Climate 411

Yesterday’s Marketplace report does an excellent job of highlighting the social and political fissures occurring in West Virginia and nationally as the United States starts in earnest the transition to a clean-energy, low-carbon economy. What the story fails to adequately convey is just how many old-line energy producers have crossed the divide and embraced the reality and opportunity of capping and reducing greenhouse gas pollution.

Don Blankenship, who was quoted in the story,  is very much a minority voice in the coal industry. His company, Massey Energy,  is in fact not even among the top four coal producers nationally, much less internationally. His views on climate change are considered to be extreme even among the coal industry.

Better for Marketplace to highlight the work of Mike Morris of American Electric Power, among the nation’s largest electric utilities and the largest consumer of coal in the Western Hemisphere. Today, AEP is cutting the ribbon on a large demonstration of carbon capture and storage technology in West Virginia, a technology Blankenship dismisses out of hand. AEP is also investing in wind generation even as it works to keep coal relevant in a low-carbon economy.

Those of us who know Morris know he is no bleeding heart — he is as flinty as they come. Yet, in supporting national clean energy cap and trade carbon legislation, and in matching his advocacy with investments in low-carbon technology, he is demonstrating the kind of leadership that West Virginia and the nation need.

Marketplace should do a better job appreciating just how increasingly irrelevant folks like Blankenship are to the national conversation about our clean energy future.

Updated 11/2: Corrected to remove references to NPR. Marketplace is produced by American Public Media.

That’s what David Yarnold had to say about the Earth Day announcement from Wal-Mart and BP Solar to double the number of solar panels on Wal-Mart stores in California over the next 18 months.  The new solar installation project will create more than a hundred jobs while reducing use of energy from the power grid. (See a video of him discussing the announcement on Governor Schwarzanegger’s blog.)

David emphasized that even with progress like this, we still need Congress to act:

We need a national cap on carbon to limit emissions, and a way to reward companies and states that develop and utilize clean energy solutions such as solar. The commitment to Wal-Mart [that] BP is making today is a step in the right direction.

One of our most striking discoveries while working on Earth: The Sequel was just how much fun energy innovators are having. (First came the book, and the Discovery TV show airs tonight at 10pm ET.)

Bernie Karl spent $20,000 building an ice hotel in the Alaskan interior, and another $700 a day on diesel refrigeration, and then the whole thing melted in the midnight sun. Forbes called it “the dumbest business idea of the year.” Well, that was pure catnip to Bernie.

So he built the whole thing again, only this time he hired a dog-mushing engineer named Gwen to figure out how to use the energy in his hot springs to keep it cold. All the experts said it would fail because his water wasn’t warm enough, but Bernie made it work (and suggested that Forbes can “kiss my a-“). He went on to collaborate with United Technologies on a geothermal power plant capable of using the lowest temperature heat resource ever used anywhere in the world. That opens up more possibilities than you can imagine: to turn low-temperature industrial waste heat, or the waste hot water that comes up with oil from Texas wells, into electricity.

Jack Newman is one of three young founders of a remarkable biofuels company called Amyris , which genetically engineers yeast to ferment sugar — not into ethanol, but directly into diesel, jet fuel and gasoline chemically identical to fuels made from petroleum. They’ve assembled an incredibly multi-disciplinary team to achieve their mission, Jack says. “They just sort of ride that wave of energy of people wanting to do something interesting that’s going to make a difference, and then it just becomes a great day at work.”

For some, the fun is in realizing an opportunity to grow and make money even in these difficult times. Conrad Burke, CEO of a cutting edge solar thin-film company called Innovalight , says “I’m not an environmentalist; I’m a capitalist.” In January, Innovalight installed the world’s first solar production line using silicon ink, which is printed onto the substrate, making for high-throughput, low-cost manufacture. Amryis is also charging ahead: last year it opened its first pilot diesel plant in California, and formed a joint venture with one of Brazil’s largest ethanol distributors to quickly scale-up production. SantelisaVale, the second-largest ethanol and sugar producer in Brazil, committed two million tons of sugar cane crushing capacity for the initial production of their “no-compromise” diesel. And this month, Raser Technologies began delivering geothermal power made in Utah using the technology Bernie helped develop to Anaheim California.

You can meet all these innovators and many more on the Discovery TV special, tonight at 10 p.m. ET, or in the book, which just came out in paperback with a new afterword and illustrations.

Photo courtesy of Sarah Shatz.