Exxon Stops Drilling

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Bill Georgevich reporting

After posting the largest corporate profit in the recorded history of mankind, Exxon has decided to halt drilling and development of existing oil leases - despite Sarah Palin's campaign to the contrary. In a move to make the perfect storm for another oil crisis, this decision to use profits to buy back Exxon stock, rather than "Drill Baby Drill", proves that the world’s largest corporation is continuing to control the world’s economy to suit themselves.

Some folks may think that high oil and gas prices will hasten the renewable green economy. And to some extent that is true. But why not have both during this time of world recession?

Lower gas prices translate into a savings of about $200/month for the average American family of 4. That's essentially a $2400/year cash injection stimulus check!

Why not embrace the Obama and Gore green initiatives and require the oil companies to keep prices down by keeping supply up? The oil lobby begged Bush for more areas to drill in 2008 during the oil crisis they completely made up, and now they aren't drilling on the leases they already have?

This ranks along with AIG as one of the greatest scandals of the 21st century. We need low fuel prices to sustain a recovery and buy us the time to convert our energy economy to a renewable world.

Out of the Red and Into the Green

Melanie Pahlmann reporting

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Last September, as our banks were failing, the always brilliant Thomas Friedman suggested that "we don't just need a bailout, we need a build up." Specifically, a build up of energy technology, taken on with the same brazen urgency as NASA's Apollo mission. President Obama seems to agree. His ambitious stimulus plan seeks to double our renewable energy output over the next few years. Friedman has been on the talk circuit for months now, recommending no less than "an overwhelming force" to green the economy: an energy tech revolution that will not only green our grids but grow our shriveled manufacturing base, which means new jobs.

In his Sept 28 2008 column, Friedman wrote:

[W]e don’t just need a bailout. We need a buildup. We need to get back to making stuff, based on real engineering not just financial engineering. We need to get back to a world where people are able to realize the American Dream — a house with a yard — because they have built something with their hands, not because they got a “liar loan” from an underregulated bank with no money down and nothing to pay for two years. The American Dream is an aspiration, not an entitlement….

Indeed, when this bailout is over, we need the next president — this one is wasted — to launch an E.T., energy technology, revolution with the same urgency as this bailout. Otherwise, all we will have done is bought ourselves a respite, but not a future. The exciting thing about the energy technology revolution is that it spans the whole economy — from green-collar construction jobs to high-tech solar panel designing jobs. It could lift so many boats.

In a green economy, we would rely less on credit from foreigners “and more on creativity from Americans,” argued Van Jones, president of Green for All, and author of the forthcoming “The Green Collar Economy.” “It’s time to stop borrowing and start building. America’s No. 1 resource is not oil or mortgages. Our No. 1 resource is our people. Let’s put people back to work — retrofitting and repowering America. ... You can’t base a national economy on credit cards. But you can base it on solar panels, wind turbines, smart biofuels and a massive program to weatherize every building and home in America.”

The Bush team says that if this bailout is done right, it should make the government money. Great. Let’s hope so, and let’s commit right now that any bailout profits will be invested in infrastructure — smart transmission grids or mass transit — for a green revolution. Let’s “green the bailout,” as Jones says, and help ensure that the American Dream doesn’t ever shrink back to just that — a dream.

Friedman is one of the freshest pragmatic visionaries to emerge from punditry in a long dry time. If I could whisper in the President's ear, I'd say three words: Friedman, Energy Czar. Check out his new book, Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution and How it Can Renew America.

Here he speaks with Fareed Zakaria:



On Feb 5 2009, President Obama made these remarks during a visit to the Department of Energy:

After decades of dragging our feet, this plan will finally spark the creation of a clean energy industry that will create hundreds of thousands of jobs over the next few years, manufacturing wind turbines and solar cells for example, and millions more after that. These jobs and these investments will double our capacity to generate renewable energy over the next few years.

We’ll fund a better, smarter electricity grid and train workers to build it – a grid that will help us ship wind and solar power from one end of this country to another. Think about it. The grid that powers the tools of modern life – computers, appliances, even blackberries - looks largely the same as it did half a century ago. Just these first steps toward modernizing the way we distribute electricity could reduce consumption by 2 to 4 percent.

We’ll also lead a revolution in energy efficiency, modernizing more than 75 percent of federal buildings and improving the efficiency of more than 2 million American homes. This will not only create jobs, it will cut the federal energy bill by a third and save taxpayers $2 billion each year and save Americans billions of dollars more on their utility bills.

In fact, as part of this effort, today I've signed a presidential memorandum requesting that the Department of Energy set new efficiency standards for common household appliances. This will save consumers money. This will spur innovation. And this will conserve tremendous amounts energy. We’ll save through these simple steps over the next thirty years the amount of energy produced over a two-year period by all the coal-fired power plants in America.

And through investments in our mass transit systems to boost capacity, in our roads to reduce congestion, and in technologies that will accelerate the development of innovations like plug-in hybrid vehicles, we’ll be making a significant down payment on a cleaner and more independent energy future.

Clean Coal Stays in Obama's Stimulus Package

Bill Georgevich reporting

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Obama talked about it along with John McCain in the presidential campaign. And despite environmentally-friendly cabinet members, clean coal got 3.4 billion dollars in the US 2009 stimulus bill under the line item - Fossil Energy and Carbon Capture. All that money despite the fact that there is no electricity made through clean coal technology and right now that technology doesn't even exist.

