Taking Control of Our Energy Future
It's on.
Today, Senator Boxer and I introduced our "Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act" that aims to put Americans back in charge of our energy future and our security -- doing nothing less than reinventing the way America produces and uses energy. At the same time, it will help to put millions of Americans back to work, protect our children's health and our environment, invest in homegrown innovation, and create a true 21st century economy.
After decades of debate, years of avoiding the challenge, billions spent on the status quo keeping us stuck in the past, it's time for us to seize control of our energy future, our planet's future, our security future, and our economic future.
We send a billion dollars a day overseas to feed our addiction to oil. Our economy is at the mercy of fluctuations in the price of a resource we don't control. And scientists and generals warn that the climate change caused by carbon pollution threatens our health, our environment and our security.
Our bill sets carbon pollution reduction targets, creates powerful new incentives for companies to find ways to meet them, and makes historic new investments in technology and efficiency that will improve every sector of our energy economy.
Four points I want to emphasize:
First, I don't want to pass over efficiency too quickly. It's often overlooked as a key part of the mix, but it's enormously important. Because the cheapest and cleanest kilowatt of energy is the one you never use. We can make enormous strides in combating carbon pollution simply by making our energy use more efficient, and this bill responds to that by funding efficiency programs across the country and up and down our economy.
Second, our bill leverages the biggest carbon polluters and makes it clear it's time to clean up their act. Following on the bipartisan success at cleaning up acid rain, it creates a carbon pollution reduction system where those who clean up the quickest reap the rewards, while those who are slow to adjust need to pay to keep polluting. It's fair, and it works.
Third, we also invest in the new technologies that will power the world in the 21st century. A dollar invested in clean energy creates four times as many jobs as a dollar invested in the old energy. We're talking about jobs that can't be outsourced and are available to workers of all educational background in every region of our country.
Lastly, none of this will be easy. For too long, big oil lobbyists and special interests have stood between us and our goals. And these forces will not quietly give up the comforts of the way business has been done for decades.
In the last few months, we've seen that the forces resisting change will say nearly anything and will spread the most obvious and egregious lies to try to derail progress. Please be ready to join with us to rebut the fears ans smears we know all too well will be heading in our direction. No sooner did we announce our bill than the other side scheduled a press conference to label and distort.
But know this -- every day, I'll be fighting to make sure people know the truth, know the danger of doing nothing, but also understand the tremendous opportunity of meeting this challenge.
And I'll need your help. You need to raise your voice to make sure that we build the future that we need. Ted Kennedy taught me that the nature of good legislating requires perseverance.
Today is only the latest round in this fight. There are many rounds ahead. But the time has come to put America back in control of our energy future and make real progress reducing the carbon pollution that threatens us all.
To read the bill, a bill summary, explanation of each section, etc, follow this link.
Follow John Kerry on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnKerry
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Senator Kerry,
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Has hinally has acknowledged that he needs help. Excellent!
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Posish!
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R/ PRONESE
Having criticized 'research' I will say he is absolutely correct that renewable energy IS ready for prime time on a massive scale.
1) Solar at 3cents/kWh relaibility still has to be proven beyond a shadow of doubt. Best done with several large scale deplotments.
2) Wind turbine infrastructure costs about $1/W . Refer to their Wind Turbine Coast and Scaling Model report
http://www.nrel.gov/wind/pdfs/40566.pdf
It includes intitial purchase, transport, roads and civil work, assembly and installation, electrical connection, operating and maintenance, rent to land owners, replacement, etc. It looked to me to be everything except administration. And guess what? It had an example for a 1.5 MW turbine reduced to ¢/kWh. that included capacity factor.
The result: 4.76 ¢/kWh.
AND THERE ARE 0, ZERO, NADA 1) tax incentives, 2) tax credits, 3) depletion allowances 3) subsidies in that number..
3) Why must American capitalists and investors demand an ROI up-ront, before they invest?
"We the People" should demand our government to collect OUR investment via paying for electricity at 1c/kWh more today and 10-15 c/kWh , total, when big carbon burners are purged from the energy portfolio. Then, "We the People" own it and "We the Peope" sell it! The producivity of the world runs on energy, pure and simple. Let us sell the energy and allow the free market to invest in infrastrucure that creates jobs and makes stuff using that energy.
Great comment. I admit, I am asserting the best possible interpretation of the data I can find, but in any case,rooftop solar still cheap.
