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California Air Resources Board News Clips for October 13, 2010. 



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CLIMATE CHANGE

California's Tug of War Over Carbon Emissions. San Francisco —
“Job killer” is a slur that has been cast both at California’s
Global Warming Solutions Act, passed in 2006 and known as AB 32,
and at Proposition 23, an attempt effectively to repeal the 2006
law in a ballot next month. AB 32 was designed to bring
California into near compliance with the Kyoto Protocol,
requiring the state to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to
1990 levels by 2020. Posted.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/business/energy-environment/13iht-rencalifact.html

Global Climate Plan May Emerge From Regional Responses. (Updates
with Greens Party comment in ninth paragraph.). Climate change
policy is likely to be driven by regional responses before an
international agreement is put in place, JPMorgan Chase & Co.
said. "Instead of the top-down Kyoto coming down, we're going to
see it come up," Odin Knudsen, the managing director of
environmental markets at the New York-based bank and a former
head of the World Bank Carbon Fund, said at a conference in
Melbourne today. Posted.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/10/13/bloomberg1376-LA7CR51A1I4H01-2TJIC6NGDVI5IQS5H7FCPM3RTE.DTL

Investor Groups Balk At Oil Companies' Support Of Prop. 23.
Shareholder organizations are expected to offer resolutions
challenging L.A.'s Occidental Petroleum and two Texas firms over
their contributions to the campaign to suspend California's
emissions law. Washington -Institutional investor groups
concerned about corporate funding of political campaigns are
expected to announce shareholder resolutions Wednesday that will
challenge three energy firms making big-dollar contributions to
halt California's landmark law limiting greenhouse gas emissions.
Posted.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-corporate-funding-20101013,0,3290774,print.story

EPA: Hope For Progress With China Despite Friction. China and the
U.S. are working together on cutting greenhouse gas emissions
despite the deadlock over a broader global agreement on fighting
climate change, the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency said Wednesday. "My hope is that we will see continued
progress on the issues. Posted.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/10/12/international/i231351D34.DTL&type=printable
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-as-china-us-climate-change,0,7111467,print.story

A Climate Proposal Beyond Cap and Trade.  Michael Greenstone has
the résumé of somebody who should be despondent over Washington’s
failure to pass a climate bill. An environmental economist who
worked in the Obama White House, he is now back to being an
M.I.T. professor and also runs the Hamilton Project, the
well-connected, Democratic-leaning research group. But Mr.
Greenstone is not despondent. He thinks the benefits of the bills
that died in the Senate — which would have raised the cost of
carbon emissions, through a system known as cap and trade — were
sometimes exaggerated. Posted.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/business/economy/13leonhardt.html?ref=science

A Carbon Trading System Draws Environmental Skeptics. Paris —
Carbon credit trading has long been decried by some climate
change experts as an ineffective way to combat global warming,
compared with imposing regulatory limits on polluting greenhouse
gas emissions. But after more than a decade of negotiations, the
Kyoto Protocol established a carbon emission credit system, in
2006, overseen by the United Nations. Posted.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/business/energy-environment/13iht-rencarbon.html?pagewanted=print

Supporters Of State's Climate Change Law Have 2-To-1 Edge In
Funding. Supporters of California's climate change law have so
far easily outpaced the fundraising of those who want to delay it
with a referendum. With the clock ticking toward Election Day,
the campaign to defeat a ballot measure -- Proposition 23 -- that
would suspend California's climate law has outflanked the "Yes on
23" squad at the bank by a nearly two-to-one margin. Posted.
http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/print/2010/10/13/4

U.S. Export Giants Press For One Global Carbon Accounting
Standard. The U.S. manufacturing sector can thrive under a global
climate change agreement as long as it guarantees the
participation of the world's major polluting and carbon-emitting
countries, said an executive at Caterpillar Inc. "Different
paths, different timelines, different objectives for different
countries, but everyone's got to participate before you'll ever
find a real balance in the manufacturing sector," said John
Disharoon, Caterpillar's director of sustainable development.
Posted. http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/print/2010/10/13/6

