- SciAmA convenient way of cutting industrial gases that warm the planet was supposed to be the United Nation's clean development mechanism (CDM). As a provision of the Kyoto Protocol, the CDM enables industrial nations to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in part by purchasing "carbon offsets" from poorer countries, where green projects are more affordable. The scheme, which issued its first credits in 2005, has already transferred the right to emit an extra 250 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2), and that could swell to 2.9 billion tons by 2012. Offsets will "play a more significant role" as emissions targets become tighter, asserts Yvo de Boer of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.
But criticism of the CDM has been mounting. Despite strenuous efforts by regulators, a significant fraction of the offset credits is fictitious "hot air" manufactured by accounting tricks, critics say. As a result, greenhouse gases are being emitted without compensating reductions elsewhere.
In the climate-change debate, the companies on the ‘environmental’ side have the most to gain.
First in a series.
By Lawrence SolomonWe all know that the financial stakes are enormous in the global warming debate — many oil, coal and power companies are at risk should carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases get regulated in a manner that harms their bottom line. The potential losses of an Exxon or a Shell are chump change, however, compared to the fortunes to be made from those very same regulations.
The climate-change industry — the scientists, lawyers, consultants, lobbyists and, most importantly, the multinationals that work behind the scenes to cash in on the riches at stake — has emerged as the world’s largest industry. Virtually every resident in the developed world feels the bite of this industry, often unknowingly, through the hidden surcharges on their food bills, their gas and electricity rates, their gasoline purchases, their automobiles, their garbage collection, their insurance, their computers purchases, their hotels, their purchases of just about every good and service, in fact, and finally, their taxes to governments at all levels.
These extractions do not happen by accident. Every penny that leaves the hands of consumers does so by design, the final step in elaborate and often brilliant orchestrations of public policy, all the more brilliant because the public, for the most part, does not know who is profiteering on climate change, or who is aiding and abetting the profiteers.
Some of the climate-change profiteers are relatively unknown corporations; others are household names with only their behind-the-scenes role in the climate-change industry unknown. Over the next few weeks, in an extended newspaper series, you will become familiar with some of the profiteers, and with their machinations. This series begins with Enron, a pioneer in the climate-change industry.
Almost two decades before President Barack Obama made “cap-and-trade” for carbon dioxide emissions a household term, an obscure company called Enron — a natural-gas pipeline company that had become a big-time trader in energy commodities — had figured out how to make millions in a cap-and-trade program for sulphur dioxide emissions, thanks to changes in the U.S. government’s Clean Air Act. To the delight of shareholders, Enron’s stock price rose rapidly as it became the major trader in the U.S. government’s $20-billion a year emissions commodity market.
Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay, keen to engineer an encore, saw his opportunity when Bill Clinton and Al Gore were inaugurated as president and vice-president in 1993. To capitalize on Al Gore’s interest in global warming, Enron immediately embarked on a massive lobbying effort to develop a trading system for carbon dioxide, working both the Clinton administration and Congress. Political contributions and Enron-funded analyses flowed freely, all geared to demonstrating a looming global catastrophe if carbon dioxide emissions weren’t curbed. An Enron-funded study that dismissed the notion that calamity could come of global warming, meanwhile, was quietly buried.
Ouch! You dumped oil shares just before the big surge? That must hurt!Hope I remember to read the rest of the article.
Not that we have much prescience, but we sold our oil shares a couple or 3 years ago and bought into alternate energies. Shortly after that, I had a pretty good discussion with a bean counter who was stating that business in general would die. I countered that, for instance, oil companies collapsed, alternative energy companies would pop up. People would stop working for one and head for the other and the economy would waddle along as usual.
Whether or not humans caused a bit of warming or not, warming happened. But, in this case, I think the means justifies the end as the planet, and hence, we will be better off for it.
Let me suggest that our conversation about how to reduce CO2 emissions must begin with a few “inconvenient” realities.
Reality 1: Worldwide demand for energy will grow by 30-50% over the next two decades – and more than double by the time you‟re my age. Simply put, America and the rest of the world will need all the energy that markets can deliver.