Would it be fair to say that the truth about solar and wind power economics seemed, at first, too good to be true?
I think this is a problem we're likely to have across the country. While George and Dick were giving polluters even more egregious preferential treatment than they'd grown accustomed to, competing technologies have advanced incredibly. For example,
http://www.shelbysupercars.com/news-012209.php
Rooftop PV solar is the cheapest electricity you can buy 3 cents per KWH.
Waste BioFUels solves our waste problems and provides all the fuel the world need.
Cheaper, faster, safe, clean forever. see my profile for proof.
ASSUMING the system lasts for 30 years. The only way to get such a warranty is the have a massive installation and the legal hutzpa to may the manufacturer follow through.
Sorry 'research' I still say your roof-top scenerio is likely to fail.
Why do you believe a nuclear power plant will last? You just want a reason not to go solar. You never responded to the idea that many place can get FREE installation of a solar power system. What's the risk then?
And your whole reliability thing is really a canard. Solar PV panels have the reputation of lasting virtually forever.
The risk is not pursuing rooftop solar and biofuel, because everything else is terrible.
I thought cash for clunkers program took care of all this climate change.
No, but the Chey Volt might. Bring it on I'm R-E-A-D-Y!
"As early as 1916, the federal government instituted income tax incentives to encourage individuals and corporations to drill for oil."
http://www.window.state.tx.us/specialrpt/energy/subsidies/
Petroleum was deemed to be in the national interest, and subsidized accordingly. Tough luck, Rex Tillerson, share holders, and Koch family, it's no longer in the national interest. Stop subsidizing 19th century technology. It is time, after 93 years, to let petroleum and coal succeed or fail on their own merits with no help from the government. Make it law, Senator Kerry, that neither industry may receive any direct assistance, nor tax exemption, nor exemption from any regulation under any circumstance. If the resources are so important to the country, nationalize the energy corporations that fail. Never give them another free lunch.
The untold difficulty with renewable energy is that it is expensive. Comparing costs is made more difficult by less than truthful reporting of total costs by wind and solar interests. Although highly variable across the US, the Energy Information Administration reported last year that both wind and solar were subsidized at a rate of $24 per megawatt hour, while coal, natural gas and nuclear received only $0.44, $0.25, and $1.59 respectively. Worse, these subsidies do not include the costs of coal-fired power plants that have to stay in operation as a backup to wind and solar. Both wind and solar must be heavily subsidized to stay in business. Once again, guess who pays for these subsidies?
A study by King Juan Carlos Univer¬sity in Spain found that 2.2 jobs were destroyed in other areas of the economy for every green job created by government decree. Further, it cost $754,000 for every green job created. Applying simple math, Obama’s 5 million new green jobs will only come at a cost of 11 million existing jobs. Worse, 90 percent of those green jobs are construction jobs that will be lost once the infrastructure nears completion.
Yes, it is expensive but we have to start somewhere. The oil industry has spent too much money suppressing new technologies and given the current financial political and economic imbalance in the world we needs answers fast. Current green technology may be just temporary measures until we can come up with more permanent innovative solutions. We have grown too complacent. It is time to dream and build again. until then, increasing our efficiency may be the best short-term solution.
That is not what that Spanish study found. They found that creating Green jobs was 2.2 times as expensive as general job creation, and falsely assumed an opportunity cost. In fact, the money spent on that Greening effort would NOT have been spent as they assume, had it not been spent on Green Jobs. The real opportunity cost of those Spanish Green Jobs is zero, and the author of that fraudulent study has been paid $170,000 by ExxonMobil to make up things that give its most serious competitor, Green Energy, a bad name.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-kerry/taking-control-of-our-ene_b_304882.html?show_comment_id=32082693#comment_32082693
Reed Young~
Thank you and thank you so much for clearing up the FACTS on the Spanish study!
Well done.
Try 5c/kWh for solar and wind - no subsidies, no depletion allowance, no tax adjustments fo suppliers of E.
PS: Current subsidies for solar and wind are to get the fat cats to fund demonstartion projects. Existing subsidies for coal and natural gas are an on-going bribe to the fat cats to continue explaoration fo coal, oil and gas.
Don't have to do that forever fo r wind and solar.
Subsidies are an incentive for the Drill-Baby-Drilers.
