Greenpeace statement on pending climate bill

Greenpeace statement on pending climate bill

April 23, 2010

WASHINGTON — Greenpeace has highlighted crucial elements of the draft climate bill necessary to address the catastrophic effects of global warming pollution. Senator Kerry, in a teleconference Thursday, organized by the We Can Lead coalition, outlined specific details from the draft Climate Bill expected to be released Monday that had not previously been publicly available.

In response Greenpeace Executive Director Phil Radford issued the following statement:

"Although we appreciate the Senate’s efforts to reduce global warming pollution, it’s clear that polluter lobbyists have succeeded in hijacking this climate policy initiative and undermined the ambitious action necessary.

We cannot support this bill unless the following elements change:

Inadequate Emissions Targets: The Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has shown that to avoid the worst impacts of global warming, the United States and other developed nations must achieve emissions cuts of 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and 80-95 percent by 2050. But this legislation only sets the goal of reducing emissions by some 4 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. Rapid reductions in the short-term are critical to avoiding catastrophic impacts from global warming. With this weak start, it is clear that achieving the needed reductions would be impossible

Eviscerating the Clean Air Act: The bill is expected to strip the authority that the Environmental Protection Agency has to regulate emissions under the Clean Air Act and the states' authority to set tougher emissions standards than the federal government.

Money for Dirty technology: The bill is expected to include financial incentives for, among other things, nuclear power, offshore oil and gas drilling, and coal fired energy. This includes billions for "clean coal" technology development, as well as free permits for heavy emitters like manufacturers, oil refiners, and merchant coal generators.

We call on the President to push leaders in Congress to get back to work and produce a climate bill, that presents a clear road map for significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions, transforms our economy with clean, renewable energy technology, generates new green jobs and shows real leadership internationally. None of this is accomplished by giving billions of dollars to the coal and petroleum industries.”

Contact information

Susan Cavanagh, Greenpeace Media Director, +1 202 615 8321, susan.cavanagh@gmail.com, www.greenpeace.org

Abstract here: http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/EE/article.asp?doi=b809990c

Full article for download here: http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/revsolglobwarmairpol.htm


Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148 - 173, DOI: 10.1039/b809990c

Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

Mark Z. Jacobson

Abstract
This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned by powering new-technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85.

Twelve combinations of energy source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge.

Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs.
Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs.
Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs.
Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations.

Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended.

Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended.

The Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85.

Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss.

The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73000–144000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.