Climate change and energy update

3 Ridiculously Optimistic Predictions In The US Government's Official Energy Outlook

While Goldman is calling for $105 oil next year and JPMorgan predicts $120 oil in 2012, the government says crude won't hit triple digits until 2015. And won't come close to 2008 highs ($147 briefly) until 2035.

Former CIBC economist Jeff Rubin points out this is one of many incredible assumptions in the US Energy Information Annual Outlook.

The government also assumes U.S. electricity costs will remain basically flat for decades while shale gas production surges.

Third, it says U.S. emissions will remain below their 2005 peak through 2027, despite a 30 percent increase in coal dependence.

EPA to double down on climate

The Obama administration is expected to roll out a major greenhouse gas policy for power plants and refineries as soon as Wednesday, signaling it won’t back off its push to fight climate change in the face of mounting opposition on Capitol Hill. 

The Environmental Protection Agency has agreed to a schedule for setting greenhouse gas emission limits, known as “performance standards,” for the nation’s two biggest carbon-emitting industries, POLITICO has learned. 

Under the schedule agreed to by EPA, states and environmental groups, the agency will issue a draft greenhouse gas performance standard for power plants by July 2011 and a final rule by May 2012. The agreement – which comes after states and environmentalists challenged the George W. Bush administration’s failure to set the standards – requires EPA to issue a draft limit for refineries by Dec. 2011 and a final rule by Nov. 2012. 

T. Boone Pickens badly misjudged the supply and price of natural gas

After 30 months, countless TV appearances, and $80 million spent on an extravagant PR campaign, T. Boone Pickens has finally admitted the obvious: The wind energy business isn't a very good one.

The Dallas-based entrepreneur, who has relentlessly promoted his "Pickens Plan" since July 4, 2008, announced earlier this month that he's abandoning the wind business to focus on natural gas.

Two years ago, natural gas prices were spiking and Mr. Pickens figured they'd stay high. He placed a $2 billion order for wind turbines with General Electric. Shortly afterward, he began selling the Pickens Plan.

EIA Projects Climate Catastrophe

The U.S. Energy Information Administration has projected that the United States will lead the world into catastrophic global warming over the next twenty five years. In its 2011 Annual Energy Outlook, the EIA predicts that energy-related CO2 emissions will “grow by 16 percent from 2009 to 2035,” reaching 6.3 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (or 1.7 GtC):

The fuel mix the EIA projects remains predominantly coal and oil, with a moderate rise in renewable energy, whose pollution benefits are offset by growth in energy demand:

This pathway would almost certainly commit the world to catastrophic climate change, including rapid sea level rise, extreme famine, desertification, and ecological collapse on land and sea. Right now, the United States, with less than five percent of global population, produces 20 percent of global warming pollution. Center for American Progress senior fellow Joe Romm published in Nature in 2008 that humanity “must aim at achieving average annual carbon dioxide emissions of less than 5 GtC [5 billion metric tons of carbon, or 18 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide] this century or risk the catastrophe of reaching atmospheric concentrations of 1,000 p.p.m.” To do so, he said, humanity needs to adopt a “national and global strategy to stop building new traditional coal-fired plants while starting to deploy existing and near-term low-carbon technologies as fast as is humanly possible.”

U.S. Challenges China’s Wind Power Equipment Aid

The Obama administration filed a case against China with the World Trade Organization on Wednesday, siding with an American labor union, the United Steelworkers, in accusing Beijing of illegally subsidizing the production of wind power equipment.

The decision is the second time in less than four months that the United States has accused China of violating world trade rules.

It represents an escalation of trade tensions between the United States and China over clean energy, viewed by the Obama administration as a frontier in which American companies are struggling to remain competitive.

The United States is challenging a special Chinese government fund that awards grants to makers of wind power equipment. The Americans say the fund provides subsidies that are illegal under W.T.O. rules because the grants appear to be contingent on manufacturers using parts made in China.

Fuel cells popping up in California

Fuel cells are starting to pop up all over California, in breweries, food processing and wastewater treatment plants, grocery stores, hotels, even a casino and a jail. As of November, commercial installations in more than 40 cities statewide are producing about 35 megawatts of power, according to the California Stationary Fuel Cell Collaborative. That's enough electricity to light up about 35,000 average homes.

The boxes at the Alhambra each produce 100 kilowatts, enough to power about 100 homes.

The Bloom boxes take the oxygen from the air and combine it with fuel such as natural gas in an electrochemical process that produces electricity without using combustion.

Each unit costs up to $800,000, or $4 million for the set. At that rate, Ratkovich Co. could recoup its costs in less than a decade. Each box comes with a 10-year warranty.