Clean Energy is an Easy Choice
The past few months the political debate inside and outside the beltway has largely been centered on health care reform, but I wanted to take a moment and turn the discussion to the big battle looming on the horizon.
Congress is gearing up to take on another critical challenge we're facing: transforming our energy economy and addressing the grave threat of climate change. As a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, I've been working with my Senate colleagues to craft a bill that will create clean energy jobs, reduce air pollution and liberate our country from depending on dirty coal and foreign oil.
The House passed an energy bill earlier this year and we in the Senate are building on those efforts. The Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, introduced by Senators Kerry and Boxer, will significantly invest in renewable energy technologies such as wind, solar, and biomass as well as invest in public transportation and energy efficiency. These investments are critical if we want to strengthen America's energy independence, reduce harmful air pollution and create clean energy jobs in local communities.
Specifically, the Kerry-Boxer bill will stimulate even more investment in clean energy by creating a pollution reduction and investment program that would go beyond what the House proposed, to cut pollution 20% by 2020. And the bill will go even further to strengthen national security and reduce oil dependence with a requirement that cities and states plan for cleaner and more efficient transportation infrastructure, like public transit systems. We also create an incentive program for forest and agriculture land-owners to undertake projects that reduce emissions beyond that achieved by the pollution reduction program and offsets under the bill.
I should add that after this bill passes out of the Environment and Public Works Committee, it will be joined with provisions to create a national Renewable Electricity Standard. I am determined to make that provision better than what has been proposed to date.
All of the things I mentioned in the bill add up to a major change in our nation's energy policy. They put us on a path to building industries and creating clean energy jobs, weaning our nation from foreign oil, and reducing pollution in order to avoid the catastrophic effects of global warming.
As we continue on a path forward to fight climate change and invest in innovative technologies, we will constantly be challenged by the influential fossil fuel interests. Just like we're witnessing with efforts to reform health care, powerful lobbyists will do everything in their power, including making up the most scurrilous distortions, to water down and block effective climate change legislation.
We cannot let them control the message in the media and we cannot let them control our future. I will do everything in my power to speak out and explain to my colleagues that as much as the special interests try to portray this issue as complicated and confusing, we face a clear and simple choice.
It's a choice between clean air or dirty air.
It's a choice between creating jobs here in America or shipping those jobs overseas.
It's a choice between strengthening our national security or remaining addicted to foreign oil.
To me, the choice is simple. We can no longer continue with a status quo energy policy. We must create sustainable clean energy jobs and leave the planet to our children and grandchildren in better shape than we found it.
Follow Sen. Jeff Merkley on Twitter: www.twitter.com/SenJeffMerkley
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Yeah, Jeff Merkley. Go get 'em Senator!
Thanks Jeff, you make me proud that I voted for you. Keep up the good work!
Senator, there is a HUGE difference between REAL energy independence, which is democratically-owned, point of use solutions like rooftop solar, conservation, storage, passive solar, etc. and the crap that Big Energy is trying to sell us (large, remote, wilderness-killing central station industrial solar and wind, with long, SF6 spewing transmission). Please be clear that the former will save this nation's economy, environment and democracy and the latter will re-entrench the dirtbags at Chevron, BP, Goldman Sachs, Pickens, Sempra, Bechtel, etc, while totally destroying tens of millions of acres of ecosystem, depleting our water and substantially warming the planet.
How is it possible that Big Banking and Big Energy are getting 100% of the benefits of environmental legislation and WE ARE FORCED TO PAY AND PAY, with eminent domain, reduced property values, ratepayer and taxpayer hijacking, loss of public lands (which currently sequester carbon), super-high "infrastructure" costs which are privately owned by Big Energy, etc.??? Where are our loans and feed in tariffs so that WE can be the renewable energy revolution and produce 100% of this nation's electricity within our existing built environment (DOE proved it's possible in 2003 from PV alone)????
If you care about America in the least, you will TRASH this hideous cap and trade in support of democratic point of use solutions. You work for us, remember?
