When President Trump announced last week that the US would withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, he unleashed a flood of condemnation. Foreign leaders, US politicians, corporate executives, and environmental groups all roundly criticized the move. It also hasn't polled well.
As the initial reaction dies down, it's worth considering how this happened, what it means, and what might come next. The invaluable Axios news site has some noteworthy insights on the latter problem that I will get to shortly.
I am convinced it was a mistake to withdraw. In this I share the view of many current and former business leaders, including the Secretary of State, that the US was better off as a party to the deal and all the future negotiations it entails. Even if the goal was truly to renegotiate the agreement on more favorable terms, signaling withdrawal first seems counterproductive. However, I also see the consequences of our withdrawal in less catastrophic terms than most critics of the move.
As I noted not long after it was concluded, the Paris Agreement is by design much weaker than its predecessor, the Kyoto Protocol. Although the 2015 Paris deal was probably the strongest one that could have been negotiated at the time, it still represented a big compromise between developed and developing countries on who should reduce the bulk of future emissions and who should bear the responsibility for the consequences of past emissions. Its text is full of verbs like recognize, acknowledge, encourage, etc., and the commitments it collected were essentially voluntary.
The agreement was also explicitly negotiated so as to maximize its chances of being enacted under the executive powers of the US president, without his having to refer the agreement to the US Senate for its concurrence. That implied it could be undone in the same way.
In other words, President Obama took a calculated risk that his successor(s) would choose to be bound by his Executive Order endorsing Paris. That was tantamount to a bet on his party winning the 2016 election, since most of the Republicans who had announced at the time were opposed to it, or the Clean Power Plan that was the linchpin of future US compliance with it.
Seeking Senate approval as a treaty would have been a much bigger lift--or required an even weaker agreement--but success would have provided significant political protection for the follow-on to the unratified Kyoto Protocol. Perhaps that explains why President Trump has chosen the much slower exit path--up to three years--provided within the Paris Agreement, rather than the quicker route of pulling out of the umbrella UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The Convention was signed by President George H.W. Bush with the bipartisan advise and consent of the Senate in 1992.
Setting politics aside, it's also not obvious that US withdrawal from Paris will put our greenhouse gas emissions on a significantly different track than if we stayed in. Even the EPA's review and likely withdrawal of its previous Clean Power Plan, which underpinned the Obama administration's strategy for meeting the voluntary goal it submitted at Paris, may have only a minor impact on global emissions.
Federal climate policy has not been the main driver of recent emissions reductions in the US power sector. Cheap, abundant natural gas from shale and the rapid adoption of renewable energy under state "renewable portfolio standards", supported by federal tax credits that were extended again in 2015, have been the primary factors in overall US emissions falling by 11% since 2005. These trends look set to continue.
The bigger question is what happens globally with the US out of the Paris Agreement--assuming the administration does not reverse course again before it can issue the required formal notice to withdraw roughly 2 1/2 years from now.
At least in the short term, I doubt much else will change. For the most part, the Nationally Determined Commitments delivered at Paris reflected what the signatories intended to do anyway. China's NDC is a perfect example. That country's ongoing air pollution crisis provides ample incentive to scale back on energy intensity and coal-fired power plants, which are the main source of its emissions.
Increasing the role of renewable energy in its national energy mix perfectly suits China's ambitions in renewable energy technology. Exhibit A for that is a solar manufacturing sector that went from insignificance to more than 50% of the global supply of photovoltaic (PV) cells in under a decade, while China's domestic market accounted for 21% of global PV installations through 2015.
The reactions to last week's announcement surely raised the stakes for other countries that might consider leaving. However, this action has also provided China and other high-emitting developing countries with an ironic mirror image of one of the main arguments on which the US government based its unwillingness to implement the Kyoto Protocol.
What ought to matter more than any of the domestic and geopolitical maneuvering around the US exit is the actual impact on the global climate. Reporting on Axios, Amy Harder (formerly of the Wall St. Journal) portrayed this as a sort of emperor's clothes moment with a column entitled, "Climate change is here to stay, so deal with it." Monday's main Axios "stream" characterized her piece as a "truth bomb."
As Harder put it, "The chances of reversing climate change are slim regardless of US involvement in the Paris agreement." That's consistent with recent assessments from the International Energy Agency and others. Citing the Bipartisan Policy Center and the UN, her column suggested a pivot to greater focus on adaptation, the hard and deeply unglamorous work of bolstering infrastructure and systems to withstand changes in the climate, including those that are already baked in. Attributing the source of changes in rainfall and sea level matters less than plugging the resulting physical gaps. That makes adaptation politically less toxic than cutting emissions, though still plenty challenging, fiscally.
