Data Comparisons

Fewer Renewables Under Waxman Markey?!

26 Comments

Today’s The Breakthrough Blog post begins

Waxman-Markey would reduce the amount of renewable energy deployed in the United States relative to business-as-usual, increase the amount of coal-fired electricity generation relative to 2005 levels, and provide no incentive for a move to cleaner cars, according to a new analysis by the U.S. EPA

The EPA reports this? Can this be so?! I’d criticisms of Waxman-Markey as ineffective.. But is the EPA really finding that no bill at all would result in faster implementation of renewables, and lower amounts of coal-fired electricity generation? Wow!

Has anyone found any rebuttals to the EPA findings?

26 thoughts on “Fewer Renewables Under Waxman Markey?!”

  2. To wit, the study they link to support their headline claims:

    Major Findings
    •

    H.R. 2454 transforms the structure of energy production and consumption.
    –

    Increased energy efficiency and reduced demand for energy resulting from the policy mean that energy consumption levels that would be reached in 2015 without the policy are not reached until 2040 with the policy.
    –

    The share of low- or zero-carbon primary energy (including nuclear, renewables, and CCS) rises substantially
    under the policy to 18% of primary energy by 2020, 26% by 2030, and to 38% by 2050, whereas without the policy the share would remain steady at 14%. Increased energy efficiency and reduced energy demand simultaneously reduces primary energy needs by 7% in 2020, 10% in 2030, and 12% in 2050.
    –
    Electric power supply and use, and offsets represent the largest sources of emissions abatement.

  3. “reduced demand for energy”? How will they make me reduce my demand? Most of my lights are already LEDs. No running water, maybe? Main dish of snow soup?

  4. I can’t wait to see the Anti-Hockey Stick charts of our beloved leaders in gov’t, as their energy consumption goes down, due to the passage of this historic legislation. I’m sure we’ll have real time websites that provide instantaneous updates on this.

    I’m excited.

    Andrew

  5. Scooter,

    I think they count on the average person reducing energy via various efficiency standards and programs, not you per se. Oddly enough, the average American doesn’t have CFLs yet, not to mention LEDs.

    Lucia,

    To nuance the ^ a bit, the story seems a bit more complicated than the Breakthrough folks let on. The less renewables claim only holds true in one of the baseline scenarios the report examines, and than only through 2025. The main reason why there is less renewables is that the H.R. 2454 requires dramatically less new generation than the baseline in question, and the baseline is incredibly optimistic about the degree to which renewables will be built to meet future demand.

    So the only way that the Breakthrough folks could complain about this particular statistic is if they want to argue that we should purposefully scale back demand reduction in order to be able to build more renewables to meet additional demand.

    The relevant figure from the report is here:


    http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j237/hausfath/Picture55-1.png

  6. ““reduced demand for energy”? How will they make me reduce my demand? Most of my lights are already LEDs. No running water, maybe? Main dish of snow soup?”

    They will reduce your demand by causing the energy price to skyrocket (by artificially raising the price to suppliers). What uses less energy than LED lights? No lights! If you’d just rise when the sun does and sleep when the sun does, you wouldn’t need lights. That would be much more green. Also, you could live underground to cut heating/cooling costs.

    Back to the headline, I didn’t read the article, but one way that renewables could be reduced by enacting the cap-and-trade is that less money is available for investment. Sure, all of this CO2 permit money is going to the government, supposedly to be used to advance alternatives. BUT, we’ve also got this huge Medicare and Social Security catastrophe coming, we may need to dump money into some government health care program for all citizens, etc. I put the odds near zero that all of the cap-and-trade revenues would make it into alternative energy. In fact, I’d be surprised if more than 50% went that direction.

    Also, the 2nd law of thermodynamics has an analogy in money flow. If the government takes in $100 in taxes that is supposed to be directly allocated to something, there is no way that $100 can actually be allocated. Administration of the money also costs money, the beauracracy requires money to operate. Much like losses due to friction or other inefficiencies.

