Wanted: better capitalists

In a recent talk I gave at the University of Massachusetts Amherst titled, “Needed: Skillful Capitalists to Lead Us to a Low-Carbon Future,” I argued that smartly crafted laws and regulations designed to address major problems (like climate change) often create new markets for American-made goods and services.

I asked why aren’t more forward-thinking companies, who understand the problem of climate change and the opportunities presented by growing demand for clean energy products, stepping up in a more assertive way?

One of my reluctant conclusions was that when it comes to recognizing the need for change and capitalizing on new opportunities, we too often turn out to be not very good capitalists. Americans are global leaders in inventing technologies that produce ever-more-efficient advances, but we can be lousy at assuring that we retain the competitive capacity to manufacture and export the products that result from our innovation.

A foundation for hope in the auto industry

Not long after I gave that talk last month, I read a speech given by General Motors CEO Dan Akerson to the IHS CERAWeek conference in Houston on March 6, that showcases the kind of smart capitalist vision I was looking for.

His eloquent speech suggests that he is a forward-leaning CEO who wants to lead his company into a profitable low-carbon future. If he can convert his vision into reality, he will influence not just one of our largest companies but an entire industry and beyond.

(That leadership is needed in an industry which continues to signal that it doesn’t have the confidence to seize the future. In the most recent example, the industry’s major trade groups, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers and the Association of Global Automakers, recently filed a petition with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last month to block California’s requirement that 1.4 million electric, plug-in hybrid, and fuel cell vehicles be sold by 2025.)

Akerson, a Naval Academy graduate and veteran corporate manager, is able to speak with the credibility of a CEO who has led his company from bankruptcy to profitability and renewed growth since he took the reins at General Motors in September 2010.

His central message was that thanks to more fuel-efficient vehicles, more energy-efficient homes and factories, and expanded domestic oil and gas production, we are presented “with an historic opportunity to create a national energy policy from a position of strength….”

The pillars of such a long-term energy plan, he said, must include: energy diversity, including renewable energy; energy efficiency, “so we can absorb the impact of prosperity and population growth”; and “long-term investments in nascent technologies to drive CO2 emissions even lower.

“GM’s own experience shows these pillars work,” Akerson said.

GM’s plan to profit, cut carbon, and save fuel

Drawing a contrast between the need to meet the new standards that will nearly double new vehicle fuel economy by 2025 and the auto industry’s earlier efforts dating back to the 1970s oil shocks, Akerson said, “(T)his time around, the past is not prologue, because we are deploying technology that will satisfy customers and make an enormous contribution to energy security at the same time.”

At the risk of tipping “my whole hand to our competitors,” he then shared core elements of GM’s fuel economy plan through the 2016 model year, which I’m proud to note are largely consistent with what UCS’s vehicle engineers have been recommending.

These include:

• Reducing vehicle weight. He notes that “a good rule of thumb is that a 10 percent reduction in curb weight will reduce fuel consumption by about 6.5 percent.”
• GM’s target: reducing vehicle weight by up to 15 percent. He reassures consumers that there will be no need to “throw safety, comfort and performance out the window to get there….”
• Optimizing mass efficiency. “(T)he new Cadillac ATS – the brand’s first North American Car of the Year – is actually lighter than a comparable BMW 3-Series.”
• Aggressively investing in advanced materials, including Nano steels, carbon fiber and resistance spot welding for aluminum structures.
• Deploying clean diesel engines “where they make business sense”, such as GM’s new B20-ready Chevrolet Cruze diesel.
• Improving the thermodynamic efficiency of GM’s gasoline engines “using a suite of technologies, including turbocharging, direct injection, variable valve timing and cylinder deactivation.”

Doubling down on electrification

Akerson, however did not stop there. He also doubled down with a strong commitment to vehicle electrification.

“You know, it’s a sport in some circles to poke fun at electric vehicles, especially at this early stage in their commercialization. But the era of using electricity to help improve performance and fuel economy is already here and the trend is only going to grow.”

Akerson said he expects to have some 500,000 vehicles on the road with some form of electrification by 2017 – including “pure electric vehicles like the Chevrolet Spark, extended range EVs like the Chevrolet Volt and Cadillac ELR, and eAssist, a light-electrification technology that allows large cars like the Buick LaCrosse to achieve up to 36 mpg on the highway.”

This is an important commitment from the company that is notorious for pulling the plug on its early electric vehicle program. In some respects, though, I’d rather bet on a company that is building from an earlier failure than one starting out fresh, as there’s a certain stubborn determination to succeed that drives the second attempt.

Praise where praise is due

UCS analysts have been critical of GM’s decisions in past years when the company wasn’t recognizing the urgency of climate change and sufficiently anticipating and investing in the future. We’ve also called out clear signs of progress, such as the industry’s endorsement of federal standards that will cut global warming emissions from their new vehicle fleets in half and GM’s decision to cut ties with climate skeptics like the Heartland Institute.

While we won’t always agree on the ways forward, we should acknowledge and celebrate strong leadership when it comes. CEO Akerson’s Houston speech lays out a compelling pathway to the future, and I applaud him and wish him well in his stewardship of one of America’s most storied companies.

Echoing the President’s own understanding of the robustness of the body of climate science, we said that “continued high emissions will lock in increasingly dangerous and irreversible changes in climate for future generations.”

We stressed that we now have a renewed window for action, emphasizing that “public understanding of the urgent need to adopt measures that reduce the risk of disruptive future climate has shifted significantly in the past few years, creating a more favorable environment within which to win support for far reaching climate policies.”

The full text of the letter highlights what our UCS team believes are the highest priority measures the President can take in the next year or two.

(In our letter, we primarily focused on climate change, clean energy, and science leadership – not because other areas that UCS works on, like reducing the threat of nuclear weapons or moving toward sustainable agricultural practices, aren’t important, but because we thought it important to prioritize our “asks.”)

Wanted: Scientists and engineers in the cabinet, White House

One of those asks was that he build on his first term success of appointing highly capable scientists and engineers to key cabinet and other senior posts.

What some dubbed the “dream green team” was more accurately a dream science team, with Nobel laureate Stephen Chu, a physicist, as Secretary of Energy; Jane Lubchenco, with degrees in biology, zoology, and ecology, as Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; John Holdren, with degrees in aerospace engineering and theoretical plasma physics, as the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy; and Lisa Jackson, a chemical engineer, as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Chu, Lubchenco, and Jackson have departed or shortly will depart the Administration, and the President appeared to be heeding our call when he named his new nominees for Secretary of Energy and the EPA, Ernie Moniz and Gina McCarthy, last Monday. (No successor to Lubchenco has been named yet.)