As I have been watching the fallout from last week's news, I keep coming back to comparisons to the Cold War that I made when the idea of pursuing climate policy through executive action was emerging in 2010. Like the Cold War, dealing with climate change requires a similarly enduring bipartisan coalition. Major policy swings every 4 or 8 years are just too costly and ineffective, due to the planning horizons involved.
NATO may be going through a difficult moment, but it is approaching its 70th year. After seeing its key weakness exposed, can anyone honestly look at the framework of the Paris Agreement and conclude that it is likely to last as long? Yet if climate change is as serious as many suggest, those are exactly the terms in which we should be thinking.
Showing posts with label rps. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rps. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 06, 2017
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Key Renewable Energy Subsidies About to Expire
The US renewable energy industry faces a greatly altered incentive environment next year, as eligibility for two of its largest current subsidies comes to an end at the close of 2011. The corn ethanol sector will likely see the complete withdrawal of the blenders' credit that has fueled its growth for more than 30 years, while new projects generating electricity from renewable energy sources must shortly attract investment without the Treasury grants that provided up-front cash in place of federal investment tax credits against taxable income--a commodity sometimes in even shorter supply among recipients than the energy they seek to generate. With these expirations taking place against the backdrop of a US presidential election campaign and record levels of deficit and federal debt, the prospects for another round of one-year subsidy extensions look slim. Yet renewable energy development in the US won't grind to a halt without them, because these two programs represent merely the most generous layer of the complex web supporting renewables.
Consider the venerable ethanol tax credit, which was made mostly redundant by the passage of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, with its Renewable Fuels Standard mandating the use of increasing quantities of ethanol in gasoline. In fact, ethanol producers were never more than indirect beneficiaries of the $0.45 per gallon credit, which was paid to refiners and other gasoline blenders in order to help create a market for ethanol. Mission accomplished. Moreover, with US gasoline sales having stalled at a level that can barely absorb all the ethanol that existing US ethanol plants can produce, unless gasoline blends containing more than 10% ethanol become popular, there is simply no need for corn ethanol output to expand further. In fact, the market will be more than sufficiently challenged providing outlets for the limited quantities of cellulosic and other advanced ethanol likely to be produced in the next few years. As I've noted previously, forward-looking members of the industry are now seeking help in expanding the market for high-ethanol blends, rather than perpetuating an outdated support for existing sales.
The situation for renewable electricity sources like wind, solar and geothermal energy is more complicated. The expiring Treasury grants were introduced as part of the 2009 stimulus to stand in for the "tax equity swap" market, a category of financial transactions that froze up during the financial crisis. These swaps provided a private-sector cash-flow bridge between project expenditures and tax credits that only paid off after start-up as income was earned or energy produced. That was particularly helpful for smaller, less profitable developers, but it also provided an additional check on marginal projects. Even after credit markets eased, most developers understandably preferred the cash grants, which reduced their financing costs and avoided the fees that bankers charged on tax equity deals. However, that preference doesn't justify continuing the cash grant program--particularly for the large, profitable corporations that increasing dominate this space. The industry should focus more effort on fostering the revival of a liquid and competitive tax equity market and less on lobbying for an extension of a temporary stimulus measure.
Either way, the tax credits behind these grants and swaps won't last forever. Under current law, the principal federal tax credit for wind will be in place only through 2012, for biomass and geothermal through 2013, and for solar through 2016. Instead of a scenario of perpetual last-minute extensions such as we've seen in the past, the industry and its investors should be thinking about a scenario in which all these tax credits end, either as part of comprehensive tax reform that eliminates most such "tax expenditures"--including the ones for the oil and gas industry that have become so contentious in the last few years--or a transition to providing renewables with similar sorts of incentives as oil and gas, which essentially amount to forms of accelerated depreciation and modest tax breaks for manufacturing in the US, rather than in other countries.
It's also important to realize that even without these tax credits and in the absence of comprehensive federal energy legislation that looks unlikely any time soon, the industry would still retain numerous state-level benefits, starting with the renewable portfolio standards (RPS) for electricity currently in place in 29 states and the District of Columbia, a tally that encompasses most of the states with the best wind and solar resources. These RPS's are similar to the Renewable Fuel Standard for biofuels in requiring utilities to include increasing proportions of renewable energy in their supply portfolios, whether owned or purchased. Such standards, including California's aggressive RPS targeting 33% renewable electricity by 2020, stand outside the polarizing political debate over taxation and government expenditures. They function as an implicit tax on ratepayers, rather than taxpayers, because they show up within customers' utility bills rather than on their 1040 forms. That distinction could be particularly important if the congressional supercommittee fails to reach a consensus, and the default spending cuts built into the Budget Control Act that resolved this summer's debt ceiling crisis kick in.
