EDF welcomed today's announcement by President Obama establishing an Interagency Task Force on Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS).

In the next six months, the Task Force is charged with proposing a plan to "overcome the barriers to the widespread, cost-effective deployment of CCS within 10 years, with a goal of bringing 5 to 10 commercial demonstration projects online by 2016."

"By 2016?" a reporter asked me. "Is that doable?" I responded yes, absolutely. CCS as a technical matter is ready for deployment now.

While there are two fundamental obstacles to widespread deployment of CCS, it's my opinion (and that of EDF) that both can be addressed in well under 10 years. Those obstacles are:

1. Lack of a market driver – Congress needs to set a limit on carbon emissions to make CCS economically attractive to project developers. If necessary, EPA acting under the Clean Air Act can help create incentives.
2. Lack of a regulatory framework – We need adoption of rules pending approval for 2010-2011 under EPA's Safe Drinking Water Act, followed by rules on verifying the lack of air emissions.

Other important topics the task force will want to consider include:

• Improving capacity assessment techniques by the U.S. Geological Survey;
• Developing leasing policies for federal lands;
• Assisting research and development efforts on the costs of capture;
• Assisting in geologic characterization efforts, especially in basins that have relatively challenging geology, such as the Appalachian basin;
• Clarification of who owns the storage space underground;
• Consideration of state law mechanisms for amalgamating storage space owned by multiple owners (i.e., eminent domain issues); and
• Whether to indemnify early adopters for any potential liabilities.

Some say the last three bullet points are absolutely necessary, others disagree. I do not believe that they are "make or break" obstacles but they're certainly worth serious deliberation.

Again, with a market driver and regulatory framework, we will have resolved the only two fundamental obstacles to widespread deployment of CCS. Subsequently, bringing five to 10 commercial demonstration projects online by 2016 will definitely be achievable.

The agency's own Executive Director (ED) recommended to remand the application for additional data. This follows hard on the heels of a brief by the TCEQ's internal Office of Public Interest Counsel (OPIC), which last month recommended denial of the permit for a list of reasons that closely mirrored those outlined in our own Environmental Defense Fund brief in permit hearings last fall.

In replying to our brief, TCEQ's executive director recommended that the application be sent back for a better analysis of the potential air pollution resulting from the dockside handling of enormous quantities of pet coke and limestone for the plant. He also agreed that the applicant's emissions modeling for the plant was flawed and should be revisited.

EDF's attorney, Tom Weber, said the agency’s filing was encouraging, but he said there are other serious problems with the Las Brisas application that aren't being addressed. "We're pleased that the TCEQ’s executive director recognizes the clear deficiencies in Las Brisas’ application regarding modeling of pollutant emissions," Weber said. "However, Las Brisas’ application should also be denied because it fails to analyze whatsoever hazardous air pollutants and particulate matter smaller than 2.5 microns, both of which can cause significant health problems especially in children and senior citizens."

Still, the executive director's reply brief represents a second setback for the Las Brisas application from within TCEQ itself and should make it very difficult for the three-member commission to approve the application unless a number of serious problems with the carbon-intensive plant are first addressed.

The U.S. Dept. of Energy’s Nov. 24 announcement of $620 million in “smart grid” demonstration and energy storage projects included $10.4 million for the Austin-based Pecan Street Project. The grant will be used to fund an advanced smart grid project at the Mueller development in central Austin. The Mueller neighborhood – a public-private joint venture between the City of Austin and the Catellus Development Group – is located at the site of Austin’s former airport.

The demonstration project will integrate with Austin Energy’s next generation smart grid platform to create, operate, and evaluate an “open platform Energy Internet” – a type of smart grid that allows two-way electricity and information flow and is modeled on the architecture of the Internet.

EDF, a leading partner in the project since its 2008 launch, will release recommendations for Phase I by the end of this year and will continue as a board member during Phase II in the newly formed nonprofit: Pecan Street Project, Inc. Technologies to be tested as a system in the demonstration project include distributed clean energy (roof-mounted solar on four commercial sites and 100 residential rooftops), energy storage, smart grid water /irrigation systems, smart appliances and plug-in electric vehicles linked to a grid-integrated system of smart charging stations.

