Joseph J. Romm's Blog, page 122

This 45-Ton Buoy Might Change The Way You Get Your Power

For the first time ever, some Americans are turning on the lights with energy from the ocean’s waves.

A pilot project in Hawaii is now grid-connected at a naval test site off the island of Oahu. The device, known as Azura, is being tested by the University of Hawaii.

“As the first grid connected wave energy device in the U.S. that will be tested and validated by an independent party, this deployment marks a major milestone for our team and the marine renewable energy industry,” Northwest Energy Innovations founder and CEO Steve Kopf said in a statement.

The 45-ton Azura absorbs wave energy — from both up-and-down and side-to-side motion — and converts it to electricity. It is the first design of its kind — other projects haven’t incorporated this 360-degree motion, according to the company.

Wave and tidal power is slowly gaining traction. Last year, Lockheed Martin was hired to help build what will be the world’s largest wave energy project — a 62.5 megawatt (MW) project off Australia’s southern coast that will have the capacity to power 10,000 homes. A 320 MW tidal project is also under consideration off the coast of Wales.

The global push to go off fossil fuels and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while still powering the lights and keeping the air-conditioning running, makes it critical to develop renewable energy sources. According to the latest data, the electricity sector accounts for nearly a third of the United States’ greenhouse gas emissions — more than any other sector, even transportation. This is because most of our electricity comes from burning coal and now natural gas, which studies have shown emits more greenhouse gases than originally estimated.

Hawaii has been an eager customer for renewables. The state’s dependence on imported fossil fuels — mainly oil — for its electricity sector has given it the highest electricity prices in the country. To combat these high prices and to diminish carbon emissions, Hawaii recently established a goal of getting 100 percent of its electricity from renewable resources.

The state already has the highest penetration of rooftop solar in the nation. But photovoltaic solar, without storage, only produces power during the day, and the local utility company has struggled with balancing out the supply and demand of electricity. This week, the Pacific Business Journal reported that Hawaii Electric Co. has approved connections for thousands of customers who have been waiting to add their solar systems to the grid since October.

While Hawaii might be the perfect testing ground for wave technology, it could theoretically spread to much of the United States. According to the Energy Department, more than 50 percent of Americans live within 50 miles of the ocean, which means wave and tide power could be easily transmitted to where many of us live and work. And the potential is huge: A 2012 report prepared by RE Vision Consulting for the Department of Energy found that the theoretical ocean wave energy resource potential in the United States is more than 50 percent of the country’s annual demand.

The 20-kilowatt Azura project will continue testing for a year. If all goes well, it will be expanded for commercial use, between 500 kilowatts and 1 MW.

“Standards, rigorous testing, and transparency are the foundations of our development program for the Azura technology. We believe that independent verification of performance data is imperative to achieving commercialization,” Kopf said.

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Department of EnergyElectricityEnergygridHawaiipowerRenewable Energyrenewablestidewave

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This 100 Percent Electric Eighteen-Wheeler Just Hit The Road In Germany

On Tuesday, an all-electric tractor-trailer hit the road in Munich, Germany — the first time such a large electric vehicle made by a European manufacturer has gone into regular service in Europe, according to BMW, the company behind the project.

The 40-ton truck has a range of about 62 miles per charge, which takes three or four hours. Its first deployment will entail transporting vehicle components — such as shock absorbers, springs and steering systems — over stretches of less than two miles across Munich seven times a day.

Developed by BMW Group and the SCHERM group, a German automotive service provider, the big rig is a model from the Dutch manufacturer Terberg. According to the companies, the truck is “CO2-free, quiet and generates almost no fine particle pollution.” They also state that compared to a standard diesel engine truck, the electric truck will save 11.8 tons of carbon dioxide per year — the equivalent of the emissions produced by driving one of BMW’s more efficient cars, which gets an average of 60 miles per gallon, around the world almost three times

Trucks are notoriously inefficient, with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) calculating that medium- and heavy-duty vehicles account for about one-fifth of greenhouse gas emissions and oil use in the U.S. transportation sector, but only make up about 5 percent of vehicles on the road. In June, the EPA and the Department of Transportation joined forces with a proposal to turn this trend around and reduce carbon dioxide emissions from heavy duty trucks by about one billion metric tons for vehicles made between 2021 and 2027.

According to the EPA, oil consumption and greenhouse emissions from heavy-duty vehicles are expected to surpass that of passenger vehicles at the global scale by 2030. In a category that includes not only tractor-trailers, but also garbage trucks, school buses, big personal vehicles like Ford F-350s, and vans, BMW’s new electric truck could pave the way for critical industry innovation needed to curtail air and climate pollution.

“With this project we will gain valuable information on what will be possible with electric trucks in the future for city logistics,” said Jürgen Maidl, head of logistics at BMW Group, in a statement.

Greenhouse gas emissions from transportation account for about 27 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and around a quarter of European Union greenhouse gas emissions. In both regions, transportation emissions are the second largest source of greenhouse gases after energy production.

According to the European Commission, transportation is the only major sector in the E.U. in which greenhouse gases are still rising — and they are 20.5 percent higher than they were in 1990. Heavy-duty vehicles are responsible for about a quarter of CO2 emissions from E.U. road transport and about 6 percent of total E.U. emissions.

While all-electric vehicles would be the ideal, there are many stops along the way to improving efficiency and design that can have a big impact on greenhouse gas emissions as well as costs. With big trucks oftentimes only getting 5 or 6 miles to the gallon, the EPA estimates its proposed standards would cut fuel costs for the vehicles in question by about $170 billion.

