House passes energy overhaul bill
Brian
7,618 Posts
Doubt this will get many responses today but any thoughts?Shit was like 1200 pages, added 300 pages in amendments over night, and it got passed today....http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/06/26/house.energy/index.html
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A sharply divided House of Representatives narrowly passed a White House-backed climate change bill Friday after hours of cajoling and arm-twisting by Democratic leaders among members worried about the legislation's potential economic and political fallout.The House of Representatives passes an energy bill that includes a "cap-and-trade" program on emissions. The bill passed 219-212, with virtually no Republican support.The bill would reduce nationwide greenhouse gas emissions 17 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050 through a so-called "cap-and-trade" program under which companies would buy and sell emissions credits.Among other things, the bill would also require utilities to generate an increasing amount of power from renewable sources.The House vote came one day after President Obama made an urgent plea for congressional approval in what could be an early make-or-break test of his young administration."Now is the time for us to lead," Obama said during an appearance Thursday in the White House Rose Garden. "We cannot be afraid of the future. We cannot be prisoners to the past."The president said the bill will spark a "clean energy transformation" of the U.S. economy and "make possible the creation of millions of new jobs.""Make no mistake," he emphasized. "This is a jobs bill."Don't MissObama makes eleventh-hour push for energy bill Carter pushes energy reform plan to Congress Several moderate and conservative Democrats indicated that they received heavy constituent pressure in the final hours to buck their party leadership and vote against the bill."I can't begin to tell you how many calls we've received," said Rep. Charles Gonzalez, D-Texas. "And it's disproportionately vote 'no.'"Gonzalez, who voted "yes," believes special interest groups generated many of the calls on both sides, including the late surge of negative feedback.However, Gonzalez also said Obama tried to counter much of that pressure by personally reaching out to swing members since Thursday night.Republicans have argued the bill would have the unintended consequence of devastating the country's battered industrial base while pushing polluting industries to countries with lower environmental standards.Having cleared the House, the bill now faces an unclear future in the Senate, where Democratic leaders have held off on introducing their own version of the legislation
Comments
No doubt it's a cluster F*ck that will criticized by all.
It goes to the senate now. No? Hope it doesn't die there.
Countries like China and India (and many others) will burn petroleum until it's no longer economically feasible, period. With decreased U.S. demand for petroleum, the price will remain low and oil consumption will increase in most of the world.
Carbon credits will become another vehicle for the rich to become richer at the consumers expense.
Mandating a decrease in emissions won't make it happen, and the requirements for renewable sources are literally physically impossible to accomplish. Here in MA, the mandate that 25% of all electricity be produced by wind or solar by 2030 is not even a remotely achievable goal, but the heavy fines will kick in anyway - to be paid by the consumer, of course.
And why the concerted rush to push through a bill that will affect our entire energy future? Virtually nobody who voted for or against it even had a chance to read it - just like the stimulus bill. In other words, the legislative process was completely circumvented for no legitimate reason.
"I'll take mine with a pessimism chaser" much?
on a more optimisitic note, I disagree. If the USA is able to institute an energy producing infrastructure, and produce energy that is cheaper than fossil fuels, then we sell it to other nations and greenhouse gases are reduced. It also serves to transition us back to an economy based on the production of goods--although it's more a matter of 'harnessing' than producing when you're selling energy.
The USA is in a unique position because its geography allows us to pursue different alternative energy sources, some of which we can really capitalize on (wind farms already exist in the Midwest, researchers are looking at ways to implement off-shore dynamos, solar panels are only getting better, et cetera). And because we've been left with no other options, we've really got to get on the clean energy thang. We should've listened to Bucky 50 years ago and we'd be way ahead of the curve.
Getting back on point, this bill is a good thing, for nothing else it shows the US government is taking steps in the right direction and is trying to tackle climate change instead of denying it.
I try to be neither pessimistic nor optimistic. 30+ years of studying these issues and technologies, both in school and on my own have taught me that realism is the only effective approach.
I was optimistic about solar back in the 70's when several breakthroughs were just around the corner. Well, none of them happened, and solar is completely unviable at this point for widescale application. If you wish to refute this, please bring the science to make your point.
Same with wind in most commercial applications (though small-scale home/community applications can be effective).The decades long wind farm experiment in the Netherlands is coming to an end because it was a complete failure. The head of the Energy Technology department at leading university there recently admitted that they would have saved more energy at about 1/1000th the cost by giving away free high-efficiency radiator valves instead.
The sad fact we must (realistically) face is that we don't have a viable large scale clean energy source right now. Forcing people to use ineffective technologies by political mandate is pointless. The Netherlands mandated that they should have closed at least 12 conventional fossil fuel energy plants by now, but they haven't been able to close a single one after 30 years of intensive investment in wind power.
The science here is extremely complicated, and I can pretty much guarantee you that not a single politician involved with this bill has a basic understanding of it.
The money that went to bail out the auto companies should have gone into intensive research and development of new energy systems. Just making laws forcing our economy to attain goals it can't possibly reach won't help anything.
I'll ask again - if this bill is so effective and well though out, how come nobody was allowed an opportunity to read the whole thing before it was voted on? How did we benefit by not having this bill researched and perfected?
You make some good points.
Some I will try to refute.
China and India use much less fossil fuels per capita than we do.
A large part of what they do use is used to make crap for the USA.
So it is on us, not them.
China is ahead of US in the use of solar energy.
I don't care for your demonizing of developing nations.
