GREEN ENERGY ISSUES

DECEMBER 2018

Article 1

因應地球暖化 美國 7 州擬祭出「碳排放定價」政策A Carbon Tax Wave? 7 States Considering Carbon Pricing to Fight Climate Change

At least seven state governments are poised at the brink of putting a price on climate-warming carbon emissions within the next year. Some are considering new carbon taxes or fees. Others are making plans to join regional carbon markets.

The situation runs counter to the instant analysis of the November election, which focused on a defeat for carbon pricing in Washington state and discounted incremental progress across the board.

Overall, the midterm election results increased their odds for success, say activists and analysts who are watching for the next step in a policy realm where proposals have been many but commitments to act have been weak.

Carbon price proponents are encouraged as Democrats expanded their legislative majorities in key states, and supporters of climate action displaced foes. But advocates are still painfully aware of remaining obstacles, and some expect a prolonged campaign.

At the federal level, Congress also faces a new carbon pricing proposal, a billintroduced on Tuesday by a bipartisan group of House members. But in the current political climate—with a president who rejects science and promotes fossil fuels, and a Republican majority in the Senate blocking the path—short term progress may be limited to a select few green-leaning states.

"As more states experiment, we'll get more information, and you expand the market size for cleaner energy that's going to create incentives for more market to sell to," said Marc Hafstead, director of the Carbon Pricing Initiative at Resources for the Future, a think tank focused on environmental economics. "There's a fundamental issue, though, in that the states that are ready to move don't represent a lot of the emissions in the U.S. I think, at the end of the day, federal action is going to be required."

All of the states that are now considering a price on carbon share two common traits.

As Hafstead noted, they have relatively low-carbon economies. Adding the states considering new carbon prices to those that already have some sort of carbon pricing—California with its pathbreaking cap-and-trade regime and the northeastern states via the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI)—15 states, most of them among the least carbon-intensive in the nation, will have adopted fossil fuel surcharges of some kind. Together, they would account for 22 percent of U.S. carbon emissions, 34 percent of the U.S. population, and 41 percent of U.S. GDP.

They also face clear, pressing economic and human risks from climate change. On the West Coast, ocean warming and acidification is damaging the fishing industry and wildfires have menaced whole towns on the heels of drought. In the Northeast, storms and coastal flooding are wreaking havoc and raising costs as the seas relentlessly rise.

If More States Act, Congress May Step Up

Economists have long argued that the most effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to put a price on fossil fuels. It drives innovation across the board, from conservation to new, green technology, and rewards the lowest-cost approach.

Policymakers often call the states laboratories of inventive policy, especially with federal action on the back burner.

"Anything that's working to reduce emissions is helpful when the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] says we don't have a ton of time," said Mark Reynolds, executive director of the Citizens Climate Lobby, a carbon pricing advocacy group. "But in addition, it's always been our belief that the real potential benefit is that Congress sees that multiple states are acting and business starts saying, 'We can't function under 10 or 20 sets of rules.'"

That's why carbon pricing advocates in Congress are getting positioned to take advantage of any momentum. Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.), cofounder of the Climate Solutions Caucus, introduced a fee-and-dividend bill on Tuesday with two other Democrats and two Republican members of the caucus—Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Francis Rooney of Florida. Their Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act of 2018, with an escalating fee on carbon emissions starting at $15 per ton with all revenue returned to households, has little chance of making it to the floor while the GOP still controls the House this year.

But the sponsors wanted to move quickly. "We thought it was important to introduce this now to show that as we prepare to head into a more bipartisan Congress that there is a bipartisan way forward on this issue," Deutch said. "It's the only way we can get anything done."

Here is a rundown of state carbon pricing initiatives currently in motion:

Oregon

The midterm election significantly boosted the prospects for a "cap-and-invest" program, which Gov. Kate Brown and Oregon's House and Senate leaders—all Democrats—have agreed is a top priority for the 2019 legislative session.

Not only did Brown win reelection, but Democrats also expanded control of the state legislature to a supermajority in each chamber—the three-fifths of seats required to raise taxes under the state's constitution. The legislature's Joint Interim Committee on Carbon Reduction has met six times since May to hear from experts and key stakeholders, like the state's forestry industry.

Another election result added to the momentum in Oregon: 65 percent of voters in the state's largest city, Portland, approved a ballot initiative to raise $30 million a year through a tax on large businesses to help support the city's goal to achieve to 100 percent renewable energy by 2050.

"Oregonians know we need leadership to turbocharge our clean energy economy and reduce climate pollution in our state," said Tera Hurst, executive director of Renew Oregon.

Washington

In Washington state, legislative action on climate change remains a possibility, despite the rejection of a carbon fee by 57 percent of the state's voters in a ballot initiative—the second defeat for fossil fuel pricing in the state in two years.

Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat who co-chairs the U.S. Climate Alliance, a bipartisan coalition of 17 governors committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in line with the goals of the Paris agreement, has long called for a state carbon tax. Inslee's office said that the governor will make an announcement in early December on next steps in the wake of defeat of the ballot initiative he supported.

"Combating climate change remains a high priority for the Gov. Inslee," said Sharlett Mena, deputy director of the governor's Washington, D.C., office. "He and our team are in ongoing discussions about what his proposal for the upcoming state legislative session will look like."

Inslee had pushed for a carbon tax in the legislature last spring, but he dropped his proposal when, he said at the time, it fell "one or two votes shy" of the support he needed. His position may be stronger now since Democrats, who already held the majority in both chambers in Olympia, gained two Senate seats and six in the House in the midterms.

The shape of the new legislature is giving proponents hope for action despite the defeat of Initiative 1631, the carbon fee proposal, which would have put the revenue into clean energy and community and worker assistance. It fell under the weight of overwhelming spending on opposition advertising, mostly from fossil fuel interests.

"We are all recovering from a hard outcome with I-1631," Vlad Gutman-Britten, Washington director of the advocacy group Climate Solutions, wrote in a blog post. But he said carbon pricing opponents have new opportunities for action in the legislature. "I'm not sure we've ever had such an enthusiastic class of newly-minted leaders, including Democrats and Republicans across the state that are replacing retiring incumbents, as well as those filling ... positions that are changing party hands."

But others argue that Democratic lawmakers, with under 60 percent of the seats in both chambers, may be wary of revisiting carbon pricing so soon.

"The voters in Washington state just went through a hard-fought ballot initiative on the carbon tax," said Scott Segal, partner with the law and lobbying firm Bracewell LLP, which represents energy industry clients. "The two houses of the Washington State Legislature are fairly evenly divided, and the November election results are a very recent and very conclusive taking of the electorate's temperature on carbon taxes. If I were in the legislature, I'd be a little nervous about trying to overturn a statewide vote so recently taken."

Some analysts argue that carbon pricing is a policy better suited to the legislative process than to a ballot verdict by citizens.

"You really need to legislate a policy that's this complicated, and have a process that allows for changes to be made," said Hafstead. "The thing with a ballot initiative—the policy is kind of locked in place. You don't have the give and take."

