Green Options

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Editor’s Note: This post was provided by one of our paid sponsors, Earth Cinema Circle, the only DVD club dedicated to increasing social & environmental awareness through entertaining films. Written by Ariellie Ford.

Behind America’s 99-cent hamburgers and 72-ounce sodas is a key ingredient that silently fuels our fast-food nation — Corn. In KING CORN, we meet two college buddies, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, who move from the east coast to the heartland to really learn where their food comes from.  They relocate to northern Iowa, home of their great-grandfathers, with a mission.  They will plant an acre of corn, follow their harvest into the world, and attempt to understand what all of us are really made of — Corn. This entertaining and informative film is now available from Earth Cinema Circle.  The following is from an interview with Curt Ellis, co-producer of the film.

Editors Note: This guest post was contributed by Charley Territo, spokesperson for the Alliance of Auto Manufacturers, in an effort encourage better dialogue between the auto industry and the environmental movement. Charley also contributed a guest post on Grist on May 20. I asked him to weigh in on a question I’ve had for a long time: How can automakers like GM complain that consumers only want to buy big cars when they spend hundreds of thousands advertising brands like Hummer? Here is his response. Feel free to weigh in with your own comments below.

For years it’s been assumed that, using their superior marketing skills, automakers have the ability to trick consumers into buying SUVs and pickup trucks…when, in reality, the consumers really only
wanted to buy compact cars.  While that’s probably quite flattering to the marketing departments, it doesn’t have the important benefit of actually being correct.

Current events are now allowing people to see more clearly the greater force at work driving consumer demand: Gas prices.

Democrats fall eight votes short of preventing filibuster

With gasoline prices topping $4 a gallon, Senate Democrats wanted the U.S. government to throttle back on the billions of dollars in profits being taken in by the major oil companies. But with the White House threatening a veto of the bill, the Senate voted 51-43 to close debate, well shy of the 60 votes needed to avoid a filibuster.

The proposed windfall profits tax would have been somewhere between 10 and 12 billion dollars for this year, and it would have been levied against the country’s five largest oil companies. The legislation would have also rescinded $17 billion in tax breaks the companies expect to enjoy over the next decade.

“The oil companies need to know that there is a limit on how much profit they can take in this economy,” said Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, warning that if oil prices are not reined in, “we’re going to find ourselves in a deep recession.”

As Americans spend $41 million in foreign oil an hour and are left broke at the pump, what plan does Obama have to solve this problem?

Oil is destined to be a heated issue in this upcoming presidential election and Barack Obama’s opposition to the gas tax “holiday” has already been a hot topic. Obama has made it clear that national energy policy needs to be taken in a new direction.

“We send a billion dollars to foreign nations every single day and we are melting the polar ice caps in the bargain,” said Obama. “That has to change.”

On Monday, USDA officials met with reporters to discuss just how closely biofuels (specifically corn-based ethanol) are linked to the increasing price of food. Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer, who has vehemently defended biofuels before, had this to say:

One theory that has been widely discussed in recent weeks is that the nation’s growing demand for biofuels and the crops needed to produce them is the real culprit behind higher food prices, both at home and abroad. Yet the evidence that we have seen. . .does not support this.

Big news for the wind industry, big implications for water.

First, the Department of Energy released a report that confirmed what the wind industry has already claimed: wind could power 20% of the United State’s energy needs by 2030. Even with growing energy demands, our ample wind resources could meet one-fifth of our needs with continued growth and innovation. Other nations, especially Denmark, are already deriving significant fractions of their energy from wind, sometimes with impressive results. The truth is, wind energy is booming even as the specter of the expiring Production Tax Credit moves to the House of Representatives for a vote.

Another large announcement this week came from ex-oilman T. Boone Pickens, who proved (once again) that every thing’s bigger in Texas.

He just ordered $2 billion worth of wind turbines from GE to build the world’s largest wind farm.

The White House has outlined their plan to increase fuel efficiency standards to 35 MPG by 2020, a move that will save Americans an estimated $100 billion in fuel costs.