Of course being a scientist doesn’t guarantee a strong leader and manager of these large federal operations. The ideal combination is scientific expertise (or, at minimum, understanding how to access and rely upon it), leadership and management skills, policy knowledge and savvy, and commitment to public service.

A seasoned, versatile physicist

Like Secretary Chu, Dr. Moniz is a seasoned and well regarded physicist – at one point chairing the Department of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at another serving as director of the Bates Linear Accelerator Center.

And also like his predecessor, he has immersed himself over his career in understanding energy technology and policy, leading, for example, a series of studies on the future of nuclear power, coal, nuclear fuel cycles, natural gas, and solar energy in a low-carbon world.

Dr. Moniz has considerable experience managing federal government agencies, having served as Under Secretary of the Department of Energy from 1997-2001 and as Associate Director for Science of the Office of Science and Technology Policy from 1995-97.

He is also knowledgeable about nuclear weapons issues – a high priority at DOE — and is equipped to make the case that the President can achieve his goal of increasing US security by further reducing the size of our nuclear arsenal. In his former DOE role, he led a comprehensive review of the nuclear weapons stockpile stewardship program.

The nominee has attracted some concern from some in the environmental community because of his support for nuclear energy and natural gas, even as his views appear to be consistent with the President’s call for an “all of the above” energy strategy. It will be important for him to work with the science and environmental communities and industry to address the climate change and safety issues associated with those energy sources.

A science-based decider

Ms. McCarthy, with the benefit of a Master of Science in Environmental Health Engineering from Tufts University and tours of duty as a top environmental protection official for Republican governors in Massachusetts and Connecticut and her current role as Assistant Administrator for EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, has consistently, in my observation, grounded her decisions in the best available science.

In fact, as I told the Washington Post last week, “What she’s tough about is the science-based standard. She’s very pragmatic about how you get there.”

She was instrumental, in President Obama’s first term, in fashioning the strong greenhouse gas emission standards that will nearly double the fuel economy of the American vehicle fleet by 2025 – standards that were widely endorsed by auto manufacturing companies, in part because of their attention to practical considerations. Similarly, the air toxics rule that she stewarded had strong science-based reduction targets and also flexibility for industry to help them achieve them.

These two nominees are in the spirit of the President’s first-term science appointments, and are a compelling signal that he intends to advance national action on climate change over the next four years. Our letter of February 21 has useful guidance for his new team on ways to make significant progress.

From his speech on the night of his successful re-election to his remarkable inaugural speech and multiple times in between, the President’s clear and inspiring comments offer a clear rationale and compelling call to action. His next big speech, the State of the Union, is traditionally where presidents provide more details on their plans for the coming year, and we can expect President Obama to do that next Tuesday.

In his speech on election night, he said, “We want our kids to grow up in an America…that isn’t threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet.”

At his first press conference after his re-election, the President responded to a reporter’s question about climate change with an extensive, highly informed answer, emphasizing: “I am a firm believer that climate change is real, that it is impacted by human behavior and carbon emissions.  And as a consequence, I think we’ve got an obligation to future generations to do something about it.”

Then, in his inaugural address, he devoted more precious text to climate change than to any other issue, including an emphatic: “We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.”  He underscored the robustness of climate science, saying, “Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms.”

The American people, the Congress, our nation’s corporate leadership and the President’s cabinet can now have no doubt about his intent and resolve to lead on this problem.

The moment—and the economics—are ripe for bold action

Our collective job now is to respond to his call to action by demanding bold action from our leaders at every level of government, and to win adoption of policies and practices that achieve the mandate of swiftly and deeply reducing greenhouse gas emissions here and globally. Alden Meyer, our director of strategy and policy, eloquently laid out the range of needed policy options in his recent blog, so I won’t be reviewing them again here.

Instead, I want to make the case that the time is ripe for a renewed round of leadership and progress in the fight to address climate change—a reading of the evolving economics and politics of climate change that, in addition to his acute understanding of the magnitude and urgency of the problem, may well be behind the President’s inclusion of climate action in his top second term priorities.

Consider these signs of readiness to tackle climate change:

Strong leadership at the state and local levels—Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger come quickly to mind when we think about who has led their states in attracting clean energy companies and in reducing carbon pollution. But they are but the tip of the iceberg, as an impressive number of local elected officials are leading the way in preparing their cities for climate change while reducing their jurisdiction’s carbon footprints—leaders like Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker, Grand Rapids (MI) Mayor George Heartwell, and Broward County (FL) Vice Mayor Kristin Jacobs. Republican governors Sam Brownback of Kansas, John Kasich of Ohio and Terry Branstad of Iowa are bullish on wind and solar power in their states, as they appear to appreciate the positive economic impact these growing sectors have contributed through a deep recession.  Washington State’s new governor, Jay Inslee, campaigned on an aggressive transition to a clean energy economy. In every corner of the country, elected officials are leading on climate action, and while they are not waiting for federal leadership, many would welcome it. And the design of federal climate and clean energy policies can build upon and learn from the exceptional work being done in the states and communities.

The clean energy economy is helping states prosper—The wind and solar power industries have been one of the brightest stories of our economic recovery, as they have been helping struggling state economies pull out of the recession by adding quality jobs, private investment, more reliable electricity generation, and an expanded tax base while doubling in size. The domestic auto industry is similarly back on its feet, in large part by filling its showrooms with significantly more fuel efficient vehicles featuring advanced green technology. American consumers are responding by choosing stylish new options such as the Ford Fusion Hybrid and Lincoln MK3 Hybrid.

An especially encouraging sign has been the rejuvenating boost that all this activity has provided to the struggling U.S. manufacturing base. In 2005, just 35 percent of the wind towers, blades and turbines installed at American wind farms were made in the U.S. Today nearly 70 percent are made in America, at nearly 500 manufacturing facilities in 44 states. Those manufacturers are locating their plants in states that have put out the welcome mat with supportive policies (like Colorado, where 6,000 people are employed making wind turbine and tower components today) and/or have strong wind resources (like Iowa, which today generates more than 20 percent of its electricity needs from wind alone). Wind manufacturers in western Michigan, noting that the industrial design and metal-bending skills cross over nicely, are expanding production and hiring laid-off auto workers.

The clean energy sector now has a proven record of growth and reliability, and is ready for the demands that strong climate policies will make of it.