Massachusetts

Massachusetts is already a RGGI member, but activists and some lawmakers have been pushing for more.

Climate campaigners fought to change the face of the Massachusetts legislature this year after House lawmakers backpedaled on a revenue-neutral carbon tax that the Senate had unanimously passed.

The Sierra Club and other environmental groups launched a campaign to defeat the party leaders they blamed for capitulating to fossil fuel interests. Two veteran Democratic House members—Jeffrey Sanchez, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and Byron Rushing, the assistant majority leader—were ousted in the primary.

They fell to lawyer and activist Nika Elugardo and emergency room physician Jon Santiago, who made climate change key parts of their platforms. Both political novices, they won the general election. And two Republican House seats also flipped in upset victories by Sierra Club-endorsed Democrats: lawyers and activists Tram Nguyen and Becca Rausch, also electoral newcomers.

Massachusetts still has a divided government, with Republican Gov. Charlie Baker, who won reelection, saying he prefers to continue to work to reduce greenhouse gases within the RGGI nine-state compact. (A cap-and-trade system, it puts a price only on electric utility emissions.) Environmental groups argue that while RGGI has been successful, it is not cutting emissions fast enough. If Democrats choose to expand carbon pricing, they hold the two-thirds of votes necessary in both the House and Senate to override a veto.

New York

The governing board of the independent electric grid operator in New York, also a RGGI state, expects to vote next year on a proposal to use its authority to incorporate the social costs of carbon—a measure of the future damages from pollution expressed in today's dollars—into the state's wholesale electricity market.

ClearView Energy Partners, a Washington-based research firm that advises investors, said it has "high expectations" that some sort of carbon pricing will be implemented in New York by 2021.

ClearView has been tracking for its clients what it calls a "second wave" of greenhouse gas pricing initiatives. (RGGI and California's programs marked the "first wave.") Although ClearView sees little sign that carbon pricing is moving beyond the states that have relatively low-carbon economies, it has told its clients that increased ambition in states like New York and Massachusetts could mark "an inflection point towards a nation of bottom-up carbon prices in the absence of a top-down, federal program."

Officials of the New York Independent System Operator have said they will abandon the effort if a carbon price proves significantly more expensive to consumers than current state policies. But so far, studies the NYISO has commissioned have shown a carbon pricing approach in the wholesale market could result in lower costs for consumers instead.

New Jersey and Virginia

Regulators are moving forward in both New Jersey and Virginia for the states to join RGGI, following the directives of Democratic governors elected in 2017.

For New Jersey, it would be a return to the regional carbon market. One analysis released earlier this year found that the state forfeited tens of millions of dollars in revenue because of Republican Gov. Chris Christie's decision to exit RGGI in 2011—two years after New Jersey helped found the initiative.

Under Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy's directive, the state's Department of Environmental Protection is expected to finalize its proposed cap on carbon emissions by the end of this year, with an eye to approving it in the spring.

Virginia's air pollution control board approved the regulations to implement RGGI for public comment on Oct. 29. The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality is expected to have a public comment period early next year with the rules to be finalized in the spring.

Hawaii

Hawaii's Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Commission, established by the state legislature last year to come up with a greenhouse gas reduction plan, met this week and recommended that lawmakers enact carbon pricing.

"The Commission believes that putting a price on carbon is the most effective single action that will achieve Hawaii's ambitious and necessary emissions reduction goals," a release from the commission

said. It didn't outline a specific mechanism, but it focused on transportation emissions and said carbon pricing must be both equitable and adequate to change behavior.

Democrats maintained their overwhelming majorities in the Hawaii House and Senate in the midterm elections, and legislative leaders are united with Hawaii Gov. David Ige in favoring strong climate action.

In June, Ige signed into law a bill making Hawaii the first state in the country to legally commit to a zero-emissions, carbon-neutral economy by 2045. That would build on the pioneering step Hawaii took in 2015 as the first state to set a deadline (also 2045) for generating 100 percent of its power from renewable sources.

Renewable energy has been growing rapidly in Hawaii, now accounting for more than 15 percent of power generated in the state. Hawaii has an economic impetus to move to clean energy—it long has been the state with the highest electricity prices because of its heavy dependence on imported petroleum (and some coal) to power its isolated island electricity grids.

Other States and Washington, D.C.

The list is not exhaustive. Lawmakers from nine states have joined in a Carbon Costs Coalition to work together on ideas for design of pricing proposals. The election increased the odds for action in several of those states, including in Vermont, where Democrats built a strong enough majority in the state House to override a veto. That could give climate advocates leverage over Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican who has resisted calls for a carbon pricing study. But even Democrats are divided on what course to follow, and for now the pending study is all they have pushed through.

In Pennsylvania, a coalition of more than 60 environmental, health and religious groups, businesses and communities were set to file a petition Wednesday asking the state's environmental regulators to create an economy-wide greenhouse gas cap-and-trade program. The proposal is based on California's program to rein in emissions, but it takes advantage of a quirk in Pennsylvania law—an environmental rights amendment that was adopted in the state's constitution in the 1970s. The state Supreme Court has recently interpreted that provision broadly to control certain fracking activities in Pennsylvania, which has become the No. 3 state behind California and Texas in production of carbon emissions due to the natural gas boom.

"This is the right time and the right place" for the carbon pricing proposal, said Joe Minott, executive director of the Philadelphia-based Clean Air Council.

Also, the city council of the District of Columbia on Tuesday voted to commit the nation's capital to 100 percent clean energy by 2032. The council included a provision authorizing carbon pricing of transportation emissions if similar policy is adopted in the two states where most of its commuters reside: Maryland and Virginia.

Carbon Pricing Is Politically Tricky

Piecing together a carbon pricing policy state-by-state is not an easy undertaking, even in blue states.

Charles Komanoff, an energy policy analyst who directs the Carbon Tax Center in New York and has long pushed for state carbon pricing, said he has come to believe that it is "intrinsically tricky" politically. The ballot initiative that Washington voters rejected, for instance, would have exempted from the carbon fee a number of "energy-intensive trade-exposed" industries, like aluminum, because of the risk they would simply move to another state instead of cutting emissions. Opponents of the ballot initiative seized on the exemptions to argue it was unfair to businesses that weren't able to cut such deals.

"The idea of being the first state, and how neighboring states might capture an advantage, and how do you handle fuel imports and trade—it feels more complex to do it in one state than in an entire country," said Komanoff. "Maybe we're back to the long game of Washington, D.C., and basically overwhelming the Republican Party in the next one or two election cycles. In a way, that's like going back to 2008 or 2009, which is depressing, considering we've lost a decade or more which we couldn't afford."

George Frampton, co-founder of the Partnership for Responsible Growth, a nonprofit bipartisan coalition working to build support for carbon pricing, believes climate action advocates have more work to do in educating the public on why putting a price on carbon makes sense for households and the economy, as well as for the planet.