Scholars Suggest New Clean Air Act Approach To Curbing GHGS.
Though the Obama administration will be challenged no matter how
it chooses to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act,
the statute's New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) would be a
more practical way to reduce emissions under existing law, three
Duke University experts argue in a new paper. So far, U.S. EPA
has used only the New Source Review (NSR) provisions of the Clean
Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases from factories, power plants
and other large facilities. Posted.
http://www.eenews.net/Greenwire/print/2010/10/13/3

State's Congressional Delegation Steers Clear Of Prop 23.
California's congressional delegation has kept relatively quiet
about the controversial ballot initiative that would suspend the
state's law to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The ballot question
has become a hot topic in statewide gubernatorial and Senate
races and has received widespread media attention. However, only
Democratic Reps. Bob Filner and Pete Stark have officially
endorsed the "No on 23" campaign, along with Democratic Sens.
Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein. Posted.
http://www.eenews.net/Greenwire/print/2010/10/13/6

Whitman Explains Plan To 'Freeze' Climate Law During Debate. Meg
Whitman, the Republican candidate for governor in California,
last night reiterated her intention to suspend the state's
climate change law for one year if elected in November, while in
the same breath saying she does not support a referendum that
would potentially kill it. The former eBay Inc. chief executive
is locked in a tight race with state Attorney General Jerry Brown
(D) with less than three weeks until Election Day. Posted.
http://www.eenews.net/Greenwire/print/2010/10/13/5

FUELS

U.S. EPA Said to Permit Blending More Ethanol Into Gasoline. The
Obama administration will grant a request from ethanol producers
to permit higher concentrations of the corn-based fuel additive
in gasoline for vehicles made in 2007 and later, according to a
person familiar with the decision. The Environmental Protection
Agency will announce as early as today its decision allowing
refiners to blend as much as 15 percent ethanol into fuel, up
from the current 10 percent, said the person, who spoke on
condition of anonymity before the announcement. Posted.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/10/13/bloomberg1376-LA7O3J07SXKX01-19UJV915AHQ75QH9OMII0KUFN2.DTL&type=printable
http://www.latimes.com/business/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-us-epa-ethanol,0,3466997.story
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703440004575548883403355828.html?mod=ITP_pageone_1
http://www.eenews.net/Greenwire/2010/10/13/1

GREEN ENERGY

Silicon Valley’s Solar Innovators Retool to Catch Up to China.
Fremont, Calif. — A few years ago, Silicon Valley start-ups like
Solyndra, Nanosolar and MiaSolé dreamed of transforming the
economics of solar power by reinventing the technology used to
make solar panels and deeply cutting the cost of production.
Founded by veterans of the Valley’s chip and hard-drive
industries, these companies attracted billions of dollars in
venture capital investment on the hope that their advanced “thin
film” technology would make them the Intels and Apples of the
global solar industry. Posted.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/business/energy-environment/13solar.html?scp=3&sq=green%20energy&st=cse

Google Invests In East Coast Wind-Power Plan. Google Inc. will
invest in a $5 billion underwater transmission network that can
harvest electricity from wind farms off the Mid-Atlantic coast
and power 1.9 million homes across Virginia, New York and New
Jersey. Google will buy a 37.5 percent stake in the development
stage of the project, said Rick Needham, director of green
business operations at the Mountain View company. Posted.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/10/13/BU891FRM42.DTL
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703440004575547381873787098.html?mod=ITP_pageone_1

Clean-Energy Spending Rose 11% in Third Quarter on Offshore Wind.
Investment in clean-energy projects rose 11 percent in the third
quarter as lending for offshore wind generation surged, Bloomberg
New Energy Finance said. New loans and equity for low-carbon
power projects reached $37.9 billion from July through September,
compared with $34 billion in the same period of 2009, the company
said in an e- mailed statement. Investment in the second quarter
was $33.9 billion. Posted.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/10/13/bloomberg1376-LA82JF0UQVI901-0V5ITAM3S90S4I9CM022GRG46J.DTL&type=printable