A lot of people don't realize that clean coal is a concept not a fact. The sequestration or hiding of carbon in abandoned oil wells is a great idea to relax folks worried about the single greatest producer of greenhouses gases in industrial countries. But the one zero-emission coal test facility operated by the DOE was abandoned after many years for lack of productivity after over 1 billion dollars were spent.

The clean coal concept is very important to the coal industry but it is also very important to countries like the US and China that have very high energy needs and lots of cheap coal. If you could set up a smoke screen that clean coal is coming, you could justify building more coal plants now and promise to retrofit them later when the technology for clean coal is invented and tested. This gives first world nations decades to continue to pollute, something climate change envrionmentalists say we don't have.

Some of this research money in the stimulus bill will go into coal gassification, a method of producing gasoline developed by the Nazis during World War II when they were converting coal into much needed gasoline for their war effort. Billions of gallons of gasoline could be produced from US coal reserves, a process seriously considered during the first oil crisis of the mid 1970's. There are still 2 remaining problems with that technology. It is an extremely inefficient way of making gasoline therefore it would make it very expensive and this technology is a terrible greenhouse gas polluter.

All this points away from coal and towards the refinement of all renewables. Why was the 3 billion+ placed in the new stimulus budget? Obviously the new administration doesn't think this country's energy policy can survive without coal.

Energy Legislation at Last?

Bill Georgevich reporting

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Despite many efforts to pass an energy package, Congress adjourned for summer recess gridlocked and empty-handed. Partisan compromise is essential if we will ever see any real energy legislation. Republicans must give up oil industry tax breaks and Democrats need to budge on the offshore drilling ban. A bi-partisan group of 10 Senators, days before adjourning last month for summer recess, wrote a compromise bill that does just that.

The New Energy Reform Act of 2008 was written in response to the months-long Senate deadlock on energy legislation. The legislation, which could be considered when Congress returns in September, includes limited offshore drilling with increased investment in new energy technologies. A portion of the finding for renewables would come from taking back tax breaks from the oil industry. The bill also sets a goal of fueling 85 percent of the country's automobiles with alternatives to oil within 20 years.

The upside:

• co-sponsored by a bi-partisan group committed to breaking the energy legislation gridlock in Congress
• closes tax loopholes for the oil industry
• maintains the ban on offshore drilling in California
• extends renewable energy tax incentives that will expire in December
• invests $20 billion for the conversion of cars and trucks to non-oil fuel sources
• garnering wide support from liberal democrats, moderates, and Republicans

The downside:

• permits offshore drilling in parts of the Gulf of Mexico and the east coast (by states' consent)
• recycling of spent nuclear fuel

Given the many bones of contention between the two parties, it is imperative to accept that a compromise coming from both sides of the aisle is the only solution to the impasse. Republicans need to give in on oil industry tax loopholes so that the renewable energy tax credits can be paid for. Democrats need to budge on their intractable stance on offshore drilling.

This bill was written just before Congress adjourned in early August. We hope that our Senators give serious attention to this bill when they return on September 4.

Countdown to Energy Reform

Bill Georgevich reporting

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This week we begin our Countdown to Energy Reform. While Congress enjoys their August recess, many Americans are wondering, where are the solutions to our energy issues? Despite multiple efforts to pass energy legislation, the Senate has been intractably gridlocked. Time is running out. Essential renewable energy tax credits will expire in December. Join us in our weekly call to action as we contact our vacationing Senators every week until they reconvene in September. This week: send a letter to Senators Obama and McCain.

Congress went on recess in early August without passing any energy legislation. Despite multiple efforts, both the House and Senate danced around the crucial issues of gas prices, offshore drilling, oil-market speculation, and the clean energy tax credits that are expiring in December.

The clean energy tax credits are especially important, because as December draws nearer, more and more investors in various renewable energy projects are getting cold feet. Many have pulled out entirely or are threatening to do so if the extension doesn't happen. Failure to renew these tax credits will be disastrous for our country and the steady momentum towards clean energy that has been taking hold.

Obama and McCain have remained rather detached in Senate activities related to renewable energy legislation. Both were among only a few to abstain on a vote to get a bill that would renew clean energy tax credits on the floor for debate. And both have shown some allegiance to the big oil industry that so handsomely finances their presidential campaigns. In 2005, Obama voted for an energy bill backed by Bush that included billions in subsidies for oil and natural gas production. In June of this year, in the weeks following McCain's embrace of offshore oil drilling, contributions from the oil and gas industry poured in ($1 million, in fact, compared to $116 K in March, $283 K in April and $208 K in May).

When the Senate reconvenes on September 4, they will be greeted with a new, bi-partisan energy bill, the first to offer a compromise to the wide philosophical and political schism that has prevented any passage of renewable energy tax credits. The New Energy Reform Act of 2008 is very promising, and couldn't come a moment too soon.

Obama has shown support of the bill, in recognition of the hope that it will end "partisan gridlock and special interest influence" and bring to the Senate "a good faith effort at a new bipartisan beginning."

McCain has remained very quiet about the bill, but most likely will not support it, for at least 2 reasons: one, the bill will take away subsidies for the oil and gas industry, which McCain adamantly wants to keep in place; and two, the bill allows for very limited offshore oil drilling (none at all off the California coast). Learn more about the bill here.

And if you haven't already, we invite you again to send a letter to Senators Obama and McCain on the very important and timely matter of energy policy.

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