The best and brightest innovative minds are on the case—We are starting to harvest the exceptional fruits of a dispersed network of innovators and investors across the country that is making our economy and lifestyles much more efficient and carbon-friendly. That network lives in the technology labs and production lines of Ford Motor Co., General Motors, Vestas WindSystems, Siemens and General Electric; in the tens of thousands of scrappy young companies birthing and nurturing the next generation of technological advances in Silicon Valley, Kendall Square, and North Carolina’s Research Triangle; in the scientists, engineers and industrial designers who pursue labors of love at the national labs in Boulder, Berkeley, Los Alamos and Argonne; and in the risk-taking venture capital investors concentrated in New York, Chicago, Atlanta and Los Angeles. Together, that network represents our economic future—and an entrepreneurial team ready to further expand the markets for American-made ever-more-efficient products and services that smartly-crafted public policies will open.

We’re successfully pioneering new ways to write the rules—The process that yielded the new auto standards that will nearly double the fuel economy of passenger vehicles in the U.S. by 2025 are a model for other major sectors of our economy for how to meet their responsibilities to deeply cut their carbon pollution. In that instance, the Obama administration sat down with leadership from major auto manufacturing companies, the United Auto Workers, and with UCS and other technical experts and negotiated a bold leap forward in reduced heat-trapping emissions from vehicles sold in the U.S. The negotiators were disciplined in setting science-based emission reduction goals while open to flexibility in how the companies met those goals.

As we turn to other major carbon-emitting sectors—such as electricity generation, oil and gas refining, heavy manufacturing, transportation and buildings—for similar leadership, the success of the process to reduce tailpipe emissions and set a clear roadmap for the next decade or two can be emulated. The essential keys are crafting a performance standard with clear metrics and milestones based on what science tells us about the magnitude of needed carbon emission reductions and being open to creative and flexible ways for industry to meet that standard.

Millions of Americans are connecting the dots—In the last year alone, extreme weather and other conditions that are worsened by climate change ravaged or stressed the lives of millions of people, and recent polls show that more Americans are connecting the dots and accepting the science. The extreme drought that destroyed crops throughout the farm belt was consistent with scientists’ projections that we’ll see more frequent and extended droughts. The forest fires that took lives and livelihoods in Colorado, northern California, and other states were exacerbated by drier soils and tree-killing pests like the pine bark beetle. Hurricane Sandy’s storm surges were more destructive in part because of sea level rise along the Atlantic coast.

As new summaries of climate science and impacts become available through the draft National Climate Assessment released last month and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report due out beginning this fall, the President and other leaders have the tools needed to educate the American people about the nature and urgency of the problem. But as with many state and local leaders, many Americans have been drawing on their observations of their region’s changing climate—as gardeners, hunters, hikers and carpenters who spend time outdoors—and have a personal understanding of the phenomenon unfolding around us.

Re-setting the national conversation

In his press conference after the election in November, President Obama said he planned over the coming months to have a “a wide-ranging conversation with scientists, engineers and elected officials to find out what…more can we do to make short-term progress in reducing carbons, and then working through an education process that I think is necessary, a discussion…across the country about…what realistically can we do long term to make sure that this is not something we’re passing on to future generations that’s going to be very expensive and very painful to deal with.”

That has led UCS and others to urge the President to follow through on his interest in initiating this national conversation by convening leaders of the science, business, labor, civil rights, environmental justice, security, faith and environmental communities, along with elected officials at the federal, state and local levels, for a White House Summit on Climate Resilience. One promising approach would be to convene a series of regional climate impacts and solutions gatherings as a learning tour as a build-up to the national summit. These steps would help educate the American people about the need for bold and urgent action, engage national and community leaders in devising strategies for climate preparedness and risk reduction, and direct and build the growing demand among Americans for responsible action.

Like many of you, I am eagerly awaiting the President’s State of the Union address, to learn how he will propose acting in response to the ever-clearer threat posed by climate change. Combining his powerful leadership with the legions of Americans in the private sector, in government and in our communities who are already hard at work reducing global warming emissions is an exciting development, and gives me real hope that this response will be appropriately ambitious and bold.

The production tax credit has led to extraordinary results

Image: Charles Cook; Flickr Commons

The tax credit provides a credit of 2.2 cents per kilowatt-hour of electricity produced by wind turbines — as well as geothermal, biomass, and underwater turbines — for the first 10 years of production, which helps level the playing field between wind and coal and natural gas. Its “cost” is in lost revenue to the Treasury, estimated at $1.36 billion a year between now and 2015 if renewed by Congress, according to the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.

The credit, in turn, leverages $15.5 billion in private investment each year, according to the American Wind Energy Association, and has led to extraordinary results. Over the last five years — with the help of the tax credit, state renewable electricity standards and stimulus spending — U.S. wind capacity has more than tripled. And that growth has powered a rebirth of American manufacturing: U.S.-based wind turbine, blade, tower and gearbox manufacturing has nearly doubled from 35 to 67 percent since 2005.

Image: Wind Capital Group

Tens of thousands of jobs are at stake

Unlike a number of fossil-fuel and nuclear-power subsidies that are decades-old and permanent, the tax credit, which debuted in 1992, has to be renewed by Congress every few years. That puts the relatively new wind industry at a distinct disadvantage, making it difficult to attract investors and plan years in advance.

If Congress doesn’t extend the tax credit, tens of thousands of wind industry employees will lose their jobs. A December 2011 study by Navigant Consulting estimated that investment in wind projects would drop 65 percent and the industry would have to lay off nearly half of its workforce—some 37,000 people—next year. Given the uncertainty, layoffs already have begun across the country.

Congress has spent substantially more to support fossil fuels and nuclear power

Those calling for Congress to kill the tax credit ignore the fact that Congress historically has spent substantially more to encourage fossil fuels and nuclear power than carbon-free renewable technologies.

According to a 2011 study by DBL Investors, a venture capital firm, the nuclear industry benefited from an average of $3.5 billion in subsidies a year (in today’s dollars) from 1947 to 1999 that continue to this day. Coal, which has been receiving government subsidies since the early 1800s, currently receives roughly $3.2 billion a year, based on Energy Information Administration data from 2007. Meanwhile, the oil and gas industry, according to DBL, has benefited from nearly $5 billion in annual subsidies in today’s dollars since 1918, nearly 100 years ago.

Compared with oil and gas, coal and nuclear, wind power is a fledgling technology that deserves a similar sustained commitment by U.S. policymakers, especially given the co-benefits of cleaner air, less global warming pollution, and greater energy security that wind power contributes.

