency: California's Oldtime Energy Religion
October has not been a particularly uplifting month on the climate
front of the Green Energy War. The worldwide financial freeze-up has
sent summer soldiers across the globe scurrying for the presumed security
of retreat. Even the nominal master of ceremonies of the UN's
Framework Convention on Climate Change puts it flatly: "If industry is
in a difficult pass, most sensible governments will be reluctant to
impose new costs on them in the form of carbon-emission caps."
2 - Feed-In May Ease Southern California Squeeze
A surprise announcement
last week by Southern California Edison that it plans to adapt its
2009 Renewable Procurement Plan to include feed-in tariff provisions
for projects under 20 MW in size could be a game changer.
3 - Enhanced Geothermal: Drill Here, Drill Now, Pt. 2
As Albert Einstein famously observed,
"politics is more difficult than physics." The US congressional energy
debate end-game these next two weeks seems destined to prove this out. At its core is bipartisan recognition of an inchoate, nationwide,
don't-just-stand-there-do-something groundswell. Where this sudden,
tidal upheaval leads in the months ahead is anything but certain.
While empiricism and reason may exert some gravitational pull over
time, for now the political instinct is to pander.
4 - Enhanced Geothermal: Drill Here, Drill Now?
A surefire indicator of hubris in American business is the
misbegotten belief that success in one enterprise is a predictor of
likely success in another, unrelated one. Established companies
periodically flirt with this conceit -- whether for executive ego
gratification, perceived risk diversification, or earnings growth
imperative.
5 - So, How Expensive Is US Gasoline Anyway?
Strategists attempting to gauge the likely scale and scope of Green
Energy War initiatives after the clamor of the current election cycle
is past may gravitate to the lodestar of gasoline prices. Posted
outside every service station in statutorily prescribed type-size,
these context-less numerals are the primary navigational aids by which
most Americans determine whether energy is a problem or not.
6 - Discount Rates, Pt. 2: Why They Matter So Much
Pragmatists in the Green Energy War tend to consider natural gas a
necessary transition fuel for electric generation. They are cognizant
of the role quick start, fast ramp gas generation will play in
integrating intermittent wind and solar generation until large scale,
dispatchable demand response and storage technologies become commercial
realities. They embrace the material environmental benefits offered by
modern gas-fired plants when compared to coal, even if only a half-way
step toward decarbonizing electricity. And they acknowledge the easier
financeability of such plants in contrast to faith-based options like
nuclear power.
7 - Discount Rates: The Divine Right of Economists
Strategists in the Green Energy War are forced to make do with the
analytic tools the early years of the 21st Century have made available
to them. How to properly value future costs and future benefits has
long been a conundrum for decisionmakers in all walks of life who are
called upon to choose between alternatives in the present. The "time value of money"
is a truism of economic orthodoxy, but ethicists have always questioned
whether it gives proper attention to the interests of future
generations.
8 - Will the UK Require New Coal Plants to Use CCS?
With thousands of demonstrators expected
to converge this weekend on Kingsnorth, a powerplant site in Kent where
the German utility E.On hopes to build the first new coal units in
Britain since 1974, a much larger battle is emerging in Parliament that
may force-feed private sector embrace of carbon capture and
sequestration.
9 - UK Renewables, Pt. 2: Churchill or Friedman?
The bipolar personality of the electricity chapters in the UK's renewable energy consultation document
is more than simply the kind of literary tic often associated with
government reports written by multiple authors. It vividly illustrates
a deep conflict in the government's policy objectives between meeting
commitments made to the European Union concerning 2020 targets for
renewables and fostering the vision for competitive electricity markets
pioneered by the UK in the 1990s. Lurking in the background is the
centrality which the London carbon market is expected to play in
preventing catastrophic climate change.
10 - UK Renewables Policy: No 'Rule, Brittania' Just Yet
Because the Green Energy War has to date been driven by a proverbial
coalition of the willing -- only the growing number of climate jihadis
and the somewhat smaller sect of renewables zealouts see the subject as
determinative of mankind's fate -- government commitments, with some
notable exceptions, have been long on rhetoric and imagery and short on
tangible performance. "You say you want a revolution," the esteemed
British energy analyst, John Lennon, might say -- "well, you know, we're all doing what we can."
11 - California's Climate Plan Snowball Starts Its Roll
Wading into one of the most self-regarding political cultures on the
planet, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change, last week injected a small bit of perspective into California's celebration of the release of the "Draft Scoping Plan" for implementation of its heralded "Global Climate Solutions Act."