So while it might appear that the US renewable energy industry is about it be cut loose from the key incentives that enabled it to grow to its present dimensions, it will continue to benefit from supports not enjoyed by other industrial sectors. Even when the current tax credits expire, renewables will have a mandated market providing a floor beneath them. Ethanol output won't revert to 2005 levels, nor will renewables vanish from the landscape, even if their growth slows a bit while the rest of the economy struggles to emerge from the aftermath of the Great Recession and financial crisis, and to avoid a double-dip. Meanwhile, global overcapacity in wind turbine and solar module manufacturing will keep their prices trending lower--and installations stronger--pending industry consolidations that will position both for healthier, more sustainable growth in the long run. All of this falls well short of the level of help for the industry that most renewable energy supporters would like to see, but it's far more than the level playing field (ignoring externalities) that would see cheap and abundant natural gas sweep away all competition for new power generation.
Consider the venerable ethanol tax credit, which was made mostly redundant by the passage of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, with its Renewable Fuels Standard mandating the use of increasing quantities of ethanol in gasoline. In fact, ethanol producers were never more than indirect beneficiaries of the $0.45 per gallon credit, which was paid to refiners and other gasoline blenders in order to help create a market for ethanol. Mission accomplished. Moreover, with US gasoline sales having stalled at a level that can barely absorb all the ethanol that existing US ethanol plants can produce, unless gasoline blends containing more than 10% ethanol become popular, there is simply no need for corn ethanol output to expand further. In fact, the market will be more than sufficiently challenged providing outlets for the limited quantities of cellulosic and other advanced ethanol likely to be produced in the next few years. As I've noted previously, forward-looking members of the industry are now seeking help in expanding the market for high-ethanol blends, rather than perpetuating an outdated support for existing sales.
The situation for renewable electricity sources like wind, solar and geothermal energy is more complicated. The expiring Treasury grants were introduced as part of the 2009 stimulus to stand in for the "tax equity swap" market, a category of financial transactions that froze up during the financial crisis. These swaps provided a private-sector cash-flow bridge between project expenditures and tax credits that only paid off after start-up as income was earned or energy produced. That was particularly helpful for smaller, less profitable developers, but it also provided an additional check on marginal projects. Even after credit markets eased, most developers understandably preferred the cash grants, which reduced their financing costs and avoided the fees that bankers charged on tax equity deals. However, that preference doesn't justify continuing the cash grant program--particularly for the large, profitable corporations that increasing dominate this space. The industry should focus more effort on fostering the revival of a liquid and competitive tax equity market and less on lobbying for an extension of a temporary stimulus measure.
Either way, the tax credits behind these grants and swaps won't last forever. Under current law, the principal federal tax credit for wind will be in place only through 2012, for biomass and geothermal through 2013, and for solar through 2016. Instead of a scenario of perpetual last-minute extensions such as we've seen in the past, the industry and its investors should be thinking about a scenario in which all these tax credits end, either as part of comprehensive tax reform that eliminates most such "tax expenditures"--including the ones for the oil and gas industry that have become so contentious in the last few years--or a transition to providing renewables with similar sorts of incentives as oil and gas, which essentially amount to forms of accelerated depreciation and modest tax breaks for manufacturing in the US, rather than in other countries.
It's also important to realize that even without these tax credits and in the absence of comprehensive federal energy legislation that looks unlikely any time soon, the industry would still retain numerous state-level benefits, starting with the renewable portfolio standards (RPS) for electricity currently in place in 29 states and the District of Columbia, a tally that encompasses most of the states with the best wind and solar resources. These RPS's are similar to the Renewable Fuel Standard for biofuels in requiring utilities to include increasing proportions of renewable energy in their supply portfolios, whether owned or purchased. Such standards, including California's aggressive RPS targeting 33% renewable electricity by 2020, stand outside the polarizing political debate over taxation and government expenditures. They function as an implicit tax on ratepayers, rather than taxpayers, because they show up within customers' utility bills rather than on their 1040 forms. That distinction could be particularly important if the congressional supercommittee fails to reach a consensus, and the default spending cuts built into the Budget Control Act that resolved this summer's debt ceiling crisis kick in.
