A study released today documents the powerful benefits of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) – the nation-leading effort by Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants while building up energy efficiency and clean energy efforts in the states.

The study found that RGGI created $1.6 Billion in net economic benefits across the region ($888 million in New England alone).  The program saved electricity customers $1.3 Billion on their energy bills region-wide due to investment by the program in energy efficiency and created 16,000 Job Years (a standard measure of employment) during the first 3 years of the program (including temporary and permanent positions).   The cost of the program was minimal, creating an imperceptible 0.7% electricity price increase on customer bills across the region that was more than offset by the benefits of the program.

CLF has been deeply involved with the RGGI program from its inception. We strongly believe that this is solid proof that RGGI, while first and foremost an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, is also a win for the economy, consumers and business, as well as the environment.

We must apply the lessons of RGGI to date and move beyond this pilot phase, scaling up the program to further reduce pollution, create even more jobs and reduce energy bills on a much greater scale, and take this effort into other parts of the nation.

RGGI has proved that a well-designed greenhouse gas reduction policy is a win for just about everybody.  The complaints (amplified by their well-financed megaphone) from the filthy few companies who make their money by extracting and selling coal and oil, at great cost in lives and environmental damage, should not distract us from hearing that very positive story.

I often say that there are two phrases that a professional climate advocate, whether they like or not, ends up repeating.

The first one, which is not the subject of this post, is “The scary part is . . . “  As in “The scary part is that Daniel Yergin might be right when, in his new book, he suggests that climate science is right and fossil fuels are a systemic problem AND that peak oil/gas theory is wrong and we are not running out of fossil fuels.”  But that is the subject of another and different blog post to be written and just one of millions of examples of sentences beginning “The scary part is . . .” that you can write or utter about global warming.

The second one is “We have to do that too . . . ” As in, “Yes, we need to conserve more and be more efficient but we need to build wind farms, like the one proposed off of Cape Cod, too.”   As so many folks, including the folks at Princeton who are more famous for wedges than dairy farmers in Wisconsin, will tell you big systemic problem like global warming requires a huge range of solutions.  As some like to say, there is no silver bullet, perhaps multiple rounds of silver buckshot.

This last point causes me to do something I am reluctant to do – disagree with a very smart guy who has a record of knowing how to get things built.  In an opinion piece, Jiggar Shah, the founder of the solar development company Sun Edison and CEO of the very laudable Carbon War Room disagrees with the wisdom of the “jumbo” solar projects being undertaken by large energy companies like NRG Energy that are chronicled in a recent New York Times article.

My suggestion is simple: We need to do both.  We need the vast network of distributed solar on millions of rooftops that Mr. Shah envisions.  We need to do smart development of large solar as well.  We also need to be far more efficient in how we light and heat all our buildings and how we use energy to travel.

The array of technologies we will need to address global warming range from new smart heating devices for our homes, sidewalks to allow safe travel on foot in all our communities, shareable bicycles like the one I took to work this morning, electric cars powered by clean renewable energy, trains that connect cities and neighborhoods, and intelligently sited wind farms and solar installations on land and in the water.

We need to be relentless in our search for new solutions, recognizing dead-ends like the old nuclear power plants that have proved to be an expensive dead-end while aggressively evaluating new answers.

The good news about solar electric generation, as a source of new answers, is that the price of this technology continues to descend at a very steep rate.

While this is very bad news for folks trying to build a business that depends on making a profit by selling these modules, it creates many new opportunities to deploy solar electric generation as part of a large scale clean energy solution; and to do so in the form of a whole lot of Small on many rooftops, a fair amount of Medium on large roofs and appropriate locations on the ground, some Large and, where appropriate, even some Extra Large.

Simulation of view of Cape Wind from Cotuit, MA. Photo credit: http://www.capewind.org

When three leading environmental organizations seek to get involved in a federal court case about a proposed development project, it’s not usually on the side of the developer. But, this week, CLF, NRDC and Mass Audubon filed a motion to participate as “Friends of the Court” in support of the defendants in five pending federal cases challenging federal approvals of the Cape Wind offshore wind energy project. The plaintiffs, unsurprisingly including the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, are seeking to overturn the federal government’s 2010 approval of the landmark offshore wind project, the first to be approved in the United States.