No nukes Merkley
I notice the Senator writes nothing about the bill's inadequate nuclear support but gives headline billing to renewables.
Germany has already wasted 10 years and $100 billion dollars on renewables and has not reduced its greenhouse emissions one iota. To help with its wind powered addiction to Russian gas, it is planning a massive build of dirty coal plants to meet its baseload power requirements.
The United States spends $1 trillion annually on fossil fuels. Projections and now evidence from India shows that mass production of nuclear reactors have cut costs from todays less than $2 billion to less than $1 billion a gigawatt - 5% of current renewable costs. $2.5 trillion in nukes saves $1 trillion annually for a 2.5 year payback.
Efficient, nuclear waste burning Gen IV reactors are now coming into service with centuries worth of nuclear fission fuel available and producing waste no more dangerous than natural uranium.
The nuclear conversion saves us a ton of money, eliminates our air pollution, creates a huge employment boosting domestic and export industry, and makes our economy far more competitive than Europe's run by fools with the "renewable" religion. With the current depression, the industrial capacity is available. We can do this.
We are as little as ten years from a civilization ending global warming/peak oil catastrophe so solution is urgent. Read this paper and buy a lotto ticket because it might already be happening.
www.whoi.edu/page.do?cid=9986&pid=12455&tid=282
Lame
Consider the Connection to:
Denial Vs. Action
SEE NO-_______-
HEAR NO-______-
SPEAK NO-_____-
-health care reform-public option-air & water pollution-clean energy jobs-global warming-
DENIAL (-)___R___(+) ACTION
The choice is ours.
Our economy, health care, & planet R N D balance!!!
Great article, Sen. Jeff Merkley
www.politicalbase.com/CTC123GREEN
Cap and Trade is a bankster playground, not a climate bill.
This is the most cynical Bait and Switch I have ever seen.
50B$ to coal???!?!?
revival of insane Nuke power????
and a pittance to rooftop solar and waste biofuels, the two energy source that are clean cheap, safe and forever. see my profile for details.
Dump Cap and trade, it has crashed repeatedly!
1$ per ton Tax carbon equivalent, for all pollution. CO2, methane, Curies, Mercury etc...CA has a similar law.
I would never support insane nuclear power, but more research into the ways in which the French and Japanese are proceeding with nuclear power would have it merits. Nuclear power, while clean and efficient, has its dangers, and should never be allowed to be operated by the insane.
Societies change, governmnet fall...
Nukes lead to more proliferation, same tech, same technologists, same companies, same materials. That's why Iran's power program is so threatening.
3 cent Rooftop Solar and Organic Waste BioFuels/BioChar can supply all the electricity, energy and fuel the worlds needs, cleanly safe, cheaper, carbon negative, and forever.
See my profile for details, links and proof.
If you want a safe nuclear reactor, contact the U.S. Navy. It is really safe, but that is not the point. The point is that not one ounce of nuclear waste has been recycled. The waste from the Manhattan Project is still sitting around waiting for a storage unit to be constructed. The problem is not so much safety, but getting rid of the waste.
Remember that nuke power is clean and safe, too cheap to meter.
Interestingly, our President, Obama, has publicly supported insane nuclear power when he stated that Iran should be allowed to pursue nuclear development for peaceful purposes, i.e. energy. This for Iran, a country that sits on one of the world's largest oil reserves, and almost certainly requires less energy as a country, than does several blocks of the Vegas strip.
Obama is wrong.
Remember Occam's Razor guys. It's not Fox News that's perpetuating the global warming, science denying, naysayer movement. It's the detestable corporations that manufacture all of the high-end winter gear that so many of us love to sport while getting out of our hybrids. These companies' token support of environmental causes is merely a clever ploy to obfuscate the fact their their products are no longer necessary. I mean, who's going to buy a $500.00 jacket when no one can remember that last time it was cold.
Who is going to buy a $500 jacket? That is half a months income for me.
Tax on the middle class and a killer to small business. What about the White House report from Treasury that said it would cost $1700 a year in higher taxes costs/taxes....Dems in moderate districts who vote for this are going to lose their job.
in other words, we must change
but don't expect miracles.
but..., in the long run we don't have a choice because of a little something called,
PEAK OIL
DEPLETION
google it.