So while it might appear that the US renewable energy industry is about it be cut loose from the key incentives that enabled it to grow to its present dimensions, it will continue to benefit from supports not enjoyed by other industrial sectors. Even when the current tax credits expire, renewables will have a mandated market providing a floor beneath them. Ethanol output won't revert to 2005 levels, nor will renewables vanish from the landscape, even if their growth slows a bit while the rest of the economy struggles to emerge from the aftermath of the Great Recession and financial crisis, and to avoid a double-dip. Meanwhile, global overcapacity in wind turbine and solar module manufacturing will keep their prices trending lower--and installations stronger--pending industry consolidations that will position both for healthier, more sustainable growth in the long run. All of this falls well short of the level of help for the industry that most renewable energy supporters would like to see, but it's far more than the level playing field (ignoring externalities) that would see cheap and abundant natural gas sweep away all competition for new power generation.
Thursday, January 07, 2010
The Dependence of Renewables on Government
As I was catching up on a large backlog of articles from December, I ran across one from the New York Times that dovetailed with my thoughts about trends to watch this year. It concerned the difficulties being experienced by US green energy companies, particularly relative to competitors operating in countries with more generous subsidies for renewable energy manufacturing and deployment. Instead of becoming progressively less dependent on help from the government, many of these firms are even more reliant on aid as a result of the financial crisis, which disrupted their access to credit and capital from the market. This is a worrying development, because it tends to shift the focus of management away from the attainment of operational excellence and profitable innovation, and toward the task of lining up a steady pipeline of government grants and tax credits. This might be necessary for the moment, but it undermines long-term competitiveness.
As I read the article, I was struck by some of the comments from industry executives, which included a complaint from the US arm of a Spanish wind turbine manufacturer about the lack of necessary legislative support for the industry, and this astonishing remark from a director of the Pew Charitable Trusts' Environment Group, "But if we don't have the policies in place to make investment here a sure thing, then we could potentially lose to other countries." I wasn't aware that it has ever been the proper role of government to ensure that any business is a "sure thing." And then there was a comment from the head of the Solar Energy Industries Association to the effect that the US would have a bigger solar sector if our incentives were more like those in China, where "80 percent of the entire cost of a factory and worker training is paid for by the government." No doubt.
There's something deeply corrosive about such attitudes, and they put anyone investing in renewable energy in a difficult position. Now, there's a strong argument that some level of government support is necessary to help renewable energy compete with traditional energy sources that operate in a market that doesn't account for significant externalities such as environmental and energy-security effects. That's one of the main arguments for establishing a cap & trade system for greenhouse gases, or a carbon tax. Yet we now see government not only helping to level the playing field by means of renewable energy tax credits for investment or production and mandates requiring a set percentage of energy to come from renewable sources, but also playing the role of venture capitalist and banker. These are roles for which government is ill-equipped, not least because the necessary Darwinian feedback mechanisms don't exist. A VC that consistently invests in impractical ideas or start-up firms with incompetent management will eventually run out of capital and close its doors; a government agency with a similarly poor track record will continue to be funded, and its employees will enjoy their customary job security.
Of course, renewable energy firms aren't the only ones to have enjoyed generous government support as a result of the stimulus and other measures put in place to address the recession and financial crisis. The key difference is that while the government has poured billions of dollars into banks and carmakers, no one doubts that well-run banks can function without government aid and that it's possible to make and sell cars at a profit in the US--Ford and several foreign carmakers with US factories prove that every day. Unfortunately, we don't know that it's possible to produce renewable energy or the hardware it requires without government support for users, producers, developers, manufacturers, or all of the above. That acts as a deterrent to established energy companies that have, through painful experience, acquired a jaundiced view of the long-term dependability of such support. Anyone questioning that view need only ask someone in the US biodiesel industry, which just lost its $1-per-gallon subsidy and now faces oblivion.
As necessary as the continued expansion of renewable energy sources is for our long-term transition away from fossil fuels and for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, I worry that the green energy sector has become caught up in an industrial policy fad that has little to do with either emissions or energy security, and that hinges on exaggerated expectations of cleantech as the next hugely-profitable global industry and massive provider of stable, high-income employment. Yet if that profitability is merely the result of a government-mediated transfer of wealth from consumers and taxpayers to a group of fortunate firms, rather than of improvements in productivity or pervasive new consumer values, then neither those profits nor the jobs that go with them will be sustainable. And sooner or later a government less committed to these subsidies, or more focused on reducing unmanageable deficits, will take office and the gravy train will end quite suddenly.