Our federal court filing comes after more than a decade of exhaustive review undertaken by state and federal authorities, and by CLF and our colleagues in the environmental community – review that served to ensure Cape Wind’s approval was based on sound science and data, and that the project was thoroughly vetted through an open and transparent public process. Our support for the project reflects our findings that Cape Wind’s benefits far outweigh its impacts.

Between CLF, NRDC and Mass Audubon, we pack a couple hundred years of environmental advocacy and stewardship experience.  Collectively, we represent hundreds of thousands of Americans, from nearby Hyannis to far-flung Hawaii, who believe our country should prioritize a true clean energy agenda and move more quickly to deliver on the environmental, public health, energy security and economic benefits of responsible renewable energy. Backing the developer in the Cape Wind case may, at first blush, go against the grain of environmental advocacy history. But in this case, it is fully consistent with our longstanding missions to protect natural resources and public health – here, by advancing a key project that will begin to unleash the tremendous potential of offshore renewable energy, allowing Massachusetts and the region to dial back polluting fossil fuel power generation.

CLF's Melissa Hoffer at the No XL Rally Washington DC

And we did—at least for now.

The Keystone XL pipeline, proposed to be constructed by TransCanada, would bring 900,000 barrels per day of toxic tar sands oil 1,702 miles across six states and through the Ogallala Aquifer—which supports $20 billion in food and fiber production in the U.S. annually—from Alberta, Canada to Texas refineries.

On Thursday, the State Department announced that it would be delaying its decision on whether to grant a key permit that would allow the Keystone XL pipeline project to proceed, stating that alternative routes that would avoid the Sand Hills in Nebraska must be studied in order to move forward with a National Interest Determination for the Presidential Permit.  The State Department also announced that it will be examining “environmental concerns (including climate change), energy security, economic impacts, and foreign policy.”  Nested in that parenthetical is a big victory for all of us who have been urging the federal government to review the project’s potential to contribute substantially to global warming pollution.

President Obama issued a statement supporting the decision noting that the permit decision could affect the health and safety of the American people as well as the environment.  Today’s decision will push back completion of the additional environmental review process until at least early 2013. Following the announcement, TarSandsAction.org. spokesperson, Bill McKibben, declared, “It’s important to understand how unlikely this victory is. Six months ago, almost no one outside the pipeline route even knew about Keystone. One month ago, a secret poll of “energy insiders” by the National Journal found that “virtually all” expected easy approval of the pipeline by year’s end…A done deal has come spectacularly undone.”  Spectacularly undone, indeed.

The movement that has built up around Keystone holds lessons for climate and environmental advocates.  This is not the environmentalism of the 70s.  Last Sunday, I traveled with a group of friends to Washington DC where I joined thousands of other Americans to form a human circle around the White House and ask President Obama to deny the Keystone XL pipeline permit.  The event was organized by TarSandsAction.org, and at the pre- and post-circle rallies, we heard from Roger Toussaint, international vice president of the Transport Workers Union, who reminded us that this is not a labor versus environment issue.  Tom Poor Bear, vice president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, asked us to take heart in the fact that all races and men and women alike were joining together to fight this battle.  Naomi Klein (see her recent article Capitalism vs. the Climate) passionately relayed how hard people are working in Canada to stop the pipeline and its destruction of indigenous lands, and promised that if we work together and stop it here, our Canadian compatriots would stop it there; her thoughts were echoed by her countrywoman, Maude Barlow.  NASA climate scientist Dr. James Hansen, who has for decades urged action to control greenhouse gas emissions, again called for action to reduce dangerously high levels of global warming pollution before it is too late.

Physicians for Social Responsibility warned that the human health impacts we already are experiencing from climate change are significant and growing—the World Health Organization estimates that there are 160,000 additional deaths annually around the world attributable to climate change.  John Bolenbaugh, a union worker who has blown the whistle on the failed Enbridge Energy oil spill “cleanup” in Michigan, cautioned that we should not believe TransCanada’s assurances of safety, pointing out the nation’s dismal record on pipeline spills.  (Enbridge, by the way, is proposing to construct the Trailbreaker pipeline that would bring tar sands oil from Alberta to Portland, Maine via Montreal.)