12 - EIA Fudges Update to Longterm Oil Price Forecast
In the ocean liner turning process that characterizes a great
nation's change in view of strategic inputs, nimbleness and agility are
more applauded in speeches than observed in practice. Media coverage of yesterday's release
by the US Energy Information Administration of the "highlights section"
of its International Energy Outlook zeroed in on the "high price case"
which sees oil climbing to $186 per barrel, unadjusted for inflation,
in 2030.
13 - A Policymaker's Cookbook for Feed-In Tariffs
The nature of the Green Energy War varies considerably around the
world, but support for feed-in tariffs is an increasingly common litmus
employed by renewables advocates globally to evaluate the efficacy of
government efforts. Remarkably successful in bringing large amounts of
renewable capacity online in Germany and Spain, the feed-in tariff has
become the preferred policy mechanism
for jurisdictions more intent on tangible results than the creation of
abstract trading instruments, intermittent tax goodies or unenforceable
portfolio requirements.
14 - Stage Set for New Renewables Strategy in UK
This morning's press briefing
by the Prime Minister's Spokesman confirms that the long-awaited UK
Renewable Energy Strategy will be published in two days. The report,
underway for some time, is being rushed forward after a blistering criticism of the Gordon Brown government's performance by a committee of Parliament.
15 - German Cabinet Bolsters Merkel's Hokkaido Stance
Combatants on the climate front of the Green Energy War have long looked to Germany for inspiration. Despite deepening rifts
in Angela Merkel's "grand coalition" government, and some obvious soft
spots in the package, the CO2 reduction measures endorsed by her
cabinet last week will reinforce the German imprint on any progress
which comes out of next month's G8 summit in Hokkaido, Japan.
16 - IEA Report, Pt. 4: Five Weak Links
Depending upon the outcome of next month's Hokkaido G8 summit, especially its "major economies" side event, the IEA's recent climate report
could establish the framework by which the world struggles to develop
the successor agreement to the Kyoto Accord. How useful this will be is
likely to turn on the specificity attached to George Bush's acceptance of a binding target for the US and the meaning of China's and India's embrace (through their national science academies) of a 50% reduction target for 2050.
17 - IEA Report, Pt. 3: Transport Sector Most Difficult
The agenda-setting function of last week's IEA climate report was reinforced by two developments yesterday. First, German Chancellor Angela Merkel endorsed
US President George Bush's plans for a "major economies" climate summit
held in conjunction with next month's G8 summit in Hokkaido, Japan. And
second, a 2050 GHG reduction target of 50% was jointly recommended
by the national science academies of thirteen countries, including all
of the G8 nations as well as Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South
Africa (i.e., all of Bush's "major economies" except Australia,
Indonesia and South Korea).
18 - IEA Report, Pt. 2: Decarbonising Generation
The climate strategy published
last week by the International Energy Agency, an analytic response to
the commitment made by G8 leaders in 2007 to "seriously consider" GHG
emission reduction targets of 50%, is emphatic about the need to
"decarbonise" the generation of electricity. The IEA identifies three
principle ways to achieve this:
19 - IEA Climate Report: The Relentless Logic of War
Two days after the derailment of the long-awaited climate debate in the US Senate, the International Energy Agency last week issued its how-to-do-it report
on achieving a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The
self-regarding greatest deliberative body in the world got sidetracked
by a demand to have the 491-page bill read out loud. The IEA, energy
think tank to the western nations that make up the OECD (think NATO
without guns), made abundantly clear that achieving even the low end of
the 50 - 85% reductions called for by the IPCC will require a "global
revolution ... in the way that energy is supplied and used."
20 - General Motors: The Consequences of Strategy
For many analysts, the Green Energy War is characterized by the same
unpredictable chaos associated with all military conflicts.
Intelligence is limited. Unanticipated conditions rapidly appear.
Developments cascade with unenvisioned quickness. Even the best of
battle plans seldom unfolds as expected.
21 - Where, Oh Where, Have the CCS Projects Gone?
Two dispatches from the carbon capture theater of the Green Energy
War's climate front make clear that to describe current efforts as
being at a standstill might be wildly optimistic.
22 - CBO Nuclear Report, Pt. 4: EPAct's Limited Role
There may be no aspect of the Green Energy War more in need of an
honest scorekeeper than the question of what to expect from nuclear
power. This month's appraisal
from the Congressional Budget Office provides significant insight into
how the legislative branch's official bean counters see it.