Wind power is a reliable energy source with tremendous potential

Image: steve p2008; Flickr Commons

Contrary to what some critics say, wind power is reliable. In 2011, wind power provided 22 percent of South Dakota’s annual electricity needs, 19 percent of Iowa’s, and more than 10 percent of North Dakota’s, Minnesota’s and Wyoming’s, without compromising reliability, according to researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

And on April 15 of this year, Xcel Energy—the largest U.S. retail wind power provider—set a new U.S. record when it generated more than 57 percent of the electricity needed to supply its customers in Colorado on a night when the winds were strong and electricity demand was low. According to Steve Mudd, product manager for Xcel Energy’s Windsource program, “What each of our world records shows is that while wind is intermittent, it can be relied upon.”

Finally, the potential for wind and other non-hydro renewables is tremendous. They currently generate only about 5 percent of U.S. electricity, but by 2030 they could produce more than 40 percent, according to a 2009 UCS study. That would more than replace the share currently generated by coal, which is still responsible for roughly 75 percent of U.S. utility sector carbon emissions. Looking even further down the road, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory concluded earlier this year that today’s commercially available renewable technologies could adequately generate 80 percent of U.S. electricity by 2050.

Michigan voters are being asked on November 6 whether the state’s utilities should be required to increase the percentage of electricity production from home-grown renewable energy, from the current 10 percent target by 2015 to 25 percent by 2025.

This is an extremely important decision for Michigan. And because this is the only straight-up opportunity in this national election cycle to demonstrate strong public support for cleaning up our energy supply and because opponents are brazenly throwing huge sums of money and buckets of misleading facts into the fight, this vote has also become important for the future of our national energy system.

(You won’t be surprised to learn that the Koch brothers are among the underwriters of the opposition. In fact, the Koch-front group Americans for Prosperity is going so far as offering Michigan voters discount gasoline in a rather transparent attempt to buy support for their anti-clean energy agenda.)

If the opponents win, it will embolden the backward-looking utilities and the fossil fuel industry to ramp up their campaign to thwart the transition to a clean energy economy. A victory for clean energy helps continue the exciting momentum of the clean energy transformation — with its benefits for human health, job growth, and home-grown power — that is well underway.

Which numbers can I believe?

For undecided Michigan voters, it can be difficult to validate the veracity of the facts and numbers put forth by the two major sides in the debate. Economic arguments can especially get confusing fast.

The two utilities that are leading the fight to reject Proposition 3 — Detroit Edison and Consumers Energy — argue that a 25 percent renewable electricity standard will cost $12 billion, or thousands of dollars per Michigan resident over time.

Proposition 3’s supporters, the Michigan Energy, Michigan Jobs Coalition (of which my organization is a member), cite independent studies that conclude meeting the higher standard will cost the average Michigan household about 50 cents a month over the first decade, to pay for the initial investment, and will lower rates over time, starting in 2027, due to decreased dependence on increasingly-costly fossil fuels.

Supporters say thousands of jobs will be created by Prop 3 and opponents say thousands of jobs will be lost.

The utilities insist there isn’t enough wind and solar capacity in-state to meet the 25 percent standard while analysis by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory shows that Michigan’s land-based wind resource alone (not counting the wind blowing across Lake Michigan) has the potential to produce more than five times the amount of electricity it will take to meet the 2025 standard.

To sort out which facts are credible, I’d recommend looking at what scientists call “observed data,” what a courtroom lawyer would cite as “evidence,” or what the rest of us might simply frame as a question: What can we learn from past experience and performance?

What the hard evidence shows

For example, what have been the impacts — for good or ill — of the effort to meet the current 10 percent renewable requirement?

The Michigan Public Service Commission, whose primary job is to ensure that the state’s residents, businesses, and factories get the electricity they need at an affordable cost, concluded that nearly every utility (56 of 59 power generators, covering 98 percent of Michigan’s customers) is on track to meet the 2015 target at lower cost than expected. The vast majority of consumers has seen no additional costs or increased costs of less than $1 a month. Wind power contracts are being signed at below the cost of new coal power, and renewable prices are continuing their downward trend.

Here’s some additional documented data: Michigan utilities sent nearly $1.3 billion out of state in 2010 and more than $10 billion between 2002 and 2010 to pay for imported coal, from states like Wyoming, Kentucky, and West Virginia.

And the price Michigan utilities have paid for a ton of coal has more than doubled over the past 10 years. With nearly 60 percent of Michigan’s electricity reliant on out-of-state coal, that’s an economic vulnerability of some urgency. More home-generated wind and solar energy will keep billions of dollars in the Michigan economy over time and protect against rising coal and natural gas prices.

Another observation based on hard facts: The renewable energy sector is more than up to this challenge. During the scariest economic crisis since 1929, the wind and solar industries have doubled in size, in terms of jobs created, power generated, and investments of private dollars. A study by the Energy Innovation Business Council has tabulated that renewable energy industries across Michigan support nearly 21,000 jobs and contribute almost $5 billion to the state’s economy each year.

This remarkable growth has given new life to American manufacturing. The percentage of American-made wind turbines, towers, blades, and gearboxes that went into American-based wind installations rose from 35 percent to 67 percent since 2005. More than 500 factories making wind power components are now spread across the country, with many manufacturers concentrating in states with ambitious renewable electricity standards, like Illinois, Colorado, Pennsylvania, California, and Texas.

Michigan, with its strong manufacturing base and highly-skilled work force, has already attracted a  significant share of wind and solar industry manufacturing business, as documented by the Environmental Law and Policy Center in a study last year. Voter adoption of Proposition 3 would send a powerful signal to additional clean energy manufacturers that Michigan is a place to set up shop.

The experience to date is that the direct jobs created by these clean tech industries are high quality and diverse: engineering, industrial design, bending metal, pouring concrete, trucking, assembly, repair.

And the economic benefits come in other forms too, like providing lease income for farmers who host a wind or solar installation, or the boost in property tax income for community needs, or the stabilization of electricity rates by reducing reliance on fossil fuels that have volatile prices.

Lastly, what has been the experience of states that have led the way? Iowa and South Dakota now generate more than 20 percent of their electricity needs from wind, while Minnesota and North Dakota generate more than 13 percent. Iowa, Illinois, and Minnesota are in the top five in installed wind capacity. Seventeen states have renewable electricity standards of more than 20 percent and Minnesota and Illinois are among the highest with standards of 25 to 30 percent.