Reality 2: There are no near-term alternatives to oil, natural gas, and coal. Like it or not, the world runs on fossil fuels, and it will for decades to come. The U.S. government‟s own forecast shows that fossil fuels will supply about 85% of world energy demand in 2030 – roughly the same as today. Yes, someday the world may run on alternatives. But that day is still a long way off. It‟s not about will. It‟s not about who‟s in the White House. It‟s about thermodynamics and economics.
Now, I was told back in the 1970s what you‟re being told today: that wind and solar power are „alternatives‟ to fossil fuels. A more honest description would be „supplements‟. Taken together, wind and solar power today account for just one-sixth of 1% of America‟s annual energy usage. Let me repeat that statistic – one-sixth of 1%.
Here‟s a pie chart showing total U.S. primary energy demand today. I “asked” PowerPoint to show a wedge for the portion of the U.S. energy pie that comes from wind and solar. But PowerPoint won‟t make a wedge for wind and solar – just a thin line.
Over the past 30 years our government has pumped roughly $20 billion in subsidies into wind and solar power, and all we‟ve got to show for it is this thin line!
Undaunted by this, President Obama proposes to double wind and solar power consumption in this country by the end of his first term. Great – that means the line on this pie chart would become a slightly thicker line in four years. I would point out that wind and solar power doubled in just the last three years of the Bush administration. Granted, W. started from a smaller baseline, so doubling again over the next four years will be a taller order. But if President Obama‟s goal is achieved, wind and solar together will grow from one-sixth of 1% to one-third of 1% of total primary energy use – and that assumes U.S. energy consumption remains flat, which of course it will not.
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The problems with wind and solar power become apparent when you look at their footprint. To generate electricity comparable to a 1,000 MW gas-fired power plant you‟d have to build a wind farm with at least 500 very tall windmills occupying more than 30,000 acres of land. Then there‟s solar power. I‟m holding a Denver Post article that tells the story of an 8.2 MW solar-power plant built on 82 acres in Colorado. The Post proudly hails it “America‟s most productive utility-scale solar electricity plant”. But when you account for the fact that the sun doesn‟t always shine, you‟d need over 250 of these plants, on over 20,000 acres to replace just one 1,000 MW gas-fired power plant that can be built on less than 40 acres.
The Salt Lake Tribune recently celebrated the startup of a 14 MW geothermal plant near Beaver, Utah. That‟s wonderful! But the Tribune failed to put 14 MW into perspective. Utah has over 7,000 MW of installed generating capacity, primarily coal. America has about 1,000,000 MW of installed capacity. Because U.S. demand for electricity has been growing at 1-2 % per year, on average we‟ve been adding 10-20,000 MW of new capacity every year to keep pace with growth. Around the world coal demand is booming – 200,000 MW of new coal capacity is under construction, over 30,000 MW in China alone. In fact, there are 30 coal plants under construction in the U.S. today that when complete will burn about 70 million tons of coal per year.
Timing was off a bit, yup. We saw it in a philosophical manner so timing and pain were relatively irrelevant.Ouch! You dumped oil shares just before the big surge? That must hurt!
Yup. Until more people realize petroleum products are a dead end and there are better things available. The more people see in alternate energies the bigger the field gets.But to be realistic, alternative energy sources are a good idea, but they can't as yet even come close to replacing fossil fuels, only supplement them a little.
I think he was doing well until he stated that the current warming period peaked in 1998. He was right but it has been higher since.Read this guy's speech:
Complete speech at http://www.questar.com/1OurCompany/newsreleases/2009_news/UVUSpeech.pdf
I think you missed what he was saying. First of all, fossil fuels aren't a dead end. They are, to all intents and purposes, infinite; we'll never run out. The other point is that existing alternatives aren't really alternatives because there's no way they can replace fossil fuel use, no matter how much people want them to. It's impossible.Yup. Until more people realize petroleum products are a dead end and there are better things available. The more people see in alternate energies the bigger the field gets.
I think he was doing well until he stated that the current warming period peaked in 1998. He was right but it has been higher since.
Data @ NASA GISS: GISS Surface Temperature Analysis: Graphs