Solar Power Production Up Despite Poor Economy. This year's
stagnant economy hasn't stopped the spread of solar power. The
United States installed enough solar panels during the first six
months of 2010 to generate up to 339 megawatts of electricity and
will soon surpass last year's record of 435 megawatts, according
to a study released Tuesday by a solar industry trade group.
Posted.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/10/13/BUTN1FRN2L.DTL&type=printable

Modesto Irrigation District Votes To Cut Ties with Biomass. The
Modesto Irrigation District board voted 3-2 today to cut ties
with a proposed power plant that would burn orchard wood. Stephen
Endsley, a partner in the company that planned to build the plant
in the Beard Industrial District, said it might sue MID for
acting in bad faith and not following state environmental law.
Proponents said the plant would cleanly burn chipped wood, mainly
from orchards that have been removed, and would help MID build up
its renewable energy sources. Posted.
http://www.modbee.com/2010/10/12/1380296/modesto-mid-votes-to-cut-ties.html#ixzz12G5Z1Kjm

If Earth Were Powered From Space. Montreal — Black holes are
regions of space so massively dense and in which the force of
gravity is so strong that nothing, not the slightest energy
particle nor wave, can escape. But if two black holes collide and
merge, says Steve MacLean, president of the Canadian Space
Agency, they can eject massive jets of gas at high speed. Posted.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/business/energy-environment/13iht-renspace.html?ref=energy-environment

Electrical Charge Helps Sun Shine on Solar Panels. Montreal — At
first glance, the most logical place to establish a large-scale
solar-power installation is in the desert, where the blistering
sun is not impeded by cloud cover and much of the land is not fit
for cultivation. But these dry, inhospitable stretches of sand,
with their frequent dust-filled blasts of wind, pose a big
problem for photovoltaic panels, which are significantly less
effective when covered with dirt. Posted.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/business/energy-environment/13iht-renpanel.html?pagewanted=print

Will New Finance Rules Hurt Energy Industry? London — As
regulators and legislators in Europe and the United States hammer
out new rules governing derivatives transactions, energy
companies and investors are worried that they will find
themselves unwittingly hurt by measures designed to curtail
excessive risk-taking by financial institutions. Posted.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/business/energy-environment/13iht-rentrade.html

Ikea Plans Solar Panels for Calif. Stores. Home furnishings
retailer Ikea said Wednesday it will install solar energy panels
on eight California stores, including off Highway 101 in East
Palo Alto. Idea said collectively, the eight buildings comprise
nearly 90 percent of the IKEA presence in California, and will
total 4.5 megawatts of solar-generating capacity, nearly 20,000
panels, and an annual output of 6.65 million kilowatt hours of
electricity. Posted.
http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2010/10/11/daily47.html

Calif. Report Examines Why Utility-Scale Projects Remain
Expensive. California regulators are trying to figure out why
investor-owned utilities are paying more per kilowatt-hour for
solar power, even as the price of solar modules has fallen
precipitously. The price drop that analysts expected to see from
rising silicon supply and panel production has not materialized
for large-scale solar projects. As wholesale silicon prices fell
from a high of $500 per kilogram in 2008 to $55 in 2010,
utility-scale facilities actually became more expensive in
California. Posted.
http://www.eenews.net/Greenwire/print/2010/10/13/11

State Spending On Energy-Saving Projects Doubles – Report. States
plowed ahead with power-saving policies this year despite the
Senate's failure to pass sweeping energy and climate legislation,
according to a report released today by energy-efficiency
advocates. The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy's
report says states' energy efficiency budgets nearly doubled in
2010 from the previous fiscal year, increasing from $2.5 billion
to $4.3 billion. And reported electricity savings from efficiency
programs increased 8 percent between 2007 and 2008, when data
were last available. Posted.
http://www.eenews.net/Greenwire/print/2010/10/13/12

