Monthly Archives: March 2008

Risky Coal and the Cost of Inaction

By / Bio / Published: March 5, 2008

Sheryl CanterThis post is by Sheryl Canter, an Online Writer and Editorial Manager at the Environmental Defense Fund.

Here are a couple of interesting news stories I came across this week:

Risks in Financing Coal. Last month, we posted about how banks are considering the risks in financing coal plants. Seems the federal government is considering the risks, too.  BusinessWeek reports that the federal government is "suspending a major loan program for coal-fired power plants in rural communities, saying the uncertainties of climate change and rising construction costs make the loans too risky."

Act Now or Pay More Later. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has issued a new report on how much it will cost to fix the environment – including (but not limited to) such problems as global warming. According to the Associated Press, the report says, "We need forward-looking policies today to avoid high costs of inaction or delayed action over the longer term." This agrees with other recent studies on the subject (see the University of Maryland, Tufts University, and McKinsey & Company).

Posted in What Others are Saying / Comments are closed

Phone Calls from the Congressional Budget Office

By / Bio / Published: March 4, 2008

Nat KeohaneThis post is by Nat Keohane, Ph.D., Director of Economic Policy and Analysis at the Environmental Defense Fund.

My February 21 post, CBO Report: The Real Story, caught the attention of the folks at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Last Wednesday, I received a call from Terry Dinan, the senior analyst at CBO who wrote the report. A little while later I got a second call, this time from Peter Orszag, the Director of CBO.

In particular, they didn’t like the attention-grabbing paragraph at the top that said:

…a careful reading reveals the report to be a theoretical exercise with no real-world relevance. It highlights the drawbacks of a version of cap-and-trade that no one advocates, and bases its efficiency analysis on a faulty premise.

I stand by what I wrote, as I’ll explain in a moment. But a call from the Director of CBO is fairly attention-getting, as well. Moreover, Dinan and Orszag are smart and well-respected economists, and my conversations with them helped to sharpen my own thinking. So I thought I’d explain a couple of points in more detail.

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Posted in Economics / Read 3 Responses

Sequestering Carbon Deep Within the Earth

By / Bio / Published: March 3, 2008

Scott AndersonThis post is by Scott Anderson, an attorney and senior policy advisor at the Environmental Defense Fund. It’s the second in a three-part series on carbon sequestration – storing carbon or carbon dioxide (CO2) in soils, trees, geological formations, and oceans.

1. Biological Sequestration
2. Geological Sequestration
3. Ocean Sequestration

To stop global warming, the U.S. must substantially move away from carbon-emitting fossil fuels to clean renewable energy. But a transition of this magnitude takes time. Right now this country is heavily dependent on coal for electricity, and traditional coal plants are none too clean.

How do we stop global warming while renewable technologies to meet our energy needs are still under development? Part of the answer may lie in an emerging transition technology called Carbon dioxide (CO2) Capture and Storage (CCS). The idea behind CCS is to capture the CO2 from industrial processes like coal plants, and then store it in deep geological formations.

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Posted in Geoengineering / Read 12 Responses