Michigan has the ability to join those national leaders in increased energy independence. The state has more than enough wind, solar, biomass, and hydropower to meet a 25 percent target and the technological and manufacturing know-how to design, build, install, and maintain that clean infrastructure.

None of what I’ve written above is speculation, but rather documented evidence that Michigan voters can independently check out.

The stakes for Michigan and our country

These impressive results bode well for the future, as the price of renewable energy is likely to continue dropping while coal prices rise, and advanced clean energy technologies continue to become more productive.

In the face of that progress, fossil-fuel funded forces have mounted a half dozen attempts this year to freeze or roll back existing state renewable standards. A strong ballot victory in Michigan will put an exclamation point on those earlier messages to the utility industry and encourage other states to create or strengthen their own renewable electricity standards.

And that’s why Michigan voters have a powerful voice this election to help ensure a bright and clean energy future, in their great state and across our great land.

Feature image: © iStockphoto.com/Redrockonline Productions

They had in mind a House that was closer to the electorate and more likely to reflect the popular will of any given moment. Thus, their design exposed representatives to re-election every two years, ensured manageable-sized districts, and allowed a simple majority to resolve most issues.

The Senate was to be more deliberative, to cool what Edmund Randolph called “the fury of democracy” that boiled in the House, and to proceed, as James Madison said, “with more wisdom, than the popular branch.”

When both chambers perform as the framer’s intended, the results can be both responsive to the voters’ passion for change and wise in the implementation of that change.

Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, in delivering an exceptional speech on climate change on the floor of the Senate on June 19, showcased the kind of leadership the framers hoped for when they designed the Senate part of the bi-cameral national legislature.

His stirring remarks, in which he said, “As a matter of conscience and common sense, we should be compelled to fight today’s insidious conspiracy of silence on climate change,” embodied a refreshing counter model to the modern-day revisionist interpretation by some of the framer’s intent. That erroneous view believes the Senate’s role is not simply to slow down the forward motion of legislative action, to allow for more deliberate consideration, but to routinely kill or paralyze it.

A case in point

We saw this cynical perspective play out in 2009 and 2010, when the House overcame expectations and passed comprehensive, far-reaching legislation to reduce climate pollution and transition to a clean energy economy. The Waxman-Markey bill passed on June 26, 2009, by a vote of 219-212 .

The House was responding to a growing call among Americans for national action to address the threat of climate change and a growing and alarming body of science documenting that threat.

The debate in the House Energy and Commerce Committee and subsequently on the House floor fully aired the concerns of the industries that would be affected by the proposed legislation—agriculture, coal mining, electricity generation, oil and gas exploration and refining, heavy manufacturing etc.—and the bill was adjusted to give those industries flexibility and public assistance/investment to make the historic transition to clean energy.

The bill’s targets to reduce heat-trapping pollution, phased in over time, reflected what decades of robust science indicated were needed to give us a fighting chance to lessen the most damaging impacts of climate change.

The founding framers would have said that the House did its job very well.

The Senate, not so much.

Cynical obstruction in the Senate

Despite the generous, patient and flexible efforts of Senators Kerry, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman to move comparable climate and clean energy legislation in their chamber, the bill was stopped cold in the summer of 2010 by a minority of senators and powerful fossil fuel industry players. There were a number of significant reasons why this legislation didn’t get to President Obama’s desk as he asked, which are insightfully discussed elsewhere , but many of us believed at the time that we would have received an affirmative majority had the Senate been allowed to vote up or down.

This failure of the Senate to act was contrary to what the framers intended.  Slowing down the fury of democracy doesn’t mean punting a major national threat to the indefinite future. It means carefully ensuring that a bill will achieve it set out to do and softening the impact on the economic sectors that will be most affected.

And it means responsibly weighing the long-term needs and interests of our country, and, if necessary, acting courageously in the face of powerful, well-financed interests that ferociously fight to protect narrow, often short-term interests.

A giant speech

This bit of historical punditry brings me back to Senator Kerry’s climate speech, an example of strong leadership that would have made the framers, along with Senate giants Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Robert LaFollette, Arthur Vandenberg, Lyndon Johnson and Ted Kennedy, proud.

At a moment in the Congress’ history when it is unfashionable to talk about the increasing dangers of the disruptions in our climate, and even more so to decry the unprincipled attacks on climate scientists, Sen. Kerry did both in a compelling and welcome speech.

He began by citing President George H. W. Bush’s declaration at Rio 20 years ago that “[t]he United States fully intends to be the world’s pre-eminent leader in protecting the global environment,” and then noting the “strange and dangerous place on this issue” that we are in today, “a place this former president wouldn’t even recognize.”

Citing another great American, Thomas Paine, who said, “It is an affront to treat falsehood with complaisance,” Sen. Kerry said, “As a matter of conscience and common sense, we should be compelled to fight today’s insidious conspiracy of silence on climate change—a silence that empowers misinformation and mythology to grow where science and truth should prevail.”

He said that “a calculated campaign of disinformation has steadily beaten back the consensus momentum for action…and replaced it with timidity by proponents in the face of millions of dollars of phony, contrived ‘talking points,’ illogical and wholly unscientific propositions, and a general scorn for truth wrapped in false threats about job loss and taxes.”

Much of the remainder of his speech provides a deeply knowledgeable discussion of the body of climate science and energy economics that is well worth reading even if you think you know all you need to know. (Perhaps especially if you think you know all you need to know.)

We all bear responsibility

But it is Sen. Kerry’s charge that all of us—advocates and opponents of action alike—have “stood by and let it all happen” that makes this speech stand out, and fall well within the Senate tradition intended by the framers.

His statement, “We’ve treated falsehood with complacence and allowed a conspiracy of silence on climate change to infiltrate our politics,” is neither left nor right nor Democratic or Republican. It is the unvarnished truth, and a statement of integrity.

Maybe Sen. Kerry is on the vanguard of a counter wave to the anti-science no-nothings who have been in the ascendancy for much of this past decade. Look around, and you can see reason starting to gain new energy and courage.

Just this week, a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., upheld the Environmental Protection Agency’s finding that global warming pollutants endanger public health, rejecting a legal challenge from some industries.  “This is how science works,” the three justices wrote in their unanimous decision. “The EPA is not required to re-prove the existence of the atom every time it approaches a scientific question.”

Sen. Kerry is asking for us to return to evidence-based decision-making, and with the interests of our nation very much foremost in his mind. The great American symbiotic relationship of science and democracy has delivered time and again, bearing a prolific stream of gains in health, welfare, security and prosperity to Americans and people around the world. It’s a compelling story that needs to be told, from the rooftops and in meeting halls and on street corners.