"People are beginning to realize if we are going to have a meaningful national climate policy it is going to have to be some kind of carbon fee," said Frampton, a former Clinton administration wildlife official and longtime conservation leader. "It's the only thing that has a chance of getting bipartisan support, it is economically positive, and it produces huge amounts of revenue."

"The question is how can we educate people to see that there are ways of doing this that are deserving of very broad support?"

Source: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/28112018/state-carbon-pricing-tax-fee-climate-change-washington-oregon-new-jersey-virginia-hawaii-massachusetts-new-york

Date: December 1st, 2018

Article 2

波蘭氣候峰會 減碳阻礙多What to know about the big climate change meeting in Katowice, Poland

Delegates from nearly 200 countries have assembled this month in Katowice, Poland — the heart of coal country — to try to move the ball forward on battling climate change. It’s now the 24th annual meeting, or “COP” — conference of the parties — under the landmark U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, which the United States signed under then-President George H.W. Bush in 1992. More significantly, it’s the third such meeting since nations adopted the Paris climate agreement in 2015, widely seen at the time as a landmark moment in which, at last, developed and developing countries would share a path toward cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

But the surge of optimism that came with Paris has faded lately. The United States, the second largest greenhouse gas emitter, said it would withdraw from the agreement, though it has not formally done so yet. Many other countries are off target when it comes to meeting their initial round of Paris promises — promises that are widely acknowledged to be too weak to begin with. And emissions have begun to rise after a brief hiatus that had lent some hope of progress.

The latest science, meanwhile, is pointing toward increasingly dire outcomes. The amount of global warming that the world already has seen — 1 degree Celsius, 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit — has upended the Arctic, is killing coral reefs and may have begun to destabilize a massive part of Antarctica. A new report from the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), requested by the countries that assembled in Paris to be timed for this year’s meeting, finds a variety of increasingly severe effects as soon as a rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius arrives — an outcome that can’t be avoided without emissions cuts so steep that they would require societal transformations without any known historical parallel, the panel found.

It’s in this context that countries are meeting in Poland, with expectations and stakes high.So what’s on the agenda in Poland? The answer starts with the Paris agreement, which was negotiated three years ago, has been signed by 197 countries and is a mere 27 pages long. It covers a lot, laying out a huge new regime not only for the world as a whole to cut its greenhouse gas emissions, but for each individual country to regularly make new emissions-cutting pledges, strengthen them over time, report emissions to the rest of the world and much more. It also addresses financial obligations that developed countries have to developing countries and how technologies will be transferred to help that.

But those 27 pages leave open to interpretation many fine points for how it will all work. So in Poland, countries are performing a detailed annotation of the Paris agreement, drafting a “rule book” that will span hundreds of pages.

That may sound bureaucratic, but it’s key to addressing many of the flash points. For instance, it will be hard for countries to trust that their fellow nations are cutting emissions without clear standards for reporting and vetting. Not everybody is ready to accept a process like the one followed in the United States, which not only publishes its emissions totals but also has an independent review of the findings.

“A number of the developing countries are resisting that kind of model for themselves. They see it as an intrusion on their sovereignty,” said Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists and one of the many participants in Poland this week. “That’s going to be a pretty tough issue at the end of the day.”

It’s hardly the only one. Also unclear is what countries will do after the time frames on their current emissions-cutting promises are up, which for many is 2025 or 2030. Will all countries then start reporting newer and more ambitious promises every five years? Every 10 years?

That really matters when five years of greenhouse gas emissions — currently about 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually — is capable of directly affecting the planet’s temperature. What can we expect each day?

The conference is in its second week, when higher-level players — basically, the equivalent of cabinet-level leaders in the United States — are in Katowice to advance the negotiations. As this happens, several big events are on the agenda. On Tuesday and Wednesday is the “Talanoa Dialogue,” which will bring together world leaders in a series of group meetings to discuss these key questions: “Where are we? Where do we want to go? How do we get there?”

Friday is the last day of the conference, but pros know these events tend to run long. On Friday — or after — we will be waiting for an overall statement or decision from the meeting which may signal how much has been achieved.

What is the “Talanoa Dialogue”? “Talanoa” is a word used in Fiji and in many other Pacific islands to refer to “the sharing of ideas, skills and experience through storytelling.” This is the process that organizers settled on to fulfill a plan formed in Paris in 2015.

That year, along with signing the Paris agreement, nations released a decision that in 2018 there should be a “facilitative dialogue" among the countries “to take stock” of where their efforts stood to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This was important because going into that Paris meeting, it was already clear that countries' promises were not strong enough to hold global warming below a rise of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial temperatures.

This dialogue, in the Talanoa process, was meant to prompt reflection and maybe even soul searching about what more would have to be done. Throughout the year, “inputs” to the Talanoa dialogue — most prominently, the recent report by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on the meaning and consequences of 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming —have been compiled and synthesized. Now, over two days in Poland, countries' ministers will assemble to share stories in small groups about what is working and what is not and to assess where the world as a whole is on achieving the required greenhouse gas emissions reductions.What remains to be seen is whether this process will culminate in any kind of product or statement that calls clearly for immediate, strong ramping up of climate change promises across the world.

With the clock ticking, will countries do anything to increase their ambition at this meeting? If negotiating the Paris rule book sounds disappointingly technical, well, you’re not the only one feeling that way. Pressure is mounting for countries to accomplish something more than that in Poland — to at

minimum give a strong signal that they understand that the science is looking worse and worse, and the world’s progress isn’t matching that outlook.

“The bigger issue is how we’re going to get to an outcome on greater ambition,” said Lou Leonard, senior vice president for climate and energy at the World Wildlife Fund, who is in Poland observing the talks. “And I think the first week was not kind on moving that part of the agenda forward.”

Most countries are not likely to make new emissions-cutting promises this week. But there are two ways that the meeting could give a strong statement that countries should — or will — come up with new promises at least by 2020. That’s when extremely dramatic emissions cuts would have to start, according to the recent report on 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming.

The first is the aforementioned “Talanoa dialogue” (see above). It’s possible that the outcome of the dialogue could be a statement acknowledging that the world isn’t nearly far enough along and calling for much stronger steps. There will also be a decision text released for the meeting as a whole, which could potentially send a signal. Leonard said he hopes that would include details for the next steps that will put the world on a better course.

“We have to create milestones, and the politics around it that will pressure countries to do something that quite frankly they don’t want to do,” he said. “It’s not going to be easy. That’s why we need a process that will help make it happen. And make the most of the IPCC report that was designed to come out right now so it could do this for us. That’s why we have it, and it needs to serve that role.”

The United States says it will withdraw from the agreement, so what role is it playing in Poland? Despite President Trump’s pledge to withdraw, the United States remains in the Paris agreement (for now) and has sent a delegation of 44 people to Poland, largely from the State Department but also from the Environmental Protection Agency, Energy Department and even the White House. Many of these career government officials remain deeply engaged in hashing out details of the agreement.