All of this is exciting news, to be certain. However, it’s important to note that not all smart grids are green grids – some are largely focused on efficiency and rely on one-way communication from a utility to the consumer. The Pecan Street Project, on the other hand, will stress not just efficiency but also a two-way relationship in which, say, consumers with their own rooftop generation capacity will be able to sell power back into the grid to replace power now generated with carbon fuels.

That’s EDF’s role – to ensure that the potential environmental benefits are given priority alongside the economic benefits. Ultimately, if done correctly, smart grids will help us dramatically reduce global warming pollution, and this DOE grant will help keep Austin at the forefront of a burgeoning new field.

So my question for all Texans is, "Why would we foolishly try to build even one more conventional coal plant?"

• The Heritage Foundation has received more than $57 Million from oil and chemical related foundations, including the Scaife Family Foundations, the John M. Olin Foundation and the Koch Family Foundations, as well as more than $500,000 from ExxonMobil. – SourceWatch.org, ExxonSecrets.org 
• Over the past 10 years, the Texas Public Policy Foundation has received more than $450,000 in funding from oil industry related foundations, including the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation and the Claude R. Lamb Charitable Foundation. – SourceWatch.org, ExxonSecrets.org 
• The American Council for Capital Formation has received $1.6 million in funding from ExxonMobil, and lists among its executives, those from the American Petroleum Institute, the American Chemistry Council, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the American Forest and Paper Association. – SourceWatch.org, ExxonSecrets.org 
• Michelle Foss, of the UT Center for Energy Economics stated in her report on the Waxman-Markey bill: "These model results do not incorporate any assumptions of specific benefits associated with ACESA.  For instance, CEE and CPA did not attempt to capture CEE Initial Report to Texas CPA, ACESA Impacts, job creation and output associated with growth in industries, such as those associated with renewable energy technologies." 

Among the academic experts not invited to participate in this panel, all with well-known expertise in climate science, economics, engineering and geology, are the following: 

Texas A&M University: Kenneth Bowman, Sarah D. Brooks, Ping Chang, Don Collins, Andrew Dessler, Robert Duce, Craig Epifanio, Rob Korty, Mark Lemmon, Shaima L. Nasiri, John Nielsen-Gammon, Gerald North, Richard Orville, Lee Panetta, R. Saravanan, Courtney Schumacher, Thomas Wilheit, Ping Yang, Renyi Zhang, Jen Irish, Jane Packard, Bruce Mccarl, David W. Yoskowitz, Paul Montagna

Rice University: Neal Lane, John Anderson,  

University of Texas: George Ward, Ian Duncan, Ginny Catania, Rodney Ruoff, Michael Moyer,  

University of Houston: Victor Flatt

Texas Tech: Katharine Hayhoe

Houston Advanced Research Center: Bill Dawson, David Hitchcock, Eric Biltonen

Let me know what you think. See the formal version here.

Dear Chairman Smitherman, Chairman Shaw, and Chairman Carillo,

I am glad to hear about your proposed joint meeting on the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACESA) and that you are interested in hearing from all parties. I would like to add my voice to those legislators around the state such as Senators Rodney Ellis and Kirk Watson, and Representatives Rafael Anchia and Mark Strama who are asking that this joint meeting be a fair review of the facts regarding the bill and the economic impacts of climate change on Texas.  I would also like to see this joint meeting rise above the recent politically motivated press releases and op-eds by some Texas politicians, which relied on so-called "studies" that admittedly and intentionally did not analyze the job and economic benefits of the ACESA. 

Any discussion among state agencies needs to consider the weight of evidence from a number of peer-reviewed studies showing the impacts of ACESA to be minimal and often positive.  Further, these studies need to be evaluated in the context of the threat of inaction to our economy as determined by Texas scientists at Texas A&M, Texas Tech, and SMU among others.

Below I list a number of studies and experts that you should consult to better inform your work.  These studies do what any fair and meaningful study would do: look at both the costs and the benefits of ACESA.  In particular, they illuminate the significant benefits that will accrue to Texas as a result of ACESA, which some state agency studies have pointedly avoided discussing or analyzing.  In addition, some of these studies examine the tremendous damage to Texas that will occur if we do not act forcefully to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases swiftly. 

The following studies, those studies’ authors, and a number of experts – many from Texas – should be consulted if the joint meeting is to have a legitimate level of scientific rigor.