READ MORE
23 - CBO Nuclear Report, Pt. 3: Mitigating Factors?
Although it contains a remarkable blind spot regarding financial risks stemming from construction schedule slippages, this month's major nuclear assessment
from the Congressional Budget Office is appropriately sober about the
magnitude of risks attributable to construction cost overruns. If
construction costs average as high as they did in the 1970s and 1980s,
CBO concludes that CO2 charges will have to exceed $80 per metric ton
for new nuclear plants to be cost competitive.READ MORE
24 - CBO Nuclear Report, Pt. 2: Construction Cost Peril
The notable assessment of the future role of nuclear power, published
this month by the Congressional Budget Office, derives significance
less from its breadth or depth than from the insight it provides into
the thinking of Congress' official fiscal scorekeeper. The report,
assembled at the direction of revered nuclear champion Senator Pete
Domenici, casts a wary (though bleary) eye at construction cost risk.
25 - How Big a Nuclear Renaissance Did We Buy?
As the debate over the future role of nuclear power in the Green
Energy War continues to sharpen, the US Congressional Budget Office released
a seminal text this month. The report succinctly describes the
financial incentives in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct) for
third-generation nuclear technology, and projects levelized costs for
the small number of plants expected to benefit. The study was
commissioned by the patron saint of modern US nuclear promotion, New
Mexico Senator Pete Domenici.
26 - New EIA Oil Price Forecast: Oops, We Did It Again
In the rear view mirror that seems to guide the US federal government's energy price forecasting, this week's revision to the Energy Information Administration's official "Short-Term Energy Outlook" looks unavoidable. The bigger question, exactly when the view forward through the windshield bug splatter of flawed assumptions will change, is less clear.READ MORE
27 - Will Edison's Solar Play Trigger a Feed-In Tariff?
Ask any Green Energy Warrior what it will take to win the war, and
the answer is likely to be "technological transformation." The feed-in
tariffs in Europe and the renewable portfolio standards in the US focus
on independent generators to prompt this change, implicitly believing
the existing utility industry is too set in its ways to adapt quickly
enough.READ MORE
28 - Biofuels: Low Carbon Fuel Standard to the Rescue?
Simultaneous with the intense food vs. fuel debate presently underway, biofuels advocates on the environmental front of the Green Energy War have faced forceful arguments over the greenhouse gas impact of current policies promoting ethanol and biodiesel. Their response
has been to emphasize the benefits expected from "second generation"
biofuels like cellulosic ethanol, and to advocate technology-neutral,
performance-based policies like a Low Carbon Fuel Standard.READ MORE
29 - Biofuels: Confusion, Conflict Among Allies
Worldwide, there are three principal motivators -- or fronts -- in the accelerated move away from current methods of consuming fossil fuels that is known as the Green Energy War. As with most large scale endeavors attracting so many participants, communication and understanding across fronts can prove exceptionally difficult. It is by no means always clear that everyone is fighting the same war.READ MORE
30 - Biofuels: Wouldn't We Miss 500,000 Barrels a Day?
As debate continues to rage
over the role which biofuels policies have played in the extraordinary
inflation in world food prices, a sobering awareness may spread.
Crop-based fuels like ethanol and biodiesel may have already become an
indispensable element of global supplies of liquid fuels. Their absence
could have a significant impact on the price of oil.
31 - Biofuels Smackdown: When Words Fail
The Green Energy War, like every military campaign since the
beginning of history, is fraught with unintended consequences. But
strategy, once committed to, often takes on an irreversible momentum of
its own. And secondary concerns, in the memorable words of the US Air Force Intelligence Targeting Guide, tend to be dismissed as "collateral damage".READ MORE
32 - Misunderestimating Bush, Part 4: Contempt of Court
Based on the historic US Supreme Court decision
that brought him to the White House, George W. Bush probably ranks
first among all US presidents in his acute appreciation of the co-equal
role which the American Constitution affords the judicial branch of
government.READ MORE
33 - Misunderestimating Bush, Part 3: Thumb on the Scale
Parsing last week's Bush climate speech has intelligence value in
the Green Energy War irrespective of the esteem in which its deliverer
is held. The dimensions of the defensive perimeter thrown up by the Republican Message Command
and its business allies are detectable. They suggest an awareness of
the blowback risk created by the Administration's infidelity to the
principle of technology neutrality.