The mandate was outlined in last year’s energy bill in December, but this proposal gives a boost to the timeline by requiring the mileage of passenger vehicles to average 31.6 MPG by 2015. That’s up from today’s average of 25 MPG (which I can’t help but mentioning is identical to the mileage of the original Model T Ford).

Speakers at a water conference in San Francisco today discussed the relationship between development and water supplies. Or, more to the point, the lack of water and continued urban sprawl in much of California and other western states.

The talk given by Roger Moore and David Boyer entitled, “The Water Supply and Land Use Interface: Lessons from a Decade of Litigation under the UWMPA, CEQA, and SB 610/221″ was part of the 2008 California Water Law & Policy Conference organized by Argent Communications Group.

Moore and Boyer, both environmental lawyers, shared their perspectives on California’s Urban Water Management Planning Act, the California Environmental Quality Act, and Senate Bills 610 and 221–often called the “show me the water” laws.

British Columbia will be the first in North America to institute a comprehensive carbon tax on nearly all fossil fuels. It’s a groundbreaking move that could prove the feasibility of taxing greenhouse-gas emissions.

Beginning July 1st, 2008, businesses and residents of British Columbia will be taxed $10 per metric ton of carbon emitted by fuels such as gasoline, diesel, natural gas, coal, propane, and home heating fuel. The tax will increase yearly by $5 per ton to $30 per ton in 2012, at which point the government will reevaluate the tax rate.

When the U.S. Congress passed the Energy Independence and Security Act last December, the bill included a passage that could effect Canada’s oilsands, and that has the Canadian government nervous.

The law prohibits federal procurement of fuels that produce more global warming emissions than conventional sources. Canada is concerned because the fuel taken from the oilsands is considered alternative fuel under the new energy act and it produces more global warming emissions than other sources. It complicates things because U.S. firms have major investments in the oilsands and the U.S. government currently gets a lot of fuel from there, so the U.S. essentially passed a law that could jeopardize this arrangement. In the province of Alberta, the oilsands represent the second largest oil reserve on the planet after Saudi Arabia.

Illinois Representative Karen May (D-Highland) has introduced a bill calling for a system of renewable energy “feed-in tariffs” (FITs) like those used in Germany to spur the development of electricity from renewable sources. After its initial reading, HB 5855, The Illinois Renewable Energy Sources Act has been reported to the House Rules Committee for initial action.

Feed-in tariffs have proven remarkably successful throughout Europe, and especially in Germany, where some 55% of the world’s solar power capacity resides. I have covered the nuts and bolts of the FIT here and I have made a short argument for them here (but for a more comprehensive treatment of how and why the policy mechanism works, I recommend visiting the World Future Council’s PACT website, which is a powerful resource for advocates, policymakers, environmentalists, tech geeks and regular folks).

In a nutshell, a feed-in tariff offers a long-term guaranteed price contract (usually about 15-20 years) to any entity that contributes electricity to the grid via renewable sources like solar, wind, biomass, landfill gas, small hydro, geothermal and methane. Whereas existing policy mechanisms like the production tax credit favor large corporations with sizable tax liability, and investment tax credits favor those folks who can afford a large upfront cost that comes with a 20-30 year payoff, this policy tool encourages the distributed generation of renewable energy and it levels the playing field by providing long-term investment security for small businesses, homeowners, churches, schools and others, so they are more willing to make the financial commitment that is necessary for installing renewable energy themselves. This is not to say that our existing RE policy tools of choice (including renewable energy standards) are inherently bad, but they may be insufficient to spark the kind of growth in clean energy the public seems to be demanding.

The diffusion of renewable energy FITs has extended from Northern Europe to include some 47 countries worldwide, but the mechanism has yet to gain much political traction in the United States. The bill is modeled after the legislation proposed in the fall of 2007, when Rep. Kathleen Law introduced HB 5218 into the Michigan House of Representatives.

Ironically, while the eyes of renewable energy policy wonks (yes, there are such a thing) have been looking to California, Michigan and Minnesota for a successful German-style feed-in tariff, Rep. May’s bill took people by surprise.