Studies

• Estimating the Influence of Projected Global Warming Scenarios on Hurricane Flooding , by Dr. Jen Irish, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, which shows that a large part of the Houston-Galveston petrochemical complex maybe be underwater due to global warming, unless action is taken soon to limit emissions;
• The Impact of Global Warming on Texas,2nd Edition edited by Jurgen Schmandt, Judith Clarkson and Gerald R. North,  which shows broad wide ranging physical and economic harm to many parts of Texas from global warming;
•  The Socio-Economic Impact of Sea Level Rise in the Galveston Bay Region, by Dr. David Yoskowitz, Texas A&M, which used conservative estimates of sea level rise and found that 78 percent of current households will be displaced in Galveston County alone.
• American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy whose study Potential for Energy Efficiency, Demand Response, and Onsite Renewable Energy to Meet Texas’s Growing Electricity Needs which demonstrated that growing demand for in energy in Texas could be met by energy efficiency and renewable energy (the type of energy sources facilitated by a cap on carbon, such as contained in ACESA) while saving money over the business as usual scenario;
• The Other Side of the Coin: The Economic Benefits of Climate Legislation by the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law, which found that for every dollar spent on ACESA, approximately $2.29 in direct benefits is produced.
• Clean Power Green Jobs by the Union of Concerned Scientists, which shows that Texans will save $21 billion in natural gas expenses as a result of ACESA; and
• Studies from the Energy Information Administration, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office and the Environmental Protection Agency that account for the benefits of ACESA and show little net economic harm, in contrast to some of the result oriented studies from Texas state agencies that only consider costs to some industries.

Experts

• The entire tenured and tenured-track faculty at Texas A&M Department of Atmospherics Sciences, who have signed an open letter that is attached, which says unanimously that "climate change brings with it a risk of serious adverse impacts on our environment and society";
• Experts from the United Kingdom, including their consular office in Houston that can attest that a hard cap on carbon emissions similar to those in the ACESA have not had the type of harm on the UK generally or the UK oil industry claimed in the so-called "studies" cited by some Texas politicians;
• Experts from Shell Oil and BP that can tell you why they support federal legislation with a cap and trade system for greenhouse gases, such as contained in the ACESA;
• The Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas about the tremendous opportunity for the Texas oil and gas industry from the use of carbon capture and sequestration to enhance oil recovery that is promoted in the ACESA. 

I agree that the ACESA legislation bears scrutiny, but until now the studies prepared or cited by Texas state agencies have been disappointing in their limited designs and in many cases outright bias. Texans deserve a Joint meeting that genuinely seeks the truth, not a publicity stunt.   Environmental Defense Fund would be happy to work with you to develop a productive agenda and slate of speakers.

Sincerely,

Jim Marston

cc: Commissioner Elizabeth Ames Jones

Commissioner Michael Williams

Commissioner Buddy Garcia

Commissioner Carlos Rubinstein

Commissioner Donna Nelson

Commissioner Kenneth W. Anderson, Jr.

National and statewide polls tell the real story: Texans agree with the rest of the country on the need for strong federal action on climate change. Last week’s Zogby poll shows that 71 percent of likely voters favor the American Clean Energy and Security Act recently passed by the House of Representatives. In fact, according to Zogby, “two-thirds (67 percent) believe Congress is either doing the right amount (22 percent) or should be doing more (45 percent) to address global warming.”

Two other Texas polls were released last week showing that Texans’ support of climate change regulation mirrors the national perspective. As reported by Texas Climate News, the Texas Lyceum Poll and the Houston Area Survey both showed that a majority of Texans understand that human activities have led to climate change and that cap-and-trade legislation is instrumental in stopping further damage to our way of life.

It’s time for our Senators to stop listening to their lobbyist friends and listen to actual Texans who want to see cap and trade legislation happen.

The military has used scientific theories throughout history to ensure a strong sense of national security in a world filled with international upheaval.  They have used the theory of gravity to develop bullet trajectories and the science of aeronautics to land a man on the Moon.  So it should be some comfort to Texans that our Senators have historically deferred to the military on such issues as the preeminent experts in keeping our nation and resources secure.

All the more reason that it seems strange that Texas' Senators Hutchison and Cornyn are trying to play political football with an issue that both our public and our nation's best military minds see as a grave threat to our national security. 