I was under the impression that The Netherlands was exporting wind power because they have a surplus. Wrong?
For 2 years in the 70s there was a push to use alternative energy.
Then the government put up barriers to alternative energy research.
You are 100% wrong when you say there have been no breakthroughs in solar and that solar is not viable.
Those are simply false statements.
You may have read on the recent breakthrough on hydrogen storage. Chicken feathers. There will be more breakthroughs on other fronts. Happening everyday.
That this bill was not researched or thought out is partly true.
The coal industry researched it and thought it out, it benefits them more than anyone.
Could something like this work on a large scale? It's debatable, but if every small town of America started doing this, imagine how much of a reduction in our carbon-footprint we could make.
And the cap-and-trade system: it's about f*cking time. There are already successful carbon-trading markets in europe (albeit on a much smaller scale than traditional trading markets), and what capitalist would not want to trade on carbon futures? It's just another way to make money, and reduce our carbon footprint at the same time. Granted, there will be companies that will just buy other companies' carbon shares so they can continue to pollute, but the idea is that you gradually lower the cap over time (thus raising the value of carbon shares, in turn creating an incentive to go green because it becomes more expensive NOT to go green) so that eventually everyone has to comply to some degree, and pollution and dependence on fossil fuels lowers.
what has to happen is a paradigm shift in our attitudes towards energy and consumption so that measures like this won't die out or expire with an administration change in DC.
Cap & Trade will create a market that will artificially inflate prices, make traders rich and allow polluters to continue to pollute.
He suggests simply regulating green house gases the same as the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act (wrong name) which have been fairly effective.
Instead of buying the right to pollute or selling the right to pollute (cap and trade) industry would be required to clean up or pay fines and be shut down.
All good points, and as I said, ideally the cap will be gradually lowered to the point where it makes no fiscal sense to keep buying carbon shares and just go green. But best laid plans...
I noticed my last link didn't work, I'll try it again.
http://www.thebreakthrough.org/
Note the lack of funding for innovation, which is what we need most.
Why are you calling foul? I clearly said in my post that wind could work on a community basis, but not a large scale. Most people on Samso are farmers, most people in the world are not.
Samso Island is great, I really mean that, but only 4,000 people live there. If we want to have cities, industries, etc we have to have another plan for that. The reality is that most people can't live like they do there.
Besides, the success on Samso doesn't change the fact that overall, wind energy in the Netherlands is losing serious money, and they have halted most of their future projects.
I know a few countries (Portugal being one) are starting to implement using some form of it and I remember MIT making some decent advances in the technology.
There are challenges with it, but if they are able to tackle these it could be an enormous benefit to energy problems.
In any case. Isn't the answer in using a mix of all available renewable technologies?
That's as well done and thought out as any argument I have ever seen here.
I can't find the numbers for wind in the pac ific NW, but I think it is more than 8%.
One way to reduce the unpredictability of wind is better localized wind forecasts.
This is being done here.
That wind energy is intermittent does not mean it is a failure and should not be pursued.
Coal would be cost prohibitive if it were not so heavily subsidized.
Green house gases, mercury and other air pollutants are just one part of the down side of coal. Add mountain top mining, tailings, and fly ash... (Not aimed at you, you are not promoting coal.
Breakthroughs don't happen everyday.
I was thinking of scientific breakthroughs.
Which are happening in all areas over time.
You are talking about production and cost breakthroughs which have not been realized at this time.
Now go fix those quotes.
Currently most utilities will let you send excess solar energy back into the grid.
Most utilities will allow you to roll your meter backwards.
(I'm not sure, but I think your meter goes backward at a slower [wholesale rate] than it goes forward.)
What utilities will not do is buy excess power from you if you produce more than you use.
If utilities were to buy power from individuals with solar roofs many more people would add solar roofs.
These people would then go out of their way to conserve energy so that they get as big a check as possible from the utilities, thus lowering demand.
This needs to be coupled with long term financing of solar roofs.
This would add an "unpredictable" energy source to our out dated grids.
Grids would have to be updated and made "smart" to adjust to the changes.
It's called the market place, I think it will work.
Lots of wave power work off the Oregon coast.
Recent article in the paper about a new wave turbine with a radically different design being tested.
When I look at the ocean and think of the storms, the turbulence, and the corrosiveness I wonder if it will ever happen.
But then I see the relentless movement and energy and wonder why it hasn't happened yet.
Ha! When I went through all that work, previewed my post, and saw that I'd screwed up I had to laugh, but I was way too lazy to fix it.
I'm a computer idiot, no two ways about it.
We have something similar here in Ontario. Feed-in tarriffs and net metering. Small alternative energy projects can sell their power back into the grid at a guaranteed higher rate, thus providing the necessary long-term return to make the investment viable. It's modelled after the very successful German system and I think some US states have something similar or are considering it.
I'm not too familar with the situation in the Netherlands, but Germany, Denmark and Spain are doing some significant things with wind power and I haven't heard too much negative press on their systems.
As far as breakthroughs go, a lot of stock gets placed on new power generation technologies, but far more attention should be paid to conservation measures and they're huge potential to lower peak demand and the need to bring on new generation facilities.
One positive anecdote: The city I work for is about to construct an large biogas facility where we'll take all the sewage sludge from our residents and convert it methane to power our vehicle fleet.
There's a lot of inventive ways being developed to deal with climate change, a lot of which is being driven more by peak oil and the inevitable increase in energy costs, than any specific goverment legislation.