Still, the country as a whole is being cast in an antagonistic role in the talks. The United States promoted a session Monday focused on fossil fuels and nuclear energy, the second year in a row that it hosted a meeting on the topic. Last year, protesters disrupted the event in the middle by busting into song. This time, yet again, the session was disrupted by protesters chanting, “Keep it in the ground!”

At the session, the U.S.'s assistant secretary for fossil energy at the Energy Department, Steven Winberg, made a pitch for adapting coal fired power with new technologies such as carbon capture and storage. “Fossil fuel use is not declining, it’s continuing on a steady pace,” he said. “So the question is, do we continue using coal technologies that we developed in the 1970s, or do we move forward with transformational coal technologies that will be near zero emitting?”

But such technologies are not currently in widespread use, and with a very short time window to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it is not clear how they could become prevalent in the short term. The United States also teamed up with Saudi Arabia, Russia and Kuwait on Saturday in an effort that seemed aimed at minimizing the import of the dire IPCC report on 1.5 degrees Celsius. Debating in a technical working group whose efforts flow into the overall Poland outcome, these countries merely wanted the meeting to “note” the existence of the report, rather than “welcoming” it, as many other nations preferred.

This now sets the stage for a bigger battle as the meeting shifts, in its second phase, from one guided by government negotiators to one in which ministerial leaders arrive and push forward. And it seems likely that the tension over the IPCC report will now be revisited at a higher level.

“The technocrats have tried,” said Yamide Dagnet, a project director at the World Resources Institute who is in Poland for the talks. “The negotiators have tried, using the process. And that was not concluded. But now the ministers have an opportunity to still get us on track to endorse the IPCC report.”

Besides the U.S., which other countries are seen as roadblocks to progress?

Saudi Arabia is also drawing the ire of climate activists after it played a central role – with the support of the U.S., Russia, and Kuwait – in blocking the idea of “welcoming” the IPCC report.

“Saudi Arabia was the most vocal of the proponents in the room but they weren’t the only ones," said Meyer. “The U.S. made a statement, Russia made a short statement. It was primarily Saudi Arabia driving that.”

It’s not hard to see how a document that calls for the world to slash greenhouse gas emissions dramatically and rapidly could be looked on somewhat unfavorably by the world’s largest oil producing countries. And for Saudi Arabia, it doesn’t just sell a lot of oil on world markets -- internally, the country also has fast-rising rates of oil consumption.

But this group would be empowered greatly in the talks if the U.S. continues to take its side.

Is there any outcome that would make this meeting a success?

That’s a matter of interpretation. Clearly, though, with a litany of bad news about climate change arriving just before the meeting, the world will be watching to see how leaders assembled in Poland can respond to it.

The real question is whether the technical process playing out right now — complicated by the dynamics of developed and developing countries and by the existence of several countries, like the United States, that is resisting sharp emissions cuts — is capable of delivering something more than just a rule book.

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/energy-environment/2018/12/10/whats-happening-poland-right-now-fix-climate-change-why-you-should-be-paying-attention/?utm_term=.0e49d5bc7491

Date: December 11th, 2018

Article 3

綠能浪潮 席捲美中西部鄉村地區Green Energy Tide Sweeps Rural America Despite Pushback From Trump

The Trump administration may be denying that humans contribute to climate change. But the marketplace is fully accepting such scientific findings. It’s true even in Trump country — or the midwestern United States — that is placing its bets with renewable energy.

The president’s skepticism of manmade global warming coincides with his support of fossil fuels — that they have comprised the preponderance of energy use and that they are not going anywhere anytime soon. But the stark reality is that climate experts are warning that unless the global community reduces its use of oil and coal, temperatures could rise and lead to devastating economic and environmental consequences. That’s why the corporate community and especially electric utilities are endorsing the use of lower-carbon fuels.

“All in all, rural renewable energy projects are laying the foundation for a clean energy economy that meets the needs of local communities and provides clean and affordable energy throughout the (midwestern) region,” Arjun Krishnaswami wrote, a policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Federal leaders should increase funding for clean energy research, development, and demonstration projects that will continue to bring down the costs of clean energy and allow more people to gain access.”

In the rural Midwest, new wind and solar capacity rose in 2017 by 2.3 gigawatts and clean energy industries employed 158,000 people, he says. Wind costs have fallen by 67% since 2009 while utility-scale solar has dropped by 86% since that time, according to the financial adviser, Lazard.

In contrast, 14.3 gigawatts of coal-fired power plants closed down in 2017. That’s according to S&P Global Market Intelligence, which goes on to cite utilities’ rationale for making such business decisions: 40-year-old units, regulatory uncertainty and consumer demand — or the public’s desire to go low-carbon.

In that regard, Xcel Energy has committed to eliminating altogether its carbon emissions by 2050. It adds that it will be 80% of the way there by 2030, from a 2005 baseline. It is moving increasingly to wind and solar electricity, although it says that it will rely on emerging technologies that are not yet commercial as well as its existing nuclear power plants. Meantime, Northern Indiana Public Service Co. has also vowed to retire early its entire coal fleet, replacing it with wind and solar plants — a move that it says will save customers $4 billion.

“We’re accelerating our carbon reduction goals because we’re encouraged by advances in technology, motivated by customers who are asking for it and committed to working with partners to make it happen,” said Ben Fowke, CEO, Xcel Energy.

All this is taking place as the Trump administration tries to rollback the environmental progress that occurred during the Obama years. Trump has proposed to end the policy of the previous administration, which said that no new coal plants could get built unless they employed carbon capture and sequestration — technologies that are not yet commercial or economic.

Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency has already sought to wipe out Obama’s Clean Power Plan that seeks to cut CO2 emissions by 32% by 2030 while also moving to end his mercury standards and coal ash disposal rules. In the case of CO2 and mercury, the trends are inevitable — that the power industry is on a path to meeting the targets set by the Obama administration.

The tide has no doubt been lifted by American companies that have vowed to increase their stakes in renewable energy, which could take place by either investing directly in such projects or by entering into power purchase agreements in which they agree to buy the output from those that generate it. General Motors and WalMart are two such companies.

Walmart, for example, has an emissions-reduction plan approved by the Science Based Targets Initiative that aligns with the global climate agreement. It seeks to cut CO2 levels 18% by 2025, and to work with those suppliers that are also carbon warriors.

And GM is on a similar quest. It has a goal of ending coal use in North America and investing in green energy, which means increasing its current 106 megawatts of renewable energy to 125 megawatts in the coming years.

"Despite the misguided policies of the Trump administration, global efforts to address the very real threat climate risk presents to the economy, financial markets and investment returns are ongoing," said Thomas P. DiNapoli, the New York State Comptroller who oversees the New York State Common Retirement Fund that manages $207 billion.