34 - Misunderestimating Bush, Part 2: Clean Coal Katrina
President Bush's "new national goal" announced yesterday,
to stop the growth in economy-wide GHG emissions by 2025 and to make
power sector emissions peak "within 10 to 15 years, and decline
thereafter" rests heavily on technology. As he put it, "There are a
number of ways to achieve these reductions, but all responsible
approaches depend on accelerating the development and deployment of new
technologies."
35 - Misunderestimating Bush's Climate Prattle
Green Energy Warriors habitually identify George W. Bush as the
culprit in the "who thwarted progress?" lineup of suspects which has
substituted for US action on climate policy these past seven years. His
putative mastermind, Dick Cheney, is a consistent runner up.READ MORE
36 - Feed-In Tariffs Pull AES Solar Strategy Away from US
Honest military historians have never known what significance to
attach to battlefield precedent. Their views range from the dour George Santayana ("those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it") to the more celebratory Yogi Berra ("it's deja vu all over again"). Why should the Green Energy War be different?
37 - EIA Oil Price Forecasts: The Limits of Intelligence
Like it or not, by the terms of some unwritten protocol governing
the Green Energy War, no single piece of intelligence is deemed to hold
more value than the expected long-term price of energy. It not only
informs strategy, it defines the outer boundaries of what is considered
possible given the virtually universal conviction that price signals
cannot be defied indefinitely. Even the most willful of policymakers
are forced to make their peace with price.READ MORE
38 - LBNL: Reading the Utility Planning Tea Leaves
The thankless job of the electric utility supply planner is designed
to attract the quantitative, the analytic, and the prudent -- not those
with an ideological bent or propensity for heroics. Yes, politics
constrains choices. The industry being what it is, there's a
predictable tendency of planners to search for the "path of least
resistance" -- an underpinning of the laws of physics which often finds
adherents among regulated businesses.
39 - 10 Candles for the California ISO
The following open letter to Yakout Mansour, CEO of the
California transmission grid manager, was written for the April 7, 2008
edition of California Energy Markets. Hey, Yakout -- As a rule, former public officials should be denied
access to the media because of their sworn duty to fade away. But when
the editors of California Energy Markets solicited
tenth birthday greetings for my second favorite non-profit public
benefit corporation (your corporate sibling, the CalPX, dead these
seven years, is still first in my heart), how could I refuse?
40 - McKinsey, Pt. 3: Seizing the Gold
The extraordinary findings on energy productivity published recently
by McKinsey & Company is a wartime anomaly. Not so much for its
basic conclusion -- Green Energy Warriors have long recited an energy
efficiency catechism. But the magnitude (roughly half the GHG abatement
needed to reach 450 - 550 ppm) and sheer profitability (a 17%
rate-of-return) of the portfolio of measures should be a shock-and-awe
awakening in a political debate still mired in the rhetoric of economic
deprivation.
41 - McKinsey, Pt. 2: Where the Gold Is Hidden
As Americans have been painfully reminded several times over recent decades, the possession of and respect for sound intelligence are prerequisites of successful military campaigns. The Green Energy War is no exception, which makes a clear understanding of the recent McKinsey report on energy productivity all the more important.READ MORE
42 - McKinsey: 17% IRR from Productivity Investments
The private sector routinely outsources its most perplexing analytic
challenges to management consultants. In that extremely competitive
profession, the global blue chip standard is widely considered to be
McKinsey & Company. Policymakers caught up in the debate over what
contribution to expect from energy efficiency in the Green Energy War
should give careful consideration to a McKinsey report recently presented to 450 institutional investors, Wall Street leaders, and CEOs from around the world.READ MORE
43 - CARB's ZEV Retreat: Dunkirk or Dien Bien Phu?
The California Air Resources Board, widely regarded as the most
aggressive technology-forcing regulatory agency in the world, has made
a shambles of its "zero emissions vehicle" program since first
mandating in 1990 that 10 percent of all new cars be pollution free by
2003 (roughly 100 - 150 thousand vehicles per annum). This week, in the
fifth revision to the requirement, it reduced that target to 7,500 over the three-year period 2012-2014.READ MORE
44 - NRG: Candor on What Holds Back Nuclear Energy
The rhetorical fight over nuclear power continues to rage. It will
retain a certain shadowboxing feel, at least in the US and EU, until
markets or governments begin making the massive financial commitments
necessary to construct new units.READ MORE
45 - EVs in Israel: Energy Security on Wheels?
The energy security front in the Green Energy War is broad and deep.