When Sen. Kerry finished his speech, I was proud of him and the Senate, and inspired by the possibilities that can come when a leader steps up and shows the way.

One of the strategies these companies use to influence climate policy is to fund front groups that can fight for the corporation’s preferred policy without having the corporation’s name attached to sometimes underhanded activities.

One of the most extreme climate front groups is the Heartland Institute, a free-market organization that has rarely met a government rule it likes. From fighting the science linking second-hand smoke to cancer to denying the risks associated with human-induced climate change, the Heartland Institute goes out of its way to muddy the waters.

Recently, for instance, the Heartland Institute hosted a conference at which one of its policy advisors said, “Warm is good for people, and it’s particularly good for people as they get older. The people that warm spells kill are already moribund.” He further asserted that only extreme cold caused extra deaths.

But we know that extreme heat can kill and will get worse as the climate warms. Higher temperatures also allow ground-level ozone, a chief component of smog, to form more easily. And higher temperatures drive more extreme rainfall events, which can cause flooding and associated public health risks.

His statement came on the heels of a recent billboard campaign the group launched comparing people who accept what scientists say about climate change to the Unabomber.

This sort of misleading and reckless rhetoric has no place in our democracy.  Accordingly, following the billboard campaign, 20 corporations that supported Heartland withdrew their funding.

Many of the companies that left were from the insurance industry, which recognizes that climate change threatens their bottom line as it drives more extreme weather. And they withdrew from the Heartland Institute despite the fact that they weren’t directly funding the organization’s work on climate change.

That’s why it’s curious that Pfizer, one of America’s largest and most respected pharmaceutical companies, has supported the Heartland Institute.

Pfizer says that “as a science-based health care company, [it] has long recognized the risks posed by global climate change, such as more severe weather events and potential adverse impacts on human health.”

When Forecast the Facts, a group that has been pushing Heartland funders to walk away from the organization, asked Pfizer about this apparent contradiction, a representative from the company wrote back and said:

“We do not agree with the Heartland Institute’s position on climate change. Pfizer supports groups such as the Heartland Institute in specific health care policy issues (including vaccines and follow on biologics), and is also a member of several industry and trade groups that represent our industry and the business community at large. Our company and its stakeholders derive significant benefits from our involvement with these organizations, which help advance our business objectives related to healthcare policy.”

Based on the science, which Pfizer’s own statement on climate change recognizes, it’s clear that a bright-line distinction between health care and climate policy is a false one, just like the distinction between insurance and climate policy.

Is this really the sort of group Pfizer wants to support if it calls itself a “science-based health care company?” Pfizer’s continued support for the Heartland Institute brings the depth of their commitment to addressing climate change into question. And their tolerance for Heartland’s grossly inaccurate claims about climate change and public health undercuts their desire to be seen as a science-based corporation.

Given this disconnect, we are calling on two doctors who are on Pfizer’s Board of Directors—Drs. Dennis Ausiello and Helen H. Hobbs—to use their influence to ensure that Pfizer stops supporting the Heartland Institute. Doctors understand that we need to make public health decisions based on the best available science. The same holds true for decisions about climate change.

You can help us by emailing both doctors. And be sure to tell your friend on Twitter and Facebook that they can help, too.

More than 500,000 supportive comments on the new standards were hand-delivered to the EPA.

I am inspired by the voices and actions of hundreds of thousands of people around the country supporting the first-ever national standards to limit global warming emissions from new power plants. Just last week, more than 500,000 supportive comments on the new standards were hand delivered to the EPA. And that’s just the beginning. On May 24, public hearings on the standards will take place in Chicago, IL and Washington, DC. UCS will be there, along with scientists, health experts, economists, concerned citizens, faith leaders and many others testifying on the importance of reducing emissions and showing support for this first round of standards.

Last Thursday, UCS hosted a national conference call with speakers from the White House and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) discussing the draft standards to limit carbon pollution from new power plants—a historic step toward a cleaner, healthier energy future—and talking about how we can all get involved in calling for action.

We were honored to have on the call Heather Zichal, the deputy assistant to President Obama for energy and climate change, and Gina McCarthy, the assistant administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation at the Environmental Protection Agency. Ms. McCarthy shared more details and her insight on the new carbon standards and encouraged scientists and citizens alike to engage and submit comments on the draft carbon pollution standards for new power plants – standards she noted are a signal to the world that the U.S. is committed to addressing climate change. Ms. Zichal spoke about the significant progress on environmental and energy issues the Administration has been able to do working together with members of the public. She also noted the importance of staying engaged on these issues in order to take advantage of opportunities to go further and do better in the future.

The EPA’s proposed carbon pollution standards demonstrate that the Obama administration is taking prudent action to address the dangers of unchecked climate change that an overwhelming majority of scientists have been warning us about for years.

With groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce vowing to do everything they can to stop the EPA’s efforts to protect our health and environment from the impacts of climate change, in order to make these standards a success and lay the groundwork for continued national efforts, the EPA and White House need to know there is public support for action. This is where you come in. With this momentum and excitement, we can make these first standards a reality and get ready for the next round of standards that will limit emissions from existing power plants.

What can you do today? The public comment period is open until June 25th. If you haven’t already, submit your comment to the EPA! If you have already submitted a comment, spread the word and contribute to a record number of comments into the EPA.

Then as now, Justice Anthony Kennedy was the swing vote as the court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority — and ultimately, the obligation — under the Clean Air Act to regulate global warming pollutants, including carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and hydrofluorocarbons.

In its powerfully worded decision, the majority said that “the harms associated with climate change are serious and well recognized” and that the EPA has a duty to issue rules that would “slow or reduce” global warming.  The refusal of the Bush administration’s EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, the justices said, had led to “imminent” and “actual” harm to the state of Massachusetts (primarily from rising sea levels).

Compelled by that historic decision, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson issued an “endangerment finding” in December 2009 that “greenhouse gases…in the atmosphere threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.”

And flowing from that finding, just last week her agency issued a draft rule that will for the first time regulate global warming pollutants from new power plants.

The leading hero in the legal suit that led to the Supreme Court’s decision was Jim Milkey, who was, at the time, the senior environmental attorney in the Massachusetts attorney general’s office.