The market shifts are a reflection of consumer demand and technological advances. But they are not feel-good efforts. They are, in fact, financially viable investments. And they are delivering clean electricity and creating lasting jobs, all against the backdrop of a withering domestic coal sector. Indeed, the U.S. president may be caught in a time-warp while the rest of the world is determined to usher ahead.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2018/12/11/green-energy-tide-sweeps-rural-america-despite-pushback-from-trump/#429a3c75166d

Date: December 11th, 2018

Article 4

擴大綠能減碳 德國急起直追U.S. Green Energy Policy Could Reap Results – Germany’s Policy Shows The Promise

Tapping into wind and solar and other green energy technologies, the U.S. can produce 80 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2050, compared to 17 percent in 2017.

That’s the conclusion of a study conducted by the Department of Energy in 2012. And the transition is a necessary step to avoid increasing global warming beyond the 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) of global temperature rise that would be a tipping point for more extreme climate change. Approximately 1 degree C of global warming has occurred already with industrialization.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its report on the implications of a 1.5 C warming of the planet in October. In order to mitigate the impacts – including more extreme drought, flooding, sea level rise, severe storms, increased wildfires, and more – the panel recommended ending

global dependence on coal-generated electricity by 2050 with a two-thirds reduction by 2030 in order to decrease carbon emissions and the production of other greenhouse gases.

The Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4), released in November by a collaboration of 13 U.S. government agencies – including NASA, NOAA and the Department of Defense – supports this conclusion.

To achieve this goal, the U.S. will need to establish policy and invest in research and development to produce, store, and transmit energy from renewable sources such as wind, solar, hydroelectricity, or biofuels to meet its needs while reducing carbon emissions.

This development is already underway in the world’s fourth-largest economy – Germany.

Energiewende is the German energy transition policy, adopted by the government in 2010. The policy includes the complete shutdown of the country’s nuclear power plants by 2022 and utilizing renewable energy sources (RES) wind, solar, and hydroelectricity for at least 60 percent of its energy production by 2050. Germany produced 33 percent of its electricity from renewable resources in 2017, reaching its 2020 goal three years early.

The Institute for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern (ISEN) took a group of 11 engineering students on a Global Engineering Trek (GET) with a focus on research and development in renewable energy technology and sustainability within the cities of Hamburg and Heidelberg Germany this September.

“Germany is a global leader in energy in sustainability and clean technology, from the top down, from Federal government but also from the bottom up, from grassroots,” said Mike McMahon, Senior Communications Manager for ISEN. “It’s a great ecosystem for clean technology and a sustainable

mindset. The businesses think green, but also the people think green in the way they live and act. So, it’s in the public policies but it’s also in the businesses and in the daily life.”

Hamburg earned the title of “Europe’s Green Capital” for 2011 for its environmental efforts and focus on sustainability. The city is home to 190 renewable energy companies, producing, financing and researching wind, solar, biomass, and biogas derived energy. One of those companies, Planet Energy, constructs wind and solar power plants under the subsidiary Greenpeace Energy, a renewable energy provider with the activist profile of its parent company, Greenpeace.

While Germany generated 33 percent of its electricity from renewables in 2017, the majority – 37 percent, came from coal. Hard coal supplied 14.6 and lignite supplied an additional 22.5 percent.

Lignite, also known as brown coal, is one of the lowest grades of coal for energy production. It’s a soft coal, abundant and inexpensive to mine, but emissions-heavy. The low energy output means more of it is needed to produce the same amount of energy as some of its higher-grade counterparts. And the cost to transport it makes it impractical to use outside of the areas where it’s mined.

“We are strongly opposed to burning more lignite,” said Michael Friedrich, press officer for Greenpeace Energy. “There’s currently a fight in a region west of Germany, next to Cologne at the river Rhine, where they’re trying to stop a utility clear-cutting a forest right next to the lignite mine in order to start mining under the former forest,” Friedrich said.

The shutdown of the coal industry is one of Greenpeace’s goals. But the company’s environmental activism doesn’t detract from the realities of a changing economy.

For that reason, Friedrich said it’s important for the utility company to develop relationships with the local community and work together to develop plans to create new jobs, generate income, generate taxes and help move the economy forward. “So, the coal can go, and they still have a future, but a clean future without emissions,” he said.

But nuclear energy may be a necessity to bridge the gap in achieving those clean energy goals. The formerly pro-nuclear Chancellor Angela Merkel chose to end Germany’s nuclear program after the Fukushima plant in Japan suffered three meltdowns in 2011. However, critics say that Germany’s shutdown of its nuclear plants without first having alternative energy sources in place has made it more reliant on coal and has driven up prices for electricity, according to a report from Politico Europe.

In the U.S., climate scientists, including Jim Hansen, director of the Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions program at Columbia University, have called for environmentalists to re-evaluate nuclear as a clean energy option to reduce carbon emissions. Hansen is the former director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City.

“The climate issue is too important for us to delude ourselves with wishful thinking. Throwing tools such as nuclear out of the box constrains humanity’s options and makes climate mitigation more likely to fail. We urge an all-of-the-above approach that includes increased investment in renewables combined with

an accelerated deployment of new nuclear reactors,” Hansen stated in a Guardian article co-authored with fellow scientists Kerry Emanuel, Ken Caldeira and Tom Wigley in 2015.

Another issue in the transition to renewable energy is storing the surplus energy produced. Wind and solar are fickle supply sources. Some days’ supply more energy than others. For that reason, research initiatives are underway in the U.S. and abroad to develop high-powered batteries for more efficient ways to store the surplus energy from windy or sunny days for what may literally be a rainy day. But Greenpeace is exploring another alternative.

“If we have 100 percent renewable energy, which is mainly wind and solar power here in Germany, the question of course arises, ‘What happens when the wind isn’t blowing, and the sun isn’t shining – are the lights going out?’ No, they are not, because it’s possible to store huge amounts of excess green energy in the gas grid,” Friedrich said.

He noted that Greenpeace is pioneering the use of “wind gas,” or hydrogen gas derived from wind-generated electricity through the process of electrolysis. Electrolysis uses electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen in a unit called an electrolyzer. The hydrogen gas can then be stored within the “hundreds of thousands of kilometers” of Germany’s existing gas grid.

“We are campaigning for this crucial element of the energiewende in Germany. In our future energy system, we need it as a basis for energy security so even if the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining for longer periods, even for three weeks or so, it can easily be provided from the gas grid and be retransformed into electricity with flexible gas power plants,” Friedrich said.

Biogas and flexible gas grids are one potential solution to the storage problem. Another is solar batteries. Northwestern’s engineering students also visited one of the wind and solar farms of developer, juwi.

“The solar panels were really cool because you hear about this great technology, these solar panels, but the only problem is [there’s] no battery source, and that’s something that everyone is looking at right now that definitely piqued my interest,” said Godson Osele, who is studying biomedical engineering at Northwestern.

Headquartered in Wörrstadt, Germany, juwi has several international projects. In November, the company contracted with the University of Queensland’s Heron Island Research Station – a key research station studying the Great Barrier Reef — to supply the station with high-efficiency solar panels, an integrated microgrid system and solar battery storage facilities. The system is expected to be operational mid-2019. it will supply more than 80 percent of the facility’s annual energy needs and will end the station’s reliance on diesel-generated power. In July, juwi completed a solar plant for a utility company in the southern Indian state of Karnataka and finalized contracts to build more plants for a South African utility.