We now know that the climate change and the national security threats arising from it have been a focus of National Defense University and military intelligence analysts for years.  They find that the costs of inaction will be serious, and not just in terms of direct impacts to our farmland and coastline. 

A report from the National Intelligence Council states that climate change poses serious threats to our military bases, relationships with other governments, and that these threats will lead to “strained readiness posture and decreased strategic depth for combat operations.” 

Even under such warnings directly from our military experts, Senators Hutchison and Cornyn are putting their political ambitions ahead of protecting national security by opposing immediate action on climate change.

“We will pay for this one way or another,” said Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, a retired Marine and former head of Central Command in a recent military advisory board report on energy and climate for CNA, a private group that does research for the Navy. “We will pay to reduce greenhouse gas emissions today . . . or we will pay the price later in military terms,” he warned. “And that will involve human lives.” 

I thought our Senators claimed to be supportive of the men and women in uniform.

In Combs’s op-ed, she cites her agency’s “initial look at the cap-and-trade provisions” in the Waxman-Markey bill now pending in Congress and proceeds to lay out a worst-case scenario based on the most negative analyses from known opponents of a cap-and-trade program. Upon a close reading of this “initial look” (released as an official report), you’ll discover that the comptroller's office openly admits that it made NO ATTEMPT to quantify any of the benefits of cap-and-trade legislation even though every neutral study on the issue acknowledges significant benefits for Texas. Combs does cite a study from the Pew Research Center that we linked to in our earlier blog to show how well Texas is doing currently. If she were to actually read the study, she would see Pew's findings on the benefits of cap-and-trade, renewable energy goals and other policies contained in the bill before Congress, saying of such policies: “Pew’s analysis indicates such policies have great potential because they create significant incentives for both the private and public sectors to develop new technologies, infrastructure and processes for clean energy, efficiency and conservation.” 

A fair study would have noted that according to the Political Economy Research Institute, Texas stands to gain 153,000 renewable energy jobs from this legislation. And the comptroller could then have cited the $21.3 billion Texans will save according to the Union of Concerned Scientists by leveraging its position as the 20th century energy leader into the 21st century clean energy economy leader. An economy that will include new international markets that haven't been tapped before, installation and maintenance jobs that cannot be relocated, and the potential to lead in integrating high penetration of energy efficiency along with solar, wind, biomass and geothermal power, not to mention carbon sequestration. 

Rather than hurting clean energy, clean energy incentivized under a cap-and-trade system is our future, unless political lackeys continue with phony studies. Fortunately most people understand the difference between a balanced analysis and a one-sided report designed to defend the status quo. As the deepening drought in Central Texas should make clear, the status quo is not an option. A new “clean energy economy” will be one of the driving forces of the 21^st century, and with our abundance of wind and sun and high-tech brainpower, Texas should be at the forefront of it.  

Combs does a disservice to all Texans by stressing an overstated downside while ignoring the enormous potential upside for our state. If Texas’ leaders insist on playing defense, the benefits of this new economy will go to other states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Tennessee that aggressively pursue that potential.    

The article “Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate” was disturbing to say the least. Based on documents filed in a recent federal lawsuit, it gave an in-depth look at what we knew all along: Global warming is real and humans contribute to it.

However, something we didn’t know was that in 1995 the Global Climate Coalition ignored its trade industry scientists who had agreed that global warming was a problem and that the role of human contribution could not be denied. For more than a decade, the coalition led a campaign to persuade the public that greenhouse gases were not a problem. Something else we didn’t know: The coalition was (yup, you guessed it) financially funded by large corporations and groups representing the oil, coal and auto industries. But why would any group ignore its own qualified scientists on such a crucial issue?

The NYT article compares the coalition’s actions to those of the tobacco industry. For years, tobacco companies insisted that there was no relationship between cigarette smoking and lung cancer, though countless studies, facts, and research from medical advisors proved otherwise.

Whether for financial gain or just due to plain ignorance, there’s no honorable reason to discount educated, credentialed professionals and cloud the public’s mind through obfuscation and doubt. The Global Climate Coalition disbanded in 2002, and while it didn’t convince everyone, Gov. Perry and TCEQ Chairman Shaw didn’t hesitate to buy into the lies. At a time when the rest of the world is moving forward in the fight against global warming, our Texas leaders (including members of the Texas School Board of Education) are still questioning whether it even exists. There’s something wrong with this picture.