I'm not advocating abandoning the renewable energy sector to the tender mercies of the market overnight, or ceding this important sector entirely to non-US firms, nor am I ignoring the lessons of the last two years about markets. However, I'm also recalling the lessons of the Tech Bubble. At least until we have cap & trade or a carbon tax, some level of support will be necessary. However, it should be uniform, picking no winners and treating all low-emission BTUs and kWhs equally. It should also phase out on a reasonable but firmly-established timetable, so that companies know they must become truly competitive. And instead of extending the Treasury's renewable energy grant program beyond its current October 2011 deadline, the government should focus on enabling the restoration of the flows of private capital for which the grants are filling in--and inadvertently stifling in the meantime. Nor should we seek to emulate the foolishness of Germany's extravagantly-generous feed-in tariffs for solar power, which created a market for German manufacturers that is now being lost to foreign competitors with lower costs.
Our goal ought to be a renewable energy sector that can stand on its own, rather than one that, like the US ethanol industry, has been tethered to federal life-support since the precursor of today's Volumetric Excise Tax Credit was established in 1978. The result would likely yield fewer US renewable energy companies, but also stronger ones better able to survive the turbulent energy transition that lies ahead.
As I read the article, I was struck by some of the comments from industry executives, which included a complaint from the US arm of a Spanish wind turbine manufacturer about the lack of necessary legislative support for the industry, and this astonishing remark from a director of the Pew Charitable Trusts' Environment Group, "But if we don't have the policies in place to make investment here a sure thing, then we could potentially lose to other countries." I wasn't aware that it has ever been the proper role of government to ensure that any business is a "sure thing." And then there was a comment from the head of the Solar Energy Industries Association to the effect that the US would have a bigger solar sector if our incentives were more like those in China, where "80 percent of the entire cost of a factory and worker training is paid for by the government." No doubt.
There's something deeply corrosive about such attitudes, and they put anyone investing in renewable energy in a difficult position. Now, there's a strong argument that some level of government support is necessary to help renewable energy compete with traditional energy sources that operate in a market that doesn't account for significant externalities such as environmental and energy-security effects. That's one of the main arguments for establishing a cap & trade system for greenhouse gases, or a carbon tax. Yet we now see government not only helping to level the playing field by means of renewable energy tax credits for investment or production and mandates requiring a set percentage of energy to come from renewable sources, but also playing the role of venture capitalist and banker. These are roles for which government is ill-equipped, not least because the necessary Darwinian feedback mechanisms don't exist. A VC that consistently invests in impractical ideas or start-up firms with incompetent management will eventually run out of capital and close its doors; a government agency with a similarly poor track record will continue to be funded, and its employees will enjoy their customary job security.
Of course, renewable energy firms aren't the only ones to have enjoyed generous government support as a result of the stimulus and other measures put in place to address the recession and financial crisis. The key difference is that while the government has poured billions of dollars into banks and carmakers, no one doubts that well-run banks can function without government aid and that it's possible to make and sell cars at a profit in the US--Ford and several foreign carmakers with US factories prove that every day. Unfortunately, we don't know that it's possible to produce renewable energy or the hardware it requires without government support for users, producers, developers, manufacturers, or all of the above. That acts as a deterrent to established energy companies that have, through painful experience, acquired a jaundiced view of the long-term dependability of such support. Anyone questioning that view need only ask someone in the US biodiesel industry, which just lost its $1-per-gallon subsidy and now faces oblivion.
As necessary as the continued expansion of renewable energy sources is for our long-term transition away from fossil fuels and for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, I worry that the green energy sector has become caught up in an industrial policy fad that has little to do with either emissions or energy security, and that hinges on exaggerated expectations of cleantech as the next hugely-profitable global industry and massive provider of stable, high-income employment. Yet if that profitability is merely the result of a government-mediated transfer of wealth from consumers and taxpayers to a group of fortunate firms, rather than of improvements in productivity or pervasive new consumer values, then neither those profits nor the jobs that go with them will be sustainable. And sooner or later a government less committed to these subsidies, or more focused on reducing unmanageable deficits, will take office and the gravy train will end quite suddenly.
I'm not advocating abandoning the renewable energy sector to the tender mercies of the market overnight, or ceding this important sector entirely to non-US firms, nor am I ignoring the lessons of the last two years about markets. However, I'm also recalling the lessons of the Tech Bubble. At least until we have cap & trade or a carbon tax, some level of support will be necessary. However, it should be uniform, picking no winners and treating all low-emission BTUs and kWhs equally. It should also phase out on a reasonable but firmly-established timetable, so that companies know they must become truly competitive. And instead of extending the Treasury's renewable energy grant program beyond its current October 2011 deadline, the government should focus on enabling the restoration of the flows of private capital for which the grants are filling in--and inadvertently stifling in the meantime. Nor should we seek to emulate the foolishness of Germany's extravagantly-generous feed-in tariffs for solar power, which created a market for German manufacturers that is now being lost to foreign competitors with lower costs.