While Germany has made strides producing electricity from renewable sources, most of its transportation still relies on gasoline and diesel fuel, bringing emissions reduction to a halt over the last few years.

According to Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt (KBA), Germany’s Federal Motor Transport Authority, 66.2 percent of newly registered automobiles were gasoline-fueled, 32.2 percent were diesel-fueled, and less than 1 percent each were hybrid or electric in 2016. In the U.S., 97.2 percent of new car sales were gasoline-fueled, 2 percent were hybrid, and less than one percent each were plug-in hybrid or electric in 2016 according to Edmunds.

One company working to make electric vehicles more accessible is Heidelberger Druckmaschinen.

The city of Heidelberg’s carbon emissions peaked in 1990, making it one of only 27 cities to start lowering emissions, according to the Cities Climate Leadership Group (C40). The city passed an energy control and climate protection program in 1992 further reducing emissions. In 1997, it won the European Sustainable City Award and in 2002 it received the Green Electricity Gold Label for having 25 percent of its electricity used in public buildings come from renewables.

Heidelberger Druckmaschinen, founded in 1850, is a long-time manufacturer of printing presses and printing software. After enduring heavy layoffs and salary cuts throughout the printing industry, the company updated its business model and began manufacturing AC/DC converters for Porsche and Audi in 2012. In 2017 the company began development and construction of the Heidelberg wall box charging station for electric vehicles. The charging station is designed for individual as well as commercial use.

But electric vehicles aren’t the only clean energy alternative to gasoline or diesel-fueled vehicles.

Another stop on Northwestern’s Global Engineering Trek was The Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht(HZG) Center for Materials and Coastal Research. HZG employs more than 950 scientists, engineers, technicians, doctoral students, apprentices, and administrators. Among the many projects under development at HZG are high performance, lightweight materials for cars and aircraft to help reduce fuel consumption; and new methods of hydrogen fuel storage.

Some of HZG’s recent progress focuses on the field of solid-state hydrogen storage for use as a high efficiency, low pollution alternative to fossil fuels. Compared to liquid or gas storage, solid state can store larger volumes of hydrogen in a hybrid tank system, with fewer safety issues such as leaks.

“What I found most interesting was the hydrogen gas fueled car,” said Aarij Rehman, an Industrial Engineering student with Northwestern. “It seems like most non-traditional cars are electric powered. So, seeing a different form of a clean energy vehicle really surprised me. Although the vehicles were still in early development stages it was clear the team behind the project was making substantial progress.”

The first hydrogen-fuel cell train made news in Germany in September. The zero-emission train developed by French company Coradia iLint, can travel at a speed of approximately 70 miles per hour and utilizes a mobile hydrogen filling station located on a 40-foot-high steel container next to the tracks at a station in Bremervörde.

The transportation sector is one of the largest contributors to carbon emissions and greenhouse gases. Developing clean fuels, fuel storage, and integrating these improvements into public transportation can help countries to reduce emissions and stay below the 1.5-degree C global warming point.

The United States’ potential to take lessons from Germany, build on them, and offer some new ones in return means there is hope for a clean energy future. But there need to be policies in place to support it.

The NCA4 recommends achieving emissions reductions through a combination of technologies and policies including “increasing the energy efficiency of appliances, vehicles, buildings, electronics, and electricity generation; reducing carbon emissions from fossil fuels by switching to lower-carbon fuels or capturing and storing carbon; and switching to renewable and non-carbon-emitting sources of energy, including solar, wind, wave, biomass, tidal, and geothermal.”

The Union of Concerned Scientists agrees that in order for the U.S. to achieve a high renewable future at low costs, to create new jobs, and significantly reduce carbon emissions and water use, the country needs a long-term national renewable energy policy that should include “a national renewable electricity standard or well-designed “clean” energy standard, a price on carbon emissions, and a significant increase in research and development funding.”

Source: http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/u-s-green-energy-policy-could-reap-results-germanys-policy-shows-the-promise/

Date: December 11th, 2018

Article 5

美是否真正退出巴黎協議 2020 大選勝負是關鍵Trump can’t actually exit the Paris deal until the day after the 2020 election. That’s a big deal

For those who remember President Trump’s announcement of America’s withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement last summer, it may be surprising that the country is still participating in U.N. climate talks in Katowice, Poland, right now. There, the United States has gained notoriety not only for sponsoring a fossil-fuel focused event but also for allying with Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing nations to weaken a reference to a key report detailing the swift pace of climate change and just how close we are to key warming thresholds. The change of stance of the United States, which used to be a leader in the talks, has created a vacuum and a re-sorting of alliances that has left progress in doubt.

But aren’t we supposed to be out of this process, you might wonder — rather than trying to scale back its ambitions? Well, no. The Trump administration could have pursued a more radical means of withdrawal from the Paris agreement, but it is still going by the book — and in this case, that means Article 28 of the Paris agreement. That text specifies that after joining the agreement, a country can’t leave for three years, after which there is a one-year waiting period for the leave to be fully in effect.

Here’s what that actually means for the United States — a timeline that, as we’ll see, has major political resonance. The Obama administration moved very fast to have the United States formally join the Paris climate agreement, and other countries did as well. That means that the agreement itself legally entered into force on Nov. 4, 2016.

So that’s the day when the clock started ticking for any possible U.S. withdrawal, under the terms of the agreement. “The U.S. can initiate the withdrawal process as early as of November 4, 2019, which is three years from the date on which the Agreement entered into force for it,” said Susan Biniaz, a former State Department climate negotiator and currently a lecturer at Yale Law School, by email.

There’s a formal process involved for withdrawal, but it is not burdensome. It has to be done in writing, and written notice has to go to the United Nations. “It would just be probably a letter or something like that from the State Department,” said Dan Bodansky, an international environmental law expert at Arizona State University. “But it would be an official document.”

Assuming the Trump administration is ready to go and files that document at the earliest possible time, another clock starts ticking. After one year passes, the U.S. withdrawal would then be complete and it would quietly, but concretely, leave the agreement. But the earliest possible day that could come is consequential — at the earliest, Nov. 4, 2020.

Election Day is Nov. 3, 2020. This is where things get very interesting. If we assume that Trump will be the Republican nominee again, and that any Democrat running against him would want to rejoin the Paris agreement, then the election could potentially put the United States right back in again if the Democrat wins. Granted, on this timeline, the United States would at least briefly leave the agreement even in the event of a Democratic victory. That’s because the new president is not inaugurated until January 2021. But after that, reversal could be swift, at least under the Obama administration’s interpretation that the agreement is not one that needs to be submitted to the Senate for ratification.It would then take 30 days after submission of notice for the United States to rejoin the agreement formally, Biniaz explained. This, again, is based on the text of the Paris climate agreement.