Politicians can grant special dispensations to those they favor, and penalize those they don’t. Faceless bureaucrats arbitrarily define the emission caps for specific industries and businesses. Pass a few bucks under the table and you get special treatment.
This type of corruption is what has happened in the European Union. So many exemptions have been made to favored industries that it has turned the entire carbon emission reduction effort into a fiasco. Not only has there been no reduction in the EU’s carbon emissions in the four years the EU has imposed cap and trade, emission rates have actually accelerated at a faster rate than those of the US. Nations are even giving rebates to industries whose energy costs are skyrocketing in an attempt to keep them from fleeing to foreign soils. Meanwhile all these machinations cost huge sums of money. Who pays for it? The taxpayers and consumers.
$70,000,000,000 in annual subsidies (that's $70 Billion, but I like the zeroes for emphasis) disproves the "idea" of government bias running rampant against petroleum and coal.
http://www.grist.org/article/2009-09-22-fossil-fuel-subsidies-dwarf-clean-energy-subsidies-obama-wants/
Where did you read all that about the European Union's experience with cap and trade, and why don't you share the link with the rest of us?
To provide safety and time to develop new energy we should create a new national energy company, separate from our vital private petroleum industries, to produce oil and gas from federal lands for US consumption to be used only in the event of interruptions due to hostilities including events when energy prices are beyond desired targets, and our US economy is threatened, turn on production from federal reserves to protect American citizens financial well being.
The National Energy Company’s purpose would be to assure petroleum supplies beyond the two month limit now available from our national petroleum storage reserve.
Anything else? That sounds costly. Where should the funds come from? China? Or higher taxes on the rich?
The whole "green" jobs movement is nonsense.
Think about it. The first thing all you greenies want us to do is to reduce our use of any and all resources. Not using as much energy does not produce jobs.
Then all the green energy require huge government subsidies to make them even remotely competitive. This bill takes the other path, that is, it taxes fossil fuels to make them more expensive. Another job killer.
Spain used to be held up as the example of a society switching over to green jobs. Turns out for every green job they created, they destroyed 2.5 non green jobs.
Kerry's bill should go down to defeat and it deserves to. Despite what the Dems say it won't be the cost of a postage stamp a day to "save the planet." It will be more like the cost of your vacation per year.
"Despite what the Dems say it won't be the cost of a postage stamp a day to "save the planet." It will be more like the cost of your vacation per year."
Cap and dividend ensures that the cost is paid by the pollluters themselves, and it's good laissez-faire capitalism; it makes a cost "externality" (carbon dioxide pollution) the financial responsibility of the entities now imposing that cost onto society and gives citizens that money as a carbon credit, to offset the polluters' expected cost increases. No, it doesn't have to cost you a dime, but if you argue that nothing should be done instead of learning which possibility is most effective and telling your members of Congress to support that, THEN you're likely to get a crappy Cap & Trade bill that will enrich Goldman Sachs and screw you.
Shed a little more light on your propaganda.
http://www.eckerd.edu/aspec/swisspage/Scientific%20Papers.htm
Big money owns your mind. You think Workaday researchers have conspired to keep their small jobs? Or is it more likely that the trillion dollar coal oil and nuke industry have the motivation and cash for an all out propaganda war, including fake think tanks funding corrupt researchers?
ONLY rooftop solar and waste BioChar are: Distributed, cheaper, safe, clean and forever. My profile proves it.
Starting wars employs people, so I would like to see a whole lot less jobs in the Energy Wars.
You deniers argue that solar is too labor intensive, than try to prove it does create jobs. BS.
Most of us Greens want you to use energy more efficiently,which will save you money, what a concept huh?
"You deniers argue that solar is too labor intensive, than try to prove it does create jobs. BS."
Out of both sides of the mouth is the only way they know how to argue.
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/paltman/imported_lies_debunking_the_sp.html
So let's dig into this "study" a little deeper...
The folks at the media watchdog group, Media Matters, jumped right on the case yesterday when Fox News cited a Spanish "study". The problems with the Spanish report start with the author: Professor Gabriel Calzada.
The Wall Street Journal has this to say about the good doctor:
"And just where did that study come from? Professor Gabriel Calzada is the founder and president of the Fundacion Juan de Mariana, a libertarian think tank founded in 2005. He's also a fellow of the Center for New Europe, a Brussels-based libertarian think tank that in recent years apparently accepted funding from Exxon Mobil."