Milkey, who is now a sitting associate justice on the Massachusetts Appeals Court, had the initial idea back in 2000 that Massachusetts and other states could demonstrate that climate change was harming their residents and that the EPA’s refusal to act to prevent that harm was contrary to its obligation under federal law.  He soon assembled 11 other states and a number of local governments and non-governmental organizations as petitioners and filed the suit that went all the way to the high court and into the annals of American history.

In a terrific 2010 interview by the Yale Climate Media Forum, Milkey remembered his now legendary exchange with Justice Antonin Scalia that made all the news reports on that day’s oral arguments.

Justice Scalia had been using the term “stratosphere” instead of the accurate one, in the context of the argument, “troposphere”, and Milkey took the risk of violating the court’s informal rules by correcting him.  Justice Scalia retorted, “Troposphere, whatever.  I told you before that I’m not a scientist.  That’s why I don’t want to deal with global warming, to tell you the truth.”

Milkey had an illuminating memory of the exchange: “One thing that’s fascinating about that line is the people who heard the line spoken inside the courtroom had a very different reaction than those who saw it in print.  And the common reaction I got from people who saw it in print was ‘How cavalier a statement!’  Those who saw it live, including me, thought it was self-deprecating.  He was a) making a joke, and b) he was making a joke at his own expense.”

We can see in Milkey’s reflection that he is a person of integrity and perspective, and that served him well as he stood up before the most intimidating of  audiences in 2007, carrying the heavy responsibility of representing multiple states, jurisdictions and organizations – and ultimately, our planet’s seven billion people – and delivered a winning argument.

As we struggle to galvanize a national response commensurate with the overwhelming body of science – and observed data – that documents human-induced climate disruption, it is heartening to remember that the U.S. Supreme Court acted responsibly in 2007 when confronted with hard evidence and the letter of the law.

A 5-4 decision from the high court can feel like an awfully thin reed on some days, especially when the U.S. Congress has failed to address the climate crisis in a meaningful way, even in the face of mounting evidence that our farmers, ranchers, fishermen, loggers, ski area operators and coastal property owners will be profoundly harmed by the fossil fuel- driven changes in our climate in the coming decades.

However, well-designed democracies have ground rules that help ensure that leaders can deliver a final decision even on controversial matters.  Thus, a split 5-4 decision is every bit as binding as a unanimous 9-0 decision and, for that, we can be very thankful on this fifth anniversary of Massachusetts vs. EPA.

As I said earlier, it’s wrong to obtain documents under false pretenses, just as it was wrong for hackers to have taken scientists’ emails from the University of East Anglia. There’s no excuse for fighting deception with deception and Dr. Gleick has now come forward to publicly acknowledge his responsibility in this matter. Obviously, the person or persons who took scientists’ emails have not felt a similar need to come clean.

Dr. Gleick is among many climate scientists who have been targeted by ideological groups that are eager to attack the messengers of scientific findings. And he is a strong advocate for the important role science plays in society. It’s unfortunate that the bitter, personal attacks on his colleagues and their work contributed to what he called a lapse of his own personal judgment and ethics.

Our criticism of the Heartland Institute’s strategy of spreading misinformation about climate science still stands. It is waging a cynical campaign, funded by corporate interests and anonymous individuals, to undermine the public’s understanding of climate science and introduce ideology disguised as science into our children’s classrooms. The Heartland Institute has still not confirmed the authenticity of the documents, even as independent media outlets have confirmed much of the information and activities outlined in them.

The science about climate change is clear, but the debate about how to respond to it is broken. We’ll continue to work with leaders from all perspectives to help ensure that the United States can have a rational, fact-based debate about how to respond to climate change. It’s time for our nation’s leaders on both sides of the aisle to start dealing with the realities spelled out by the body of evidence on climate science.

By its telling, someone “fraudulently” assumed the identity of a Heartland Board member and fooled a staff member into “re-sending” a number of internal documents about their climate change projects.  These projects are designed to undermine public confidence in the overwhelming scientific consensus that human activity is driving disruptive changes in our climate.  The alleged con-man or woman then launched the documents into the blogosphere.

The Institute’s angry response has been to note that identify theft and computer fraud are criminal offenses subject to imprisonment, and to say, “We intend to find this person and see him or her put in prison for these crimes.”

I find myself agreeing with their conclusion: if a crime has been committed, it should be investigated and prosecuted within the full scope of the law.

The contradiction here is that Heartland had the opportunity to take a similar position of integrity when unknown individuals hacked into the hard drives of climate scientists at the University of East Anglia in England in 2009 and released scores of email exchanges between scientists in the U.S. and England.

As UCS’s Michael Halpern observed in a blog last December 19, shortly after the same hacker (or hackers) released a second batch of emails stolen from those climate scientists, “the immediate question that sprang to my mind was, ‘Why haven’t we found them yet?’.”

Certainly the Heartland Institute was silent about the inaction of British investigative authorities and the U.S. Department of Justice.  Worse, Heartland was extremely active in exploiting the stolen emails to argue that climate scientists were playing fast and loose with climate science.  Heartland and other climate deniers took the scientists’ emails out of context, a fact validated by five independent investigations that have since found no wrong-doing by those scientists.

The bigger crime

It’s all well and good for me to take the easy shot that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw rocks.  Or in this case, one shouldn’t gladly throw rocks and then angrily lash out when rocks come crashing through your window in return.

The far more disturbing story here is in what the content says in the internal Heartland documents.

Even if one dismisses the one strategy document that Heartland says is a fake, the other documents are rich in offensive, well-funded projects aimed at sowing doubt about the truth.

A project called “Global Warming Curriculum for K-12 Schools,” for example, laments “the absence of educational material suitable for K-12 students on global warming that isn’t alarmist or overtly political.”  The memo candidly conveys that “Heartland has tried to make material available to teachers, but has had only limited success.  Principals and teachers are heavily biased toward the alarmist perspective.”

Or, it may be that principals and teachers know a strong scientific consensus when they see one and object to being manipulated by a secretly-funded and waged campaign to infiltrate science classrooms in our public schools.

This project would start by producing modules for grades 10 to 12 that presses the fiction that “whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy,” that models used to explore how climate works are unreliable and “whether CO2 is a pollutant is controversial.”  More modules would target grades 6, 7, and 9.  To this, today’s New York Times story on this matter said bluntly: “It is in fact not a controversy.  The vast majority of climate scientists say that emissions generated by humans are changing the climate and putting the planet at long-term risk, although they are uncertain about the exact magnitude of that risk.”