Of course, if Trump wins, and has withdrawn from the agreement formally, then his victory could be expected to cement the U.S. withdrawal. What this means, clearly, is that unless Trump somehow changes his mind and decides not to withdraw after all, U.S. participation in the Paris climate agreement seems likely to be a live matter of political debate in the next two years, especially after the formal withdrawal paperwork gets filed.

“Climate change could easily be a campaign issue, and then President Trump, if he’s given notice of withdrawal, then the clock starts ticking,” Bodansky said.

In the meantime, if you think U.S. participation in international climate talks has been rather awkward lately, just wait until next year’s annual climate meeting. Negotiations will probably take place next December, though the location is up in the air because Brazil just announced the country will no longer host the meeting.

That meeting could occur right after the United States has formally submitted its Paris withdrawal paperwork but while the country is still in the waiting period for the withdrawal to occur. In other words — on the outs but not quite there yet.

And again, that could then be followed by a major case of international climate whiplash if the United States promptly rejoins. But that’s just the way it goes when you have treaties with formal timelines, and an extremely polarized climate change debate domestically.

It wouldn’t be the first time such a strange reversal has happened in the international arena. Just to give one rather messy example: Iceland, a whaling nation, was a member of the International Whaling Commission for decades. It withdrew in 1992 after the body enacted a commercial whaling moratorium but rejoined (after an extremely close vote) in 2002, with a reservation to the moratorium.“Countries do withdraw from treaties and rejoin,” Bodansky said. “It does happen.”

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/energy-environment/2018/12/12/heres-what-election-means-us-withdrawal-paris-climate-deal/?utm_term=.17ec58cc9f46

Date: December 12th, 2018

Article 6

貿易戰牽累 大型太陽能電池陣列建設趨緩The Energy 202: Solar companies say Trump's trade war recently 'took a toll' on them

Solar energy providers were among the first to be hit by President Trump's tariffs. Now the industry says it is one of the first to be feeling their negative economic effects of a burgeoning trade war with China. The main industry association for U.S. solar companies is blaming a tariff Trump imposed on foreign-made solar panels for a recent slowdown in new construction of large solar arrays in the United States.

At the beginning of the year, Trump imposed a tariff of 30 percent on foreign solar panels, with the percentage gradually dropping after the first year over the next four years. While a pair of U.S. panel manufactures had sought that protective measure from the Trump administration, most of the rest of the U.S. solar industry depends on panels made cheaply abroad, often in China. As a whole, the industry opposed the tariff, which they worried would dry up investment and lead to job losses for solar installers and engineers.

Both of those fears are being realized, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, which commissioned a report from the consulting firm Wood Mackenzie published Thursday. Between July and September of this year, U.S. solar companies installed just 1.7 gigawatts of new generation in the United States. That is a decrease of 15 percent from the same three-month period the year before.

While growth in installations of solar panels on homes remained relatively flat, the solar tariff "took a toll" on the construction of utility-scale solar projects capable of producing power comparable to traditional power plants. For the first time since 2015, quarterly growth in such large-scale solar arrays fell below 1 gigawatt. “As we look at the data and the timing, we think that it has to do with the tariffs,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association.

Since taking office, Trump and his deputies have tended to emphasize the development of more traditional fuel sources of electricity — such as coal, uranium and natural gas — through public-lands and policies that favor the extraction and use of those resources. Nominally, the Trump administration has adopted an “all-of-the-above” energy strategy, but tends not to give as much attention to solar power — at least publicly. Last year the administration, for example, opened two major solar power plants on Bureau of Land Management property in southern Nevada without issuing any accompanying news release.

In his first move in what would become a broader trade war with China, Trump decided to levy a tariff on a nascent solar industry that President Barack Obama sought to nurse with tax breaks approved by Congress to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity sector. Even conservatives at the Heritage Foundation, American Legislative Exchange Council and other right-leaning institutions in Washington objected to the Trump solar tariffs for tilting the scales in favor of one part of the energy sector over another.

In total, the U.S. solar industry expects there to be $8 billion in lost investments between 2017 and 2022 because of the tariffs, Hopper said. That translates to 9,000 jobs either lost or not added to the solar industry to date this year. “In my world, it's a really significant decline,” she added. Those third-quarter results put a damper on what otherwise was an excellent 2018 for the solar business. Solar businesses procured a record 8.5 gigawatts of power in the first half of the year.

The U.S. solar sector is still growing despite the tariffs, which will be reviewed next year and expire after 2021. Wood Mackenzie projects solar installations to pick back up toward the final months of the year as the shock of the tariffs dissipates and delayed projects come online.

Other government policies — such as renewable energy mandates in states like California and solar tax credits from the federal government still on the books — are helping to sustain the expansion. So are declines in prices for solar panels driven by improved manufacturing year to year?

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-energy-202/2018/12/14/the-energy-202-solar-companies-say-trump-s-trade-war-recently-took-a-toll-on-them/5c12ed581b326b2d6629d4b0/?utm_term=.cdec6eccc85a

Date: December 14th, 2018

Article 7

對抗暖化 選民認同「綠色新政」訴求The Energy 202: Lots of people support the 'Green New Deal.' So what is it?

Before the 2016 midterm elections, it was a campaign slogan little known outside progressive activist circles. Now after the election, it is supposedly supported by most American voters. Even if many of them still said they have no idea what it was. In only a few months, the notion of a “Green New Deal” has earned the support of not just a few dozen Democrats in Congress. It's also backed, at least according to one new survey, by the vast majority of registered voters.

A poll conducted by researchers at Yale and George Mason universities found that 81 percent of registered voters either strongly or somewhat support the ambitious plan to reduce carbon emissions over the next decade. Even most Republican voters — nearly two in three — said they supported the Green New Deal when it was described to them by pollsters as a plan to generate all of the nation’s electricity from renewable sources within 10 years while providing job training for those displaced from traditional energy sector jobs.

But that same survey also identified the main weakness surrounding a Green New Deal, an ambitious proposal from progressive activists to tackle climate change that has been adopted by some high-profile Democratic freshman including Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).

More than four-fifths of respondents said they had heard "nothing at all" of it before being reached online by survey takers.

Those findings show that left-leaning activists have, at the very least, found an effective slogan to encapsulate the aggressive action they demand to address climate change.

But turning a mantra into law is no small task. Ocasio-Cortez and others have outlined formidable goals, but have not yet detailed a clear way of achieving them. And the researchers warn Democrats and their climate activist allies that they should expect to see more resistance to the idea of the platform as more people learn about it and associate it one political party over another.

The phrase “Green New Deal” has existed in U.S. political discourse for at least a decade after New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman used it in a 2007 column calling for a plan to transition the American energy system from fossil fuels to renewable sources. The name harkens back to a series of efforts to build public works and overhaul financial rules under Franklin D. Roosevelt dubbed the New Deal.

Soon after that, Van Jones, the CNN commentator who once served as President Obama’s “green jobs czar,” adopted the phrase in his 2008 book “The Green Collar Economy” to describe a plan to create thousands of low- and medium-skill jobs installing solar panels and insulating homes.