Our goal ought to be a renewable energy sector that can stand on its own, rather than one that, like the US ethanol industry, has been tethered to federal life-support since the precursor of today's Volumetric Excise Tax Credit was established in 1978. The result would likely yield fewer US renewable energy companies, but also stronger ones better able to survive the turbulent energy transition that lies ahead.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Time to Choose
Last week's finding by the US Environmental Protection Agency that greenhouse gas emissions "threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations" should not have come as a surprise. It has been virtually inevitable since the Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts v. EPA two years ago, and it was rendered imminent by the election last November of Barack Obama, who made responding to climate change a centerpiece of his presidential campaign. Whatever you might believe about the risks of climate change, we no longer have a choice between addressing them or ignoring them. Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass.), who chairs the Select Committee on Energy Security and Global Warming, responded to the finding by saying, "It is now a choice between regulation and legislation." I don't think that's quite accurate, particularly since his own proposed climate legislation includes many strong regulatory features. Instead, I believe the choice lies between relying primarily on an explicit price for emissions to nudge consumers and businesses away from emissions-intensive activities, and employing a more prescriptive approach using mandates, "standards", and air pollution-style rules on smokestacks and tailpipes. Long-time readers won't need to infer my position on this matter from the way I've described that choice.
I've argued the case for cap & trade numerous times on this blog and in front of various audiences, corporate and public. I've also expressed my misgivings about the imposition of a strict cap & trade system in the middle of a recession, particularly if the government intends to use the revenues from cap & trade to fund a dog's breakfast of non-energy programs, rather than returning the bulk of it to taxpayers. I've even suggested that under some circumstances a simple carbon tax might be preferable to cap & trade, since both serve the purpose of establishing a price for emissions, to which our market economy must respond by shrinking emissions-intensive sectors and growing low-emissions ones, including the renewable energy sector with its vaunted "green jobs." I've spent less time, however, examining the regulatory approach, perhaps because I regarded it as self-evidently inferior, particularly if it looks more constraining than the version of cap & trade that might accompany it. It is abundantly clear that many others do not share that view.
The main appeal of the regulatory path is that it would build on long experience in managing other environmental impacts--including many from energy systems--under existing federal and state air and water quality regulations, the federal Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), and numerous state-level renewable electricity standards (RPSs) and other regulations. But these programs also illustrate some of the severest drawbacks of this approach, in the complexity and overlapping nature of these rules. Regulating emissions that are not incidental to, but rather a fundamental consequence of the use of our principal energy sources would add further layers of complexity without subtracting any, as cap & trade might eventually be expected to. We already have trading in Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) for state RPS compliance, Renewable Identification Numbers for compliance with the federal RFS, and sulfur and nitrogen credits for compliance with the Clean Air Act's rules for criteria pollutants. And because the GHG emissions from motor vehicles are determined largely by how much fuel they consume, efforts at regulating tailpipe emissions become de facto fuel economy regulations, in conflict with the federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy regs. (This is the matter on which California eagerly awaits a waiver from the administration to pursue its legislated Low-Carbon Fuel Standard.) With all due respect to the dedicated professionals at the EPA, anyone contemplating leaving the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions to that agency should be required to pass a test demonstrating that they understand the EPA's notice implementing the RFS for 2009, which involves the comparatively much simpler task of setting the required ethanol percentage in gasoline for the year.
We are now at the point that I have long feared we would be, if we mislabeled carbon dioxide as a pollutant. While the consequences of excess CO2 and other naturally-occurring greenhouse gases certainly live up to the terms the EPA has applied in its finding, unleashing a pollution mentality to solve climate change will be counter-productive and unnecessarily expensive, when dealing with a phenomenon for which a ton of CO2 emitted, captured or avoided in Boston is exactly equivalent in its climate impact to a ton emitted, captured or avoided in Beijing. We would have been much better served if the Supreme Court had paraphrased the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and found that CO2 was "almost, but not quite, entirely unlike" pollution, yet here we are.