Countries all over the world profess a desire to move away from oil --
some out of concern for the environment and climate change, many from a
desire to sidestep the debilitating economics of petroleum dependence,
most with growing apprehension about continued reliance on OPEC
exporters.READ MORE
46 - Motivating the Generals
The past several years have seen considerable, and wishful,
attention paid to the role of so-called "enlightened" corporate leaders
in pushing the U.S. federal government into a more activist stance on
climate issues. Some of this has been calculated political strategy, a
dry-eyed search by environmentalists for middle-of-the-road message
carriers. More of it has been naive sentimentality, reinforced by
massive advertising expenditures designed to boost company image.
READ MORE
47 - Feed-In Tariffs: A Redistribution of Power?
The zeal of the renewable energy movement is one of the wild cards
in the Green Energy War. Opinion surveys show exceptionally broad
"do-it-now" support in many countries. The depth and commitment of such
support, and its ability to knock down barriers of institutional
inertia, will ultimately determine the pace and scope of any transition
away from fossil fuels.
READ MORE
48 - Border Carbon Charges: A Whiff of Mustard Gas
World War I
saw an escalating, though not particularly effective, use of poison gas
by the combatants. Because of the horrific effect on victims, more
often wounded than killed, the Geneva Convention of 1925 banned the use
of such weapons. Considerable opprobrium has attached to their
deployment ever since.READ MORE
49 - UK Renewables: Beating Your Head Against a ROC
In the Green Energy War, renewable energy is generally considered to
be the ultimate weapon against whatever adversary is identified: energy
security, climate change, escalating fossil fuel prices, etc.
Significant disagreement exists about time frames, scalability, and
costs, but a broad consensus exists among policymakers that promoting
greater reliance on renewables is a desirable priority for government.READ MORE
50 - Entergy's Nuclear Spinoff: No New Construction
The second largest operator of nuclear power plants in the US, the
New Orleans based company known as Entergy, is trying to secure
regulatory approval to spin off five of its 10 nuclear plants into a
separate, publicly traded company initially called SpinCo. This would
create the first pure play nuclear company in the U.S. stock markets at
a time of growing enthusiasm in some quarters over the role for nuclear
on the Green Energy War's climate front.READ MORE
51 - UK Embraces New Nuclear, Coy About Subsidies
Perhaps the most controversial question among climate activists
worldwide is what role to assign nuclear power in the Green Energy War.
The answer from the Labour Party government in the UK, with full
support from the Tory opposition in Parliament: a very big one.READ MORE
52 - DOE Efficiency Standards: Historic Weak Link
By almost universal consensus, improvements in energy efficiency
represent a core strategy in the Green Energy War. Because price
signals alone have not prompted efficiency improvements to a level
policymakers consider economically rational, there also exists a broad
consensus that a legitimate role for government is to correct this
market failure and establish minimum efficiency standards for key
energy-using appliances.READ MORE
53 - Lightbulbs: Home Front in the Green Energy War
Nothing in the Green Energy War has stirred the hyenas of talk radio
more than Big Government's move to override the marketplace's judgment
about lightbulbs. The energy legislation signed into law by President
Bush last December sets efficiency standards for lighting which will
begin phasing out the incandescent bulb -- a technology largely
unchanged since the 1880s -- in favor of compact fluorescents, halogens
and LEDs.READ MORE
54 - Carbon Capture and Sequestration in Europe
Carbon capture and sequestration, the waste disposal technology
underpinning the "clean coal" vision, is perceived by many as a
strategic weapon in the Green Energy War's climate front -- if for no
other reason than to accommodate the seemingly irrevocable commitment
China and India have made to coal to fuel their economic development.READ MORE
55 - Does CCS Establish a Wartime Cost Frontier?
The presence of abundant deposits of coal in China, India, the
United States -- and its general lower cost as a feedstock compared to
other energy sources -- creates a presumption that, one way or another,
this resource is likely to be used over time. Soldiers on the climate
front of the Green Energy War are insistent that this only be done with
full capture and sequestration of the associated carbon emissions, also
known as CCS.READ MORE
56 - IPCC Report Sets Climate Front Time Line
The most active front in the Green Energy War this past
decade has been the international crescendo of alarm about climate
change. The "Fourth Assessment Report" published by the IPCC in November, 2007 defines the time frame by which governmental actions should be evaluated. As summarized by DEFRA, the environmental agency of the UK national government, the relevant points are:READ MORE