A year later, the United Nations Environment Programme picked up on the phrase when outlining a “Global Green New Deal” for reducing greenhouse gas emissions without sacrificing economic development.

But the current version was perhaps outlined best by Ocasio-Cortez. Shortly after the election, she called for the creation of a so-called “Select Committee For A Green New Deal” in the House that would develop a plan to “dramatically expand” renewable power to meet 100 percent of the nation’s needs while creating a job guarantee program to facilitate that transition.

Since the election, young activists part of groups like the Sunrise Movement and Justice Democrats have staged sit-ins in the offices of Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and other Democratic leaders,demanding their endorsement of the committee. So far, at least 40 members of Congress have endorsed the idea of a Green New Deal.

But given House Democrats' experience with cap-and-trade legislation when they were last in the House majority, grand gestures aimed at climate change are going to be politically divisive, even among Democrats.

Edward Maibach, director of George Mason’s Center for Climate Change Communication and one of the co-authors of the survey, said it is “probably not all that surprising” few Americans outside Washington have heard of the Green New Deal.

“It's quite a new concept and while it is certainly caught hold in in liberal progressive circles, probably not so much in much of the rest of America,” he said.

The poll, which was conducted online between Nov. 28 to Dec. 11, did not tell respondents that so far all of congressional backers of the Green New Deal are Democrats. Public opinion may calcify along party lines as the concept gains publicity and its details — including its costs — are sketched out more thoroughly. “The Green New Deal isn’t anything yet. It doesn’t have any guts. It doesn’t have any inside. It doesn’t have any real specifics other than broad platitudes,” said Frank Maisano, an energy industry specialist at the law and lobby firm Bracewell.

For now, the organizers of the Capitol Hill climate protests are fine with allowing the moment to fill out the details of what major climate change action would look like.

“What young people are doing here today, and what Justice Democrats and Ocasio-Cortez have been calling for, is similar to what happened in the 1930s and 1940s,” Justice Democrats’ spokesman Waleed Shahid told reporters before the protest in Pelosi’s office this month. “The original New Deal was not one policy.”

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-energy-202/2018/12/19/the-energy-202-lots-of-people-support-the-green-new-deal-so-what-is-it/5c1944641b326b2d6629d4e8/?utm_term=.fba6faa0c98c

Date: December 19th, 2018

Article 8

Enel Green Power 今年為北美增加 830 兆瓦新風能Enel Green Power brings online 620 MW of new wind power capacity in the United States

The 320 MW Rattlesnake Creek wind farm in Nebraska will sell its energy to Facebook and Adobe, while the Diamond Vista wind farm of around 300 MW in Kansas will sell its energy to Kohler, Tri-County Electric Cooperative of Oklahoma and City Utilities of Springfield

Enel invested approximately 430 million US dollars in the construction of Rattlesnake Creek, and around 400 million US dollars to build Diamond Vista

With these two wind energy projects, Enel Green Power has connected around 2.6 GW of renewable capacity to grids around the world from January 2018 to date, of which over 830 MW in North America

Enel, through its US renewable company Enel Green Power North America, Inc. (“EGPNA”), has started operations of the 320 MW Rattlesnake Creek wind farm, its first wind facility in the US state of Nebraska, and the Diamond Vista wind farm of around 300 MW in Kansas. Combined, the two new wind farms will generate around 2,600 GWh annually. With these two wind farms, the total renewable capacity that Enel Green Power has connected to grids around the world this year amounts to approximately 2.6 GW, of which over 830 MW in North America.

“With the completion of Rattlesnake Creek and Diamond Vista, we have now added more than 800 MW of new wind capacity in 2018 in the US, strengthening our growth in the country and confirming our position as partner of choice for commercial and industrial customers,” said Antonio Cammisecra, Head of Enel Green Power. “These projects further demonstrate our ability to develop customised solutions that best meet the renewable energy needs of our customers.”

The Rattlesnake Creek wind farm, located in Dixon County, Nebraska, is fully contracted with long-term power purchase agreements, under which Adobe will purchase the energy from a 10 MW portion through 2028 and Facebook will gradually buy the wind farm’s full output by 2029. The agreement enables Facebook to power its data centre in Papillion, Nebraska with 100% renewable energy. The

investment in the construction of Rattlesnake Creek, which is expected to generate around 1,300 GWh annually, amounts to approximately 430 million US dollars.

The Diamond Vista wind farm, located in Marion and Dickinson Counties, Kansas, is supported by three separate long-term power purchase agreements. The electricity and renewable energy credits from a 100 MW portion of the wind farm will be sold to global manufacturing company Kohler Co. to supply 100% of the annual electricity needed to power the company’s US and Canadian operations, including its 85 manufacturing facilities, offices and warehouses, while reducing Kohler’s global greenhouse gas emissions by more than 25%. Additionally, the output and renewable energy credits from another 100 MW portion of the facility will be sold to City Utilities of Springfield, and those from an 84 MW portion to Tri-County Electric Cooperative of Oklahoma. The investment in the construction of Diamond Vista, which is also expected to generate around 1,300 GWh annually, amounts to around 400 million US dollars.

In addition, EGPNA signed tax equity agreements with Bank of America Merrill Lynch and J.P. Morgan for the Rattlesnake Creek and Diamond Vista wind farms. The two investment banks will purchase 100% of the “Class B” equity interests of the 320 MW Rattlesnake Creek wind project in Nebraska for around 334 million US dollars. Under a separate agreement, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and J.P. Morgan will also purchase 100% of the “Class B” equity interests of the 300 MW Diamond Vista wind project in Kansas for around 317 million US dollars. Enel retains 100% ownership of the “Class A” interests, as well as control over the management and operation of both wind farms.

Over the past year Enel signed around 570 MW of commercial and industrial (C&I) PPAs in the US. To date, Enel has signed, directly or indirectly, more than 1.2 GW of power supply contracts in the US with C&I customers. Through these agreements, Enel is able to create tailor-made solutions for its corporate customers, with the aim to provide them with long-term access to an affordable, sustainable and reliable source of power.

EGPNA, part of Enel Green Power, is a leading owner and operator of renewable energy plants in North America with projects operating and under development in 24 US states and two Canadian provinces. EGPNA operates around 100 plants with a managed capacity of around 5 GW powered by renewable hydropower, wind, geothermal and solar energy. In 2017, the company was the fastest growing renewable energy company in the US, bringing approximately 1.2 GW of capacity online. The company is currently the largest wind operator in Kansas and Oklahoma.

Enel Green Power is the Enel Group’s business line dedicated to the development and operation of renewables across the world, with a presence in Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa and Oceania. Enel Green Power is a global leader in the green energy sector with a managed capacity of around 43 GW across a generation mix that includes wind, solar, geothermal and hydropower, and is at the forefront of integrating innovative technologies into renewable power plants.

Source: https://www.evwind.es/2018/12/27/enel-green-power-brings-online-620-mw-of-new-wind-power-capacity-in-the-united-states/65623

Date: December 27th, 2018