CT Green Scene

Recession byproduct - a cut in emissions

But low level may hurt cap and trade program
The Boston Globe
March 11, 2009
By Beth Daley, Staff Writer

New figures being released today show the recession helped drive down global warming emissions from Northeast power plants last year to their lowest levels in at least nine years.

Northeast power plant emissions dropped about 9 percent last year from 2007, according to preliminary projections by Point Carbon, a consulting and research firm. The Norway-based company attributed the drop to the economic slowdown, combined with the fact that power plants are burning cleaner natural gas.

The drop in emissions may be good for the environment, but was not seen as reason for celebration. "What does this say about the state of the economy?" said Robert Rio, senior vice president of Associated Industries of Massachusetts "We could get 100 percent below the cap if we shut every business and moved them out of state."

The reduction in emissions came with another drawback: It has the unintended effect of delaying a longer-term and potentially more important effort to reduce greenhouse gases over the next decade.

Blowing in the Wind

by Eileen Weber

Headline: Wind is in; coal is out. Since the news hit that the wind industry provides more jobs than coal mining, a slew of blogs and media web sites are all a-twitter about it.

As Rick Fuentes said in his blog on FreshEnergy.org, “Coal is what, a 300-year-old industry? Ancient. Wind is just getting its ability to buy booze. And to say that the new industry is neck-and-neck with the old one is amazing.”

With a 70% increase in wind jobs since 2007, the industry hit a high of 85,000 at the end of 2008. Coal mining jobs were at 81,000. A relatively new energy source has gained lots of ground in a short of span of time.

According to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), coal is the largest source for greenhouse gas emissions and is used to generate about half of the electricity in the U.S. Other sources such as gas, oil, and nuclear power don’t even come close.

Much of the wind industry is rooted in the Midwest and West Coast. Many of the turbines are being placed on Native American reservations where open tracts of land are readily available. The residents on these reservations say this is a way for the tribes to generate much-needed income off a natural resource.

Our first green president?

 

by Barry Katz

In five days we will inaugurate our first African American president. It's momentous. It's historic. And it's about time.

Back in the early days of the primary campaign some black leaders raised the question, is Obama black enough. My only question is this - is he green enough.

I think he just may be. I sure hope so. I have watched with pleasure and relief at the science/climate/energy/environment team he has put in place and each appointment raised my level of optimism. Could Barack Obama really be our first green president?

We are faced with an historic opportunity. At no other time would it have been possible to get Congress to approve the kind of spending that could really jump-start the new clean green economy we so desperately need. Only a financial melt-down of current proportions can shake that kind of money from the tree.

It will take bold action and a lot of very smart decisions to make this work, and I'm waiting with bated breath to see if Obama and his team can pull it off. Back in December I wrote a post for my blog, The Future is Green entitled "What we need now" in which I suggested that this administration should be judged primarily on the extent to which the next four to eight years is devoted to energy and climate policy. In my mind, nothing else matters. Nothing else matters because everything else hinges on this.

I'll be watching.