By next year's Earth Day, the 40th anniversary of the first one, I expect that we will have made our choice between these competing approaches. We see signs of this in the apparent determination of the administration to arrive at the Copenhagen climate conference this December having taken concrete steps here, and in the competing cap & trade bills making their way through the Congress. I can understand that opponents of strict legislation on climate change might regard the EPA's endangerment finding as a high-stakes game of chicken. But whether it serves as an implicit threat or merely an insurance policy against protracted legislative delay, it--rather than inaction--represents the new baseline. Anyone who has been sitting on the fence must now decide which approach is likely to be more effective in dealing with the US contribution to global warming, while simultaneously doing less harm to our economy. After long and careful scrutiny of the options, and after spending a career in an industry that has already been regulated to the gills, I find pricing emissions by far the most attractive solution. This is anything but a trivial decision, though it is one that must be made, and soon, before the default option becomes as inevitable as the endangerment finding was.
I've argued the case for cap & trade numerous times on this blog and in front of various audiences, corporate and public. I've also expressed my misgivings about the imposition of a strict cap & trade system in the middle of a recession, particularly if the government intends to use the revenues from cap & trade to fund a dog's breakfast of non-energy programs, rather than returning the bulk of it to taxpayers. I've even suggested that under some circumstances a simple carbon tax might be preferable to cap & trade, since both serve the purpose of establishing a price for emissions, to which our market economy must respond by shrinking emissions-intensive sectors and growing low-emissions ones, including the renewable energy sector with its vaunted "green jobs." I've spent less time, however, examining the regulatory approach, perhaps because I regarded it as self-evidently inferior, particularly if it looks more constraining than the version of cap & trade that might accompany it. It is abundantly clear that many others do not share that view.
The main appeal of the regulatory path is that it would build on long experience in managing other environmental impacts--including many from energy systems--under existing federal and state air and water quality regulations, the federal Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), and numerous state-level renewable electricity standards (RPSs) and other regulations. But these programs also illustrate some of the severest drawbacks of this approach, in the complexity and overlapping nature of these rules. Regulating emissions that are not incidental to, but rather a fundamental consequence of the use of our principal energy sources would add further layers of complexity without subtracting any, as cap & trade might eventually be expected to. We already have trading in Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) for state RPS compliance, Renewable Identification Numbers for compliance with the federal RFS, and sulfur and nitrogen credits for compliance with the Clean Air Act's rules for criteria pollutants. And because the GHG emissions from motor vehicles are determined largely by how much fuel they consume, efforts at regulating tailpipe emissions become de facto fuel economy regulations, in conflict with the federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy regs. (This is the matter on which California eagerly awaits a waiver from the administration to pursue its legislated Low-Carbon Fuel Standard.) With all due respect to the dedicated professionals at the EPA, anyone contemplating leaving the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions to that agency should be required to pass a test demonstrating that they understand the EPA's notice implementing the RFS for 2009, which involves the comparatively much simpler task of setting the required ethanol percentage in gasoline for the year.
We are now at the point that I have long feared we would be, if we mislabeled carbon dioxide as a pollutant. While the consequences of excess CO2 and other naturally-occurring greenhouse gases certainly live up to the terms the EPA has applied in its finding, unleashing a pollution mentality to solve climate change will be counter-productive and unnecessarily expensive, when dealing with a phenomenon for which a ton of CO2 emitted, captured or avoided in Boston is exactly equivalent in its climate impact to a ton emitted, captured or avoided in Beijing. We would have been much better served if the Supreme Court had paraphrased the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and found that CO2 was "almost, but not quite, entirely unlike" pollution, yet here we are.
By next year's Earth Day, the 40th anniversary of the first one, I expect that we will have made our choice between these competing approaches. We see signs of this in the apparent determination of the administration to arrive at the Copenhagen climate conference this December having taken concrete steps here, and in the competing cap & trade bills making their way through the Congress. I can understand that opponents of strict legislation on climate change might regard the EPA's endangerment finding as a high-stakes game of chicken. But whether it serves as an implicit threat or merely an insurance policy against protracted legislative delay, it--rather than inaction--represents the new baseline. Anyone who has been sitting on the fence must now decide which approach is likely to be more effective in dealing with the US contribution to global warming, while simultaneously doing less harm to our economy. After long and careful scrutiny of the options, and after spending a career in an industry that has already been regulated to the gills, I find pricing emissions by far the most attractive solution. This is anything but a trivial decision, though it is one that must be made, and soon, before the default option becomes as inevitable as the endangerment finding was.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
A Wave of Wind
A long train ride provided the opportunity to review the new report from the Department of Energy on the state of wind power in the US. For those who like numbers the ones in this document are fascinating. Significantly, they show that for the second year in a row, wind power capacity additions were second only to those for natural gas-fired turbines and ahead of coal, even when adjusted for “capacity factor”, the proportion of nameplate capacity actually utilized, on average. Furthermore, in at least a few states wind power is now contributing shares of total electricity sales that are comparable to the national shares from conventional sources such as hydropower and nuclear energy. At least regionally, wind is becoming mainstream, rather than niche.