ExxonSecrets.com reports that the "Center for New Europe" - where Gabriel Calzada is a visiting fellow - has received $170,000 form ExxonMobil since 1998. Calzada also is tied into the Heartland Institute, another well-known hub of climate science denial.
As Reuters put it - much more kindly then we would have, by the way - "Calzada, as the founder of a libertarian think tank, might not be completely objective."
Love the specifics! Good work, keep it up!
Any technical piece that begins with "Spain is a country known for its romance, wine and bullfighting"
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/paltman/imported_lies_debunking_the_sp.html
should be viewed with the utmost skepticism as should ANY work coming from ANY think tank
"Bowing to pressure from the pro-nuclear lobby, Senators Boxer and Kerry have included nuclear power into their bill to address climate change. In their proposed legislation, the Senators claim that "nuclear energy is the largest provider of clean, low-carbon, electricity...." Funny we've heard that before. In fact, the bill's nuclear section reads like it was lifted off the Nuclear Energy Institute's (NEI) website, despite its lack of veracity."
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-kessler/boxerkerry-climate-bill-g_b_304633.html
I say "No to Nukes" all of them.
They know that they can say that with impunity because they also know that their friends in the environmental movement can legally stall any nuclear plant proposal for 50 years in the courts.
HuffPost's Pick
Even ignoring nuclear radiation and only considering global warming, "Trapping Carbon Dioxide Or Switching To Nuclear Power Not Enough To Solve Global Warming Problem, Experts Say."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090713085248.htm
They point out that net heat emissions between the industrial revolution circa 1880 and the modern era at 2000 correspond to almost three quarters of the accumulated heat, i.e., global warming, during that period.
Their calculations suggest that most measures to combat global warming, such as reducing our reliance on burning fossil fuels and switching to renewables like wind power and solar energy, will ultimately help in preventing catastrophic climate change in the long term. But the same calculations also show that trapping carbon dioxide, so-called carbon dioxide sequestration, and storing it deep underground or on the sea floor will have very little effect on global warming.
. . .
The researchers also point out a flaw in the nuclear energy argument. Although nuclear power does not produce carbon dioxide emissions in the same way as burning fossil fuels it does produce heat emissions equivalent to three times the energy of the electricity it generates and so contributes to global warming significantly, Nordell adds.
Green energy is low quality energy. It wastes resources that should be used to feed people. No honest study suggests that it could ever produce more than 20% of our national power consumption. It will force everyone to do less WITH LESS. This, people is the Green Economy. It is an anemic, boring, emasculating, over regulated death march into the future.
Sorry to say, but there is no free lunch. We can't have it all. Kerry, Gore, Pelosi, Waxman....snake oil salesmen all.
We could, however, build several nuclear reactor plants, stop attacking the coal industry, develop our own domestic energy sources, put solar panels wherever it made sense, and promote conservation and an efficient cascading use of various qualities of energy.
So let's have the honest debate. A robust economy with plenty of choices and opportunities where we match the quality of energy to the given task, or a clamped down, watch your step, high transition-cost policy that reduces our quality of life.
Quality of life is being reduced by polluted air, water, and soil.
NO TO NUKES!
Quality of life is also reduced by turning off the heat and electricity. Which are we going to choose?
"No honest study suggests that it could ever produce more than 20% of our national power consumption."
What honest study predicts that 20% is the maximum?
We'll create a brand new fiat currency backed by nothing called Carbon Tax Credits, and controlled by bankers, that will tax our right to exist.
Could we please leave the bogus AGW pseudo-science out of this bill and just face our real problems for what they are?
Have you ever asked yourself how can Gore make such statements when there are over 31,000 scientists and climatologists who publically signed a petition stating they do NOT agree? http://www.petitionproject.org/ 31,000! Very clearly the debate is NOT over! It should alarm you greatly that one man has the power to silence that many people who disagree with him.
That petition has been discredited more times than I can count. To quote the prestigious National Academy of Science:
"The petition project was a deliberate attempt to mislead scientists and to rally them in an attempt to undermine support for the Kyoto Protocol. The petition was not based on a review of the science of global climate change, nor were its signers experts in the field of climate science."
The petition is over ten years old. Most of the signers were not scientists working in the field of science change and publishing in peer reviewed journals. The petition is a fraud.