Farmers in the region where Keystone is proposed to be constructed called on us to help them protect their land and the Ogallala Aquifer through which the pipeline will run, placing this precious water source at great risk of irreversible contamination.  Cherri Foytlin of the Gulf Coast spoke movingly about just how wrongly things can go—she reported that dead wildlife, including fish, dolphins, and birds, continue to wash ashore there on a daily basis, coated with oil from the BP spill, and that fresh, wet oil is washed in on the waves, while people continue to get sick from exposure to the oil and chemicals used to control it.  “Our divers who dove into the spill, “she said, “are on their deathbeds.”  Representatives of the Sierra Club, National Wildlife Federation, and NRDC founder John Adams, each spoke about Keystone’s impact on the environment, and the potential for climate change to bring about the next, and sixth greatest, extinction event in the planet’s history.

The scale of the climate emergency is paralyzing for many.  Now, we can actually see what climate change looks like, in the form of record-breaking Spring floods in 2010 throughout New England, a tornado that killed four people this spring in Western Massachusetts, the devastation wrought by Hurricane Irene (especially in Connecticut, Vermont, and Western Massachusetts), and just days ago, a record breaking late October snowstorm that left millions without power (again) as heavy wet snow snapped tree trunks and limbs, many still bearing green leaves.  These weather patterns, as msnbc recently reported, are consistent with the predicted trends for our region as the climate warms, and extreme weather is already costing us billions in response costs.  Everywhere people are talking about these unprecedented weather events, yet many still do not understand or acknowledge that climate change is the cause.  For those who do, the realization is accompanied by a bewildering sense of both the urgency and enormity of the problem, for every aspect of our modern, energy-dependent lifestyles contributes to planet-warming pollution.

But like most very difficult problems, we will solve this one step at a time, and killing Keystone is a very good step, since it will make it that much harder for TransCanada to tap and sell one of the largest remaining oil reserves in the world.  Keystone XL is the poster child for what we should not be doing.  Transportation sector emissions, for example, constitute about a third of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), and in New England, that sector is the fastest growing source of GHG.  We need to be moving away from high carbon fuels, like tar sands, to low carbon fuels.  Because it is such a dirty fuel source, according to NRDC, replacing three million barrels per day of conventional oil with tar sands oil would be equivalent to adding more than 22 million passenger cars to our roads. The environmental impact statement for Keystone (which did not adequately account for lifecycle GHG pollution) estimated that the project would emit in the range of 12-23 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents annually—on par with the emissions from two to four coal fired power plants, according to TarSandsAction.org. Quite simply, that is obscene.

The Keystone movement is a model of what we will need to do if we are to succeed in the fight to take back our environment and restore the climate.  We will need to work together, across political lines, across the borders real or imagined that often separate us, finding and holding that common thread that weaves us together:  our knowledge that we are in the fight of our lives and our commitment to win it, whatever it takes.  Climate change is not in the national interest.

Fire Boats Attempt to Control Fire on BP's Deepwater Horizon

Earlier this week Secretary Salazar announced the Department of the Interior’s five-year proposal for oil and gas leases in our nation’s oceans. Much to the relief of New England’s fishermen, beachgoers, and coastal businesses, the Obama Administration’s proposal keeps the oil industry out of New England’s ocean and the rest of the Atlantic coast. CLF has long opposed oil drilling off of New England’s coasts and joined with the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association to block drilling 30 years ago when test wells were being drilled on the rich fishing grounds of Georges Bank.

CLF opposes offshore drilling for the very simple reason that a healthy, thriving ocean free of oil spills is worth far more to our region than the oil that potentially lies beneath the waves. From fishing to recreation to coastal tourism, a healthy ocean contributes more than $17.5 billion to our economy every year.

Just over a year ago, we watched in horror as the BP Deepwater Horizon rig burst into flames, unleashing what would become the nation’s greatest environmental disaster. But for the efforts of CLF, our allies in the fishing industry and environmental community and champions such as Congressman Ed Markey, that oil could very well have been washing up on the beaches of Cape Cod’s National Seashore or on the rocky coasts of Maine.