The DOE report reflects the reality that practical wind power is not a national phenomenon, partly because of differences in state renewable energy policies, but also because wind resources are unevenly distributed. Twenty states account for almost 99% of all US wind power capacity, both incrementally for 2006 and cumulatively since the 1980s. Within that group, just six states account for 76% of 2006 additions and 72% of total capacity, with Texas, California, Minnesota and Washington making both lists.
In four relatively sparsely-populated states, New Mexico, Iowa, North Dakota, and Wyoming, wind made up over 5% of total electricity supply last year. That isn’t quite up to Danish levels of 21%, but it approaches the shares in Spain and Germany, the world leaders in installed wind capacity, and it greatly exceeds the US and global averages of just under 1% of total power from wind.
The data make it clear that consistent federal policy is the key to sustaining this kind of growth, and in particular avoiding the previous situation in which the Production Tax Credit for renewable power was at risk of expiring nearly every year, and periodically did. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 provided a two year extension of the PTC, and the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006 tacked on an extra year, through the end of 2008. A permanent extension of the PTC, even one that included a gradual phaseout of the benefit, would put wind on an equal footing with conventional power and support the growth of domestic wind turbine manufacturing. The proliferation of state Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPSs) and the prospect of a national RPS from pending energy legislation are also helping to expand the market for wind.
The report provides some useful information on the structure of the US wind industry, which is dominated by independent power producers, including many small developers focused entirely on wind power, but which has recently seen significant consolidation and acquisitions by large, non-utility players such as oil companies and investment banks.
Some of the most interesting data concern the power price garnered by wind generators. Although this had been falling steadily throughout the decade, it appears to have turned up slightly last year. The DOE attributes this to rising turbine costs, but it must surely also reflect the higher price of the fuel for wind’s chief competitor, gas turbines, as well as the induced demand from state RPSs. However, we shouldn’t conclude from this uptick that wind is likely to be any less competitive in the future. That will depend on improvements in transmission capacity and load management, as well as the expansion of the turbine manufacturing base. It also begs the larger question of what should happen to the specific subsidies for wind under a national climate change policy that puts a price on carbon emissions from wind’s conventional competitors.
The DOE report reflects the reality that practical wind power is not a national phenomenon, partly because of differences in state renewable energy policies, but also because wind resources are unevenly distributed. Twenty states account for almost 99% of all US wind power capacity, both incrementally for 2006 and cumulatively since the 1980s. Within that group, just six states account for 76% of 2006 additions and 72% of total capacity, with Texas, California, Minnesota and Washington making both lists.
In four relatively sparsely-populated states, New Mexico, Iowa, North Dakota, and Wyoming, wind made up over 5% of total electricity supply last year. That isn’t quite up to Danish levels of 21%, but it approaches the shares in Spain and Germany, the world leaders in installed wind capacity, and it greatly exceeds the US and global averages of just under 1% of total power from wind.
The data make it clear that consistent federal policy is the key to sustaining this kind of growth, and in particular avoiding the previous situation in which the Production Tax Credit for renewable power was at risk of expiring nearly every year, and periodically did. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 provided a two year extension of the PTC, and the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006 tacked on an extra year, through the end of 2008. A permanent extension of the PTC, even one that included a gradual phaseout of the benefit, would put wind on an equal footing with conventional power and support the growth of domestic wind turbine manufacturing. The proliferation of state Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPSs) and the prospect of a national RPS from pending energy legislation are also helping to expand the market for wind.
The report provides some useful information on the structure of the US wind industry, which is dominated by independent power producers, including many small developers focused entirely on wind power, but which has recently seen significant consolidation and acquisitions by large, non-utility players such as oil companies and investment banks.
Some of the most interesting data concern the power price garnered by wind generators. Although this had been falling steadily throughout the decade, it appears to have turned up slightly last year. The DOE attributes this to rising turbine costs, but it must surely also reflect the higher price of the fuel for wind’s chief competitor, gas turbines, as well as the induced demand from state RPSs. However, we shouldn’t conclude from this uptick that wind is likely to be any less competitive in the future. That will depend on improvements in transmission capacity and load management, as well as the expansion of the turbine manufacturing base. It also begs the larger question of what should happen to the specific subsidies for wind under a national climate change policy that puts a price on carbon emissions from wind’s conventional competitors.
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