(The memo, candid to a fault, made two observations that many of us can agree with: “(M)aterial for classroom use must be carefully written to meet curriculum guidelines, and the amount of time teachers have for supplemental material is steadily shrinking due to the spread of standardized tests in K-12 education.)

This case has magnified one of the primary reasons for the poisoning of our national discourse and the near-paralysis of our national government in addressing life-threatening crises like climate disruption.

The late, great New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said that “Everyone is entitled to their own opinions.  They’re just not entitled to their own facts.”  Heartland and other entities funded by fossil fuel interests have aggressively been trying to buy their own facts, when the facts based on the rigorous and expansive body of climate science conclude that we are changing the ability of our planet to sustain life as we know it.

A different set of technical facts—produced by the engineers, designers, and manufacturers who are advancing technology to make our homes, businesses, factories, and transportation options far more efficient and less polluting—reveal that we can respond to the urgency to act on climate change in a way that modernizes our economy and gives us a fighting chance to lessen the harshest impacts of global warming.

The deep anger that pervades Heartland’s public statement yesterday seems to indicate embarrassment at being caught doing something that isn’t honorable, of which they are not proud.  Why else would they threaten to pursue civil and criminal charges and seek damages from individuals who wrote about the stolen documents?  Why else would their donors insist on anonymity?

Heartland called for “common decency and journalistic ethics.”  I couldn’t agree more.  But an even-handed application of either or both would never lead an organization to dream up a middle- and secondary-school curriculum that deceptively undermines the truth.

Among those standing with the president in the Washington Convention Center, surrounded by the most advanced technology vehicles headed to dealership showrooms and stone-faced secret service agents scanning the invitation-only audience, were executives from the big domestic three: Ford Motor Co., General Motors and Chrysler. It was a remarkable moment for a domestic industry that over decades had blocked proposed mandates that they innovate, and was now supporting a far-reaching framework that will require all their companies’ creative and technical prowess.

The late arrival of these corporate leaders would be easy to criticize, but I think instead they deserve considerable credit for standing on that dais with the president. In agreeing to raise the bar on the energy and environmental performance of their products (increasing the average fuel economy of the American cars and light trucks to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025), these executives are challenging their companies to do their share of meeting the climate crisis.

Detroit steps up

When the negotiations began, the outlook wasn’t so promising. The domestic companies’ Washington lobbyists elected to fight for 42 mpg – an embarrassingly modest increment above the 2016 standard. UCS’s vehicle engineers documented our case that an average standard of 62 mpg is attainable by 2025 with a smart combination of known technologies – a step that would all but guarantee our country could meet the president’s goal (or at least the equivalent) of cutting our dependence on imported oil by a third by 2025.

But the auto CEOs know that their engineers, designers and fabricators can build a fleet of passenger vehicles that average 55 mpg because the required technology can be found in their own technology labs and in the vehicles being driven by the first adopters among their customers. And despite their displeasure at being directed by government policy, they seem to welcome the certainty that comes from clear performance targets. Perhaps they also appreciate that industry-wide goals level the playing field, giving no individual company an inherent advantage over the rest.

The climate leadership of the auto manufacturing executives is especially impressive when compared to the failure of every other major emitting sector — electricity generation, heavy manufacturing, oil and gas production and refining, and building/construction — to make a comparable commitment.

CAP and the power of leadership

The diversity and caliber of companies that helped organize the Climate Action Project (CAP) in 2007 demonstrated that voluntary corporate leadership can be powerful. Joining General Electric, Dow Chemical Co., Honeywell, Ford Motor Co., Siemens Corp. and other companies were six major electricity generators: Duke Energy, AES, Exelon, PNM Resources, NRG Energy, and PG&E.

The CAP companies (along with five national environmental groups) called for the enactment of national legislation “to slow, stop and reverse growth of greenhouse gas emissions over the shortest time reasonably achievable“, and were emphatic in stating that “the climate change challenge will create more economic opportunities than risks for the U.S. economy.” It doesn’t get any clearer than that.

The risks these corporate leaders took, in stepping ahead of their respective sectors, helped legislative technicians Henry Waxman and Ed Markey win U.S. House passage of comprehensive climate and energy legislation in 2009. Because the corporations were at the table, the Waxman-Markey bill combined strong GHG reduction targets with exceptional flexibility for the regulated companies. It was deeply disappointing when many of those same companies seemed to disappear when climate legislation bogged down in the Senate in the face of heavily-funded lobbying by the fossil fuel sector.

Climate pollution rules: a new opportunity

That recent history aside, the leadership of the power generation industry — and by leadership I mean the CEOs, senior management and Boards of Directors of utilities and merchant power companies — have a new chance to step up and do the right thing. The Environmental Protection Agency, by order of the U.S. Supreme Court, is crafting a rule to reduce climate pollution, and that, along with other rules to reduce ground-level ozone, toxics like mercury and arsenic, and coal ash, is under punishing attack from the coal, oil and gas and utility industries.

Eight utility leaders, including Lewis Hay of NextEra Energy, Jack Fusco of Calpine Corp. and John Rowe of Exelon Corp., the second, fifth and eighth largest utilities in the country, late last year eloquently defended EPA’s air quality regulations in a letter to the Wall Street Journal. They noted that “the electric sector has known that these rules were coming”, and that their companies’ “experience complying with air quality regulations demonstrates that regulations can yield important economic benefits, including job creation, while maintaining reliability.”

Short-sighted strategies

In stark contrast to these leaders, laggards like Southern Company (the largest utility) and American Electric Power (third largest) have worked overtime to block progress to protect the health of all Americans, even as they are fully aware of the stakes to our nation and their own customers. Their business model not only pollutes the air we breathe but is also heating our climate at an unbearable pace.

A smartly designed policy will give them and their shareholders clarity for the future, a leveling of the competitive field across the country and a driver for modernization of our patchwork electric system. Yet short-sighted profits and the luxury of avoiding the real human costs of burning fossil fuels (e.g. respiratory disease, premature death and large-scale climate disruption) are dominating the strategic decisions in their executive suites and Board rooms. (Garry Trudeau’s recent Doonesbury comic exquisitely captured this phenomenon.)

Even with the recent legislative setbacks, it remains a matter of not if but when carbon will be regulated. As with the auto rules, some flexibility for utilities in the compliance elements is reasonable if – and if is a small word with resonant meaning – the emission targets are based on science and reflect the utility sector’s share of the problem. The moment is now for utility CEOs to match the leadership of their auto counterparts by putting their integrity and muscle behind strong new EPA rules on greenhouse gas emissions, ground-level ozone, and air toxics.