  7. Another piece of this bill is the way it changes -over-time-. It ramps up, stiffly. It appears designed specifically for the “That doesn’t look so bad” view of the next several years. Where the larger changes come farther down the track. (Without any sunset or metrics.)

  10. Scooter–
    There are plenty of people who could do things to use at least a little less energy. I have CFLs, not LED’s. A few closets still have… uhmm… incandenscents. (Those are never going to burn out!) We also own a gi-normouse TV, which could be turned off. I’ve started walking to the grocery store (mostly for exercise), but I’ve often driven. Etc.

    If energy prices rise enough, more people will walk or ride bikes to the store , and possibly drop their membership at the gym!

    Zeke–
    I knew you’d come through for me! 🙂

  11. I can’t wait to see pics of Big Al walking to the grocery store or riding a bike there (ring, ring! coming through!). As far as dropping his membership to the gym, he obviously took care of that a long time ago. 😉

    Andrew

  12. Don’t let Joe Romm see that!
    He’s already on record warning people to pay no attention to Breakthrough, because they actually read the reports.

    For example, because of the use of offsets, emissions in covered industries barely drops, but Romm insists the actual reductions are 12%.

    At RC and other blogs, they love saying that energy is being produced by efficiency.

  13. MikeN,

    At least in this case, they didn’t read the report, at least not very well. There are plenty of reasons to be critical of H.R. 2454 (and too heavy a reliance on offsets and the grandfathering of permit allocations are two big ones), but this particular report doesn’t really supply much ammunition.

  15. Life was so much better when we used less energy 100 years ago….

    And I’m sure my family will benefit immensely when my employer is forced to pay higher energy costs at every turn. They will finally see the light and figure out the problem isn’t with lower profits due to a downturn in the economy, it was simply from not paying enough taxes, fees and too few government regulations, which in turn will convince them I should receive a 5% increase in salary!

    How silly of them!

  16. Zeke:

    The post is titled:
    Climate Bill Analysis ***Part 16***

    You may be right that it is a small issue but they are not wrong. It is also simple one in a long series of posts pointing out flaws in the bill. Given that context your criticisms are not that reasonable.

  17. This bill, even if enacted, will do nothing at all for the climate. Even the strong believers in AGW admit that it will do nothing. It will, however, take us away from energy sources that are not requiring massive tax subsidies to those that do. It is clearly a bill that has nothing to do with actually solving a problem. Unless, of course you define ‘problem’ as ‘a desire for a massive increase in government revenue’.
    One cost of this bill will be the destabilization of one of the main drivers of the economies of Houston, New Orleans, and much of the Gulf Coast: the oil industry.

  20. This is the week that AGW due to C02 officially ended/ pronounced dead (for posterity record). 26th June, 2009 based on release of suppressed NCEE document to the public

  22. FYI, I still haven’t turned the AC on at my house. I have vowed to make it through the month of June without turning it on, since May was such a cakewalk. Almost there. There were a couple of “hot” days there that had me leaning, but I held firm.

    Lots of rain here. Big storm last night. Sunny/partly cloudy so far today, though.

    I know everyone’s been waiting for an update. 😉

    Andrew

  24. Lucia,

    Do I Dare to Dream July? You know, just so I can say I did it?
    The Dog Days of Summer here in the midwest can be cruel and pitiless! 😉

    Andrew

  26. It looks to me like Waxman-Markey is actually going to increase the cost for renewable energy projects because it requires all projects done under it to use the Davis-Bacon prevailing wage guidelines used for federal construction. This increases costs directly by requiring the contractor to pay above market for labor and indirectly through compliance paperwork.

    Page 96 SEC. 786. COMMERCIAL DEPLOYMENT OF CARBON CAPTURE AND SEQUESTRATION TECHNOLOGIES
    Page 245 SEC. 181. REVISIONS TO LOAN GUARANTEE PROGRAM AUTHORITY.
    Page 270 SEC. 187. DIRECT SUPPORT.
    Page 854 SEC. 338. DAVIS-BACON COMPLIANCE.

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