The fact is that unless we get permanent protection for our ocean and coasts oil drilling off of New England’s coasts remains a real threat. Congress has failed to reauthorize a congressional moratorium on drilling on Georges Bank introduced by Congressman Ed Markey, and earlier this summer the House passed legislation that could require drilling off of New England’s coast and in other sensitive areas around the nation.

Given the importance of the ocean to New England’s economy and last summer’s stark example of the danger drilling poses to jobs, the economy, our beaches, wildlife and our quality of life you would think that New England’s representatives to Congress would oppose such legislation, and many did. Unfortunately Representatives Charlie Bass and Frank Guinta, both of New Hampshire, supported the House legislation which passed. Most of New England’s Republican Senators, Brown of Massachusetts, Ayotte of New Hampshire and Collins of Maine all supported similar legislation in the Senate. Senator Snowe of Maine joined all of New England’s Democratic Senators to reject the drilling requirement. Fortunately, this time, the Senate voted down this legislation.

Yesterday’s decision by President Obama and Interior Secretary Salazar to keep New England’s ocean and coastal economy oil rig free should be applauded as the important step forward that it is. However, New England’s ocean is far too important to our lives and our economy to face such constant threats. It is time for Senators Brown, Ayotte and Collins as well as Representatives Bass and Guinta to stand with the rest of New England’s delegation and support permanent protection from drilling off of New England’s coast. If your Representative or Senator is on that list, you can contact them by calling the Congressional switchboard at 202-224-3121.

CLF is a proud founding member of Renewable Energy New England, a non-profit association that brings together companies working on and supporting clean renewable energy (including developers of wind farms, manufacturers of equipment that harvests wind and solar power, private builders of transmission lines that serve wind farms) with environmental advocates. RENEW (as the group is known) has a nice new revamped website worth visiting.

Solving our massive environmental and energy problems will involve a lot of saying no to bad projects but will also will require saying yes to what affirmative projects that can meet the needs of our society and economy in a cleaner and better way.

Environmental advocates like CLF will never agree with everything that businesses like renewable project developers say and we will scrutinize their projects and may even oppose some.  But we need to work with them as much as we can if we are truly serious about reaching our shared goal of a thriving New England.

Today, the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services provided an annual report to the New Hampshire legislature detailing the results of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) Carbon Dioxide Emissions Budget Trading Program.  The report notes that the program has supported approximately $20 million in job creating energy efficiency investment in New Hampshire and that each dollar of invested RGGI revenue resulted in $3.42 in direct energy savings (See this study by the University of New Hampshire). The report concludes that the effect of the RGGI program on rates has been negligible, amounting to .06 cents per kWh, or approximately 30 cents per month per household.

At the same time, electricity bills for customers of New Hampshire electric utilities have decreased dramatically since RGGI went into effect, with the exception of PSNH customers.  According to the report, the average PSNH residential customer is currently paying approximately $27 per month more than a New Hampshire customer in National Grid’s service territory for the same amount of power ($89 per month for PSNH versus $62 per month for National Grid).

Given the magnitude of the excessive energy costs paid by PSNH residential customers (comprising the overwhelming majority of New Hampshire homes), one might assume that the legislature would use the report as a basis for reviewing and revising the state’s policy that forces New Hampshire residents to subsidize PSNH’s above market costs to the tune of $324  per ratepayer per year.

Instead, House Speaker William O’Brien and Majority Leader D.J. Bettencourt issued a statement today criticizing RGGI for laying an extra “$5.50 per year on the backs of our ratepayers.”  They appear to have missed the forest for the trees (and bungled their math).  New Hampshire ratepayers pay among the highest rates in the country because PSNH imposes on them the above-market cost of its dirty and expensive power.  In fact, the report shows that National Grid ratepayers in New Hampshire, having been spared the legislative mandates that inflict exorbitant costs on PSNH ratepayers, pay the lowest electric rates in New England. National Grid and other New Hampshire utilities purchase power from newer, more efficient power plants selling into the wholesale market.