What fraction of those 31,000 "scientists" have ever published ANYTHING in a peer-reviewed science journal? What fraction of that fraction published ANYTHING on climatology? And what fraction of that fraction have ever had their published work on climatology cited in ANYBODY else's research in climatology?
That is the fraction of your 31,000 whose disagreement is relevant and worthy of inspection. I strongly suspect the number would be fewer than the remaining 350 or 400 (of originally 650 or 700, IIRC) who haven't demanded their names be removed from, or their comments corrected in, James Inhofe's notorious Environment and Public Works (epw) Minority Report.
Can we all agree that "too big to fail" = "too big to exist" in every industry, not only finance?
http://www.grist.org/article/2009-09-22-fossil-fuel-subsidies-dwarf-clean-energy-subsidies-obama-wants/
If so, what should we do about the apparent chronic need of the petroleum corporations?
Why have no global warming deniers agreed with this premise yet? Isn't a free, un-subsidized market good laissez-faire capitalism, independent of our opinions of global warming?
Don’t look now, but it seems as if another climate hockey stick might have had its blade broken. And it’s kinda hard to sell the AGW fraud without hockey sticks.
After a report released that over regulation through California’s personal version of cap and trade killed millions of jobs in the state, caused a significant amount of tax payers to flee and basically bankrupted the state, she of course wants to take it nationally. These people are purposefully trying their best to destroy the economy of this country. They are stopping creation of wealth to ensure that only a small group benefits. Hopefully Boxer is not going to survive, her numbers are not where an incumbent’s should be. I will be happy to say good-bye.
blinders are for horses
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOLkze-9GcI&feature=channel
Kerry has my support. Carbon taxes or clean up your coal plant emissions, take your choice Romeo (grandpa), your way of thinking is history. We should have taken the 900billion bank bailout and built solar panel plants across the country. We would have jobs, clean energy, and energy independence all for the same dollar spent. I am an engineer, anyone who tells you that solar doesn't work is lying or stupid. Solar panel efficiency is up, costs per watt are down, the panels are warranted for 25 years, but will probably last centuries. A box of batteries the size of a fridge can power your house for several cloudy days. That's a real solution, your comment may be partially based on facts, saying that dems want to "destroy the economy". If you really think that, you must be crazy. They are trying to change the way electricity is created.
Care to cite some sources? Everything that I have read indicates that solar panel efficiency declines by about 50% in ten years. After ten years you would have just about recouped your money saved in not buying power off the grid.
As usual, you didn't cite your source, meaning your "information" either comes from Fox News, cato.org or some other wrong-wing site which you know is lying and will be correctly discredited by every thinking person here; or you cut it from whole cloth yourself.
Even without any numbers or specifics of any kind from you, I can tell everybody else reading your comment that whatever "California’s personal version of cap and trade" has cost the state, there is a more important reason that it is in financial trouble, and that is the flat two Senators per state rule in the Constitution, whose result is to disproportionately send pork to worthless projects like "corn ethanol" which enriches corrupt patrons like the Andreas family, which owns Archer Daniels Midland, which in turn pays off crooked Senators like Grassley, who "represents" a state which produces a lot of corn.
In more populated, diverse states like California, elections are more competitive, Senators don't have effectively lifetime appointments like Grassley has, and therefore they don't generally have the seniority of the small state Senators. Dixiecrat Senator Byrd (Coal, not WV) is another example. The result is that California pays more than its fair share, while Red States freeload on the backs of Liberals, who are really the productive members of society. Always have been.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/22685.html
Read it and weep. The more populous and demographically diverse states subsidize the Bible Belt, the South, and the Midwest.
Then talk to your Representatives in the House, which is based on per capita representation. It's a bicameral legislative body for a reason.....
"A report"
I saw a report that said it created millions of new jobs. so there.
I would go with the numbers recently put out in an editorial by Barbara Boxer, who claimed that 100,000 jobs were created in the California Green Economy over the past 8 years. Most of those jobs were government or research related, which means that they were basically useless. Add to that the additional non-starter that was California's $2 billion stem cell research program, and we see why the people running our state are completely on the wrong track economically. We tax ourselves to fund research that, at best, will lead to technolgies that no one will be able to afford (without additional taxes for subsidies). We continue to rip up existing industries and business to redirect our State's economy into much less profitable directions. And we put the burden on those who have always pulled more than their fare share of the public price tag.
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