CDC Provides Grants For Climate Studies By States, Cities. The
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have awarded $5.25
million to eight states and two cities for programs to identify
and adapt to health effects of climate change. Arizona,
Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina and San Francisco will
each receive $350,000 over three years to assess health risks.
And Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Oregon and New York City -- which
have already conducted basic assessments -- will each get
$750,000 over the next three years to start projects to address
health risks. Posted.
http://www.eenews.net/Greenwire/print/2010/10/13/8

Calif. Braced For Big Oil Pushback. San Francisco — Defenders of
California's global warming law are bracing for a last-minute
spending blitz from oil companies determined to nix one of the
state's premier green crusades come Election Day. But the big
money may not come. Other than a $500,000 check last week
delivered from Houston-based Marathon Oil, most of the cash
raised by industry to overturn California's signature climate
policy came much earlier in the year, when the race appeared
closer. Posted.
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=A3C1057B-AB65-973E-D25FB57952C461C4

OPINION

Build ’Em and They’ll Come. Kishore Mahbubani, the dean of the
Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University
of Singapore, is over for tea and I am telling him about what I
consider to be the most exciting, moon-shot-quality,
high-aspiration initiative proposed by President Obama that no
one has heard of. It’s a plan to set up eight innovation hubs to
solve the eight biggest energy problems in the world. Posted.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/opinion/13friedman.html?_r=2&ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=print

Bill Mckibben: How Climate Denialism Conquered the Right. One
interesting fact heading into the mid-term elections: Almost none
of the GOP Senate candidates seem to believe in the idea that
humans are heating the planet. A few hedge their bets—John McCain
says he’s no longer sure if global warming is “man-made or
natural.” (In 2004, he told me: “The race is on. Are we going to
have significant climate change and all its consequences, or are
we going to try to do something early on?”) Most are more
plainspoken. Posted.
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/bill-270703-mid-hedge.html

Van Jones, Dolores Huerta Speak Against Prop. 23. Proposition 23,
the ballot measure that would roll back California’s greenhouse
gas emissions law, would kill jobs and prevent environmental
improvements in communities of color, three noted human-rights
activists said today.“I am very disturbed by Prop. 23, it is a
deceptive proposition,” Van Jones – the Oakland social- and
environmental-justice activist and author who went to Washington
last year as President Barack Obama’s “green jobs czar,” only to
be let go in the face of conservative criticism – told reporters
on a conference callPosted.
http://www.ibabuzz.com/politics/2010/10/12/van-jones-dolores-huerta-speak-against-prop-23/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PoliticalBlotter+%28Political+Blotter%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

BLOGS

C.D.C. Girds for Climate Change. The Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention have announced their first-ever direct grants to
states and cities to study the potential effects of climate
change in the United States. Some $5.25 million will be split
among eight states and two cities seeking to evaluate and
mitigate health impacts from everything from hotter summers to an
anticipated increase in waterborne illness resulting from
flooding as glaciers melt and raise sea levels, the centers said.
Posted.
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/c-d-c-allots-climate-research-money/?ref=energy-environment

Prop 26: One Election-Year Attack On The Environment You Need To
Know About. Prop 23 - the Dirty Energy Proposition - is finally
getting the attention it deserves. Prop 23 is an attack by
out-of-state oil companies on California's clean energy laws. It
essentially repeals more than 60 policies that increase solar and
wind power and decrease pollution. Posted.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/wcrowfoot/detail?entry_id=74441#ixzz12Fs06YnY

How to Spend on Clean-Energy Research. If the federal government
decided to spend $25 billion on clean-energy research — as my
column this week discusses — how should it spend that money?
Michael Greenstone of M.I.T. and the Hamilton Project suggests
starting by building a monitoring system that uses satellites and
ground-based instruments to measure the carbon emissions of each
country. Posted.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/how-to-spend-on-clean-energy-research/?pagemode=print

Research First, Cap and Trade Next. Congress seems more likely to
increase the funding for clean-energy research in the next couple
of years than to pass a cap-and-trade bill that effectively taxes
carbon emissions. But it is worth remembering that these two
policies are not mutually exclusive. Posted.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/research-first-cap-and-trade-next/?src=busln