Unfortunately, peak oil is a dead idea. They have discovered that dead plants are not necessary to produce oil. Oil can be produced by the forces deep in the Earth.
Google it.
(if i make a mistake -- correct me -- i'm in a hurry)
ok -- so here's the question:
WHAT HAS MORE ABILITY TO DO WORK???
1. water falling down from a 150 foot hill nd collecting in a lake on a plateau 20,000 feet above sea level?
or
2. water falling down from a 10,000 foot montain to sea level???
well, water at an elevation of 20,000 feet has more potential energy but when it collects on the plateau it can't fall any further. that's it. not as much energy there despite the greater elevation.
water falling from 10,000 feet has less potential energy but is falling further before it stops at sea level, therefore that has more potential to do work.
it's not the elevation or the temperaure that matters.
what matters, is the difference in hight or the difference in temperture.
There's allot of wind and solar energy but it's very diffuse.
it's not like water falling from 10,000 feet down to sea level. it's more like water falling from a hill up 20,000 and collecting on a plateau. It looks good, but if you look at it from a physics stand point..., it's going to take a heck of alot of wind mills and solar panels to make up the difference. MUST SCALE.
this doesn't mean it can't be done,,, just that it's not as easy as some make it sound.
2030 energy demand by all sectors (ALL residential, ALL commercial, ALL indusrial, ALL auto transportation) can be met by 3.7 million wind trurbines OR 13,000 175-MW, 1mi2 solar thermal plants in the desert SW. That assumes 20% CF on wind and 50% CF for SEGS. Solar PV is becoming more cost effective too. AUSRA has shown that SEGS can deliver coast-to-coast baseload power based on plants in CA, AZ, NM, TX.
But this doesn't yield 100% dispatchability. So we have to store energy by: 1) pumping H2O uphill and extract energy as you outlined, 2) electrolyzing H2O and recovering power from the stored H2.
For you enviro folks, transporting electicty underground by HVDC doesn't require SF6 nor high tension wires dangling across the landscape. Does anyone recall that in the 1950's we laid over a million miles of undergraound, welded, leak-tested gas pipelines form TX to virtually every home in the US. We did that in about 10 years. We can do conversion to 100% renewable in 20 years.
excellent
some people don't like reality
they'd prefer to deal in left / right political fantasy
another thing that bugs me about this whole green thing is the lack of honesty about ENERGY in general
energy is the ability to do work.
there are laws that describe how it works
energy can't be created or destroyed
it flows from a high state to a low state and in the process, can do work
think of it as being like gradients. the gradient naturally tries to even out. but it tries to even out by flowing from density or higher temp. to less dense, or lower temp. If you want to cool something off, like in a fridg, then you must heat the environment more then you cool off the inside of the fridge. In other words, the fridge and the air conditioner are heaters that generate more heat then cold, as they transfer heat from one room to another. so if you are going to reverse the natural tendensy, you can, but only at the cost of generating more heat somewhere else.
and not all energy is created equl -- it's not a human being
I guess going green because of PEAK OIL or Depletion
is just not politically correct
nor is it politically correct to state that the change will be difficult because of the need for new infrastructure plus that fact that green energy is diffuse and hard to store.
batteries will not work. the best idea to store energy from wind or solar would be to force water uphill and then release when the wind doesn't blow or the sun doesn't shine.
although natural gas is considered a clean energy its extraction can be deadly for the environment and human health.....
http://www.riverkeeper.org/news-events/news/ny-state-plans-for-industrial-gas-drilling-in-nyc-watershed/
Natural gas is not a clean energy. CO2!
"Just like we're witnessing with efforts to reform health care, powerful lobbyists will do everything in their power, including making up the most scurrilous distortions, to water down and block effective climate change legislation."
This is exactly why we need to make bribery (aka private campaign finance) illegal first, before doing anything else. Every single fight against corporate interests will be much easier if we take away their power to bribe elected officials.
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