Improving New Hampshire’s economic future requires a thoughtful review of the statutory policies that extend the lives of PSNH’s uneconomic power plants and foist the exorbitant costs of these plants, and the pollution they emit, on New Hampshire residents. Portraying a successful and economically beneficial program such as RGGI as a burden to ratepayers lays blame in the wrong place and amounts to a game of political charades—a disservice to New Hampshire voters and job creators.

The unfortunate news that Beacon Power, an innovative technology company based in Massachusetts,  declared bankruptcy has inspired a bit of a media feeding frenzy centered around analogies to the failed California solar company Solyndra,  because Beacon (like Solyndra) received  a federal loan guarantee.

This analogy simply doesn’t hold up for the following reasons:

• Beacon Power has a fully operational facility in Stephentown New York that is an operating model of their flywheel technology, a innovative technology that provides an essential service to the electricity grid, providing stability to the power system at a very low cost.  This stability will allow smoother operation of the power grid and allow for integration of many more renewable resources like wind and solar smoothly at a reasonable price.
• The Federal loan guarantee is structured in a way that protects the financial interests of the taxpayers – giving them the right to be repaid out of the assets of Beacon before other companies and people that are owed money.
• Unlike Solyndra, which was effectively losing a price competition with Chinese and other US manufacturers, Beacon makes a unique product that is being developed here in the United States.
• The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, a mere 11 days ago, issued a detailed rule that requires utilities to compensate companies like Beacon that provide power system stability in a competitive manner.  This sets a clear trajectory for Beacon, and the handful of other companies providing similar services, to be economically successful.

Given the assaults on the environment and climate and continuing economic and social disruptions there is enough bad news out in the world without alarmist voices generating scary stories because of events like the Beacon bankruptcy.   While it is an unfortunate event for some private investors and employees of Beacon it is not a crisis for taxpayers and can and will not stop the development of innovative and important technologies that will be the backbone of a new clean energy economy.

Much of CLF‘s work these days is focused on the challenge of global warming and in particular reducing immediately, structurally and effectively the release into the atmosphere of carbon dioxide and the other “greenhouse gases” causing the problem.

This is, of course, not all that we do.  But much of our work on this over-arching problem overlaps with other important work like reducing air pollution that directly harms the health and lives of people or providing good transit access to urban communities, thus providing access to jobs for residents of those communities while reducing automobile trips and emissions. Still other CLF work, like protecting and nurturing our fisheries and forests, ensures that management of those resources is mindful of the changing climate while preserving unique ecosystems both for their own benefit and to ensure that future generations will be able to use and enjoy special places and resources.

When we step up and assert the benefit to the climate of, for example, wind farms in Maine or in Nantucket Sound or energy efficient light bulbs or the need to consider the climate in considering a transmission line across New Hampshire or in a merger proposed between utilities the question comes back to us: is it worth the cost?  Often it is a cost measured in dollars but sometimes it is a “cost” in terms of a view from a house or a beach or a mountain changing.

Responding to this question presents us with two challenges: first we need to show that the result we are advocating in favor of will actually reduce emissions and then we need to show that the need for those emissions reductions outweighs the cost of taking the action we are advocating.

One good example of how we show that an action will actually reduce emissions comes from the world of wind farms.  In those cases we can present expert testimony about how deploying wind resources will reduce emissions of carbon dioxide.  And that analysis isn’t just created by our experts, it draws upon reports done by the planners and operators of New England’s wholesale electricity system – work that is sometimes summed up in official summaries and nice presentations that include informative charts like this one showing how when the system gets 9% of its power from wind that emissions drop by 9% but when it gets 20% of its power from wind the emissions drop by 24% for reasons explained in the report:

And then we turn to the question of showing that this all matters and the cost of taking action outweighs the price of that action.  In our cases, again using the wind farm example, we use expert testimony.

But the bottom line is that we as a society are getting to the point where the cost of global warming is no longer a horrible possibility- it is an immediate reality, all around the world from Russia to Texas and points in between like New England.  And what we are experiencing is only a preview of what is to come and a strong reminder of the need to take action.