The Obama Administration also had a SuperTruck initiative run through the Department of Energy (DOE) that aimed to develop tractor-trailers that are 50 percent more efficient than baseline models by this year — a goal it surpassed in April. If all Class 8 trucks, or 18-wheelers, in the U.S. were that efficient, the country would consume nearly 300 million fewer barrels of oil and spend nearly $30 billion less on fuel each year, according to the DOE.

Last year Walmart unveiled one example of how large trucks can become more sustainable by releasing a tractor-trailer that will be 20 percent more aerodynamic than the current fleet and will use a “micro-turbine hybrid powertrain” than can run on diesel, natural gas, biodiesel and “probably other fuels still to be developed.” Dubbed the WAVE (Walmart Advanced Vehicle Experience), the trailer is made out of carbon fiber, which reduces the weight of the big rig by 4,000 pounds per vehicle.

If the changes were able to bring the truck above 10 mpg from its average of around 6 mpg, cost savings could add up to $25,000 or more per 120,000 miles, depending on diesel prices, according to Gas2.org.

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BMWElectric TruckElectric VehicleHeavy-Duty VehicleRenewable Energy

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Obama Administration Takes Next Step On Raising Rock-Bottom Coal Royalty Rates

The Obama administration is looking at raising the rock-bottom coal royalty rates companies pay to extract coal from public lands.

On Thursday, the Interior Department announced a schedule of five listening sessions it will host around the country focused on ensuring “that American taxpayers receive a fair return on the coal resources managed by the federal government on their behalf,” addaccording to a press release. The sessions will be held in Colorado, New Mexico, Montana, Wyoming, and Washington, DC through July and August, and meetings in D.C. and Denver will be available to livestream on the Bureau of Land Management’s website.

“As I’ve said, it’s important to have an honest and open conversation about modernizing the federal government’s coal program,” Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said in the release. “I have heard many concerns about how the federal government leases coal, the amount of royalty charged and whether taxpayers are getting a fair return from public resources. These listening sessions are an opportunity to better understand how taxpayers, stakeholders and local communities perceive the federal government’s coal program today and how we can improve and strengthen it for future generations.”

The listening sessions, while focused on royalty rates, are the next step the administration will take to address concerns about coal mining on public lands, a senior administration official told ThinkProgress. The official said that this examination of raising royalty rates, combined with a parallel process focused on closing loopholes on artificially low coal sale prices as well as the upcoming release of the Stream Protection Rule, demonstrate the administration’s commitment. A stream protection rule would not affect revenue, but advocates, especially in Appalachia, have been pushing for a strong rule to limit the damage caused by mountaintop removal mining.

This follows up on the speech Interior Secretary Sally Jewell gave in March where she said the need to cut carbon pollution “should inform our decisions about where we develop, how we develop, and what we develop.” The Interior Department, through the BLM, manages the coal, oil, and gas located on 570 million acres of public lands, and about 40 percent of the coal produced in the United States is mined from public lands. Her comments about coal leasing made some environmentalists’ ears perk up. Specifically, she noted that “most Americans would be surprised to know that coal companies can make a winning bid for about a dollar a ton to mine taxpayer-owned coal,” and she called for “an honest and open conversation about modernizing the federal coal program.”

The federal coal program, which manages coal companies operating leases on 310 active coal leases covering about 475,000 acres in 10 states, charges a royalty rate of 12.5 percent on surface-mined coal and 8 percent on coal mined underground. This is the lowest rate they can legally charge, and it has never been successfully raised. For the federal treasury and for state budget managers, who roughly split the royalty revenue, this is even more of a problem because the effective royalty rate is actually much lower. An analysis performed by the research group Headwaters Economics found that through deductions and loopholes, companies mining coal on federal lands in fact pay an effective 4.9 percent royalty rate.

Nearly all coal mining on federal lands is surface coal mining.

The invitation letter to the listening sessions said that “concerns have been expressed that royalty rates are too low and that the program’s processes do not reflect current market conditions or appraisal best practices, and therefore put the government at risk of not obtaining for the taxpayer full value for the use of their federal coal resources.”

The letter asks the public if existing royalty rates are appropriate, and if “the size of the federal coal resource base and its domestic market share require us to think differently about how we establish an appropriate royalty rate.” Also on the agenda is the potential impact of raising rates, including jobs, export markets, the economic viability of mining operations, as well as federal and state revenue.

“Increasing royalty rates is not just about increasing revenues,” University of Colorado Law School professor Mark Squillace told ThinkProgress. “It is even more importantly about finding a way to ensure that coal covers more of its external costs to society. And when coal is forced to pay more of these costs, other energy sources look more attractive.”

“It is also conceivable that coal production will continue for the foreseeable future, especially in areas like the PRB where production costs are low,” he continued. “So, the federal government should demand a fair return for whatever future coal it sells.”

If, after the listening sessions, the process results in the decision to raise coal royalty rates, this would apply to future coal leases; the rates on existing leases are locked in by contract and by law. Future coal leases, judging by the interest generated in past years, would not be hot commodities. In 2013, an auction for a tract in Wyoming resulted in just one historically low bid, which was rejected because the BLM said it “did not meet fair market value.”

The royalty rates are not the only factor limiting potential revenue for taxpayers. The price at which the company sells the coal can also be made artificially low if they sell it to a subsidiary, who then can sell it for more, especially to the much stronger export market abroad. This is known as a captive transaction, and Interior proposed a rule addressing this loophole in January. It would attempt to halt the practice of coal companies intentionally dodging royalty payments through captive transactions.

“The action Interior has taken, through proposed rules of the Office of Natural Resource Revenues, is quite significant,” said Dan Bucks, who directed Montana’s Department of Revenue from 2005 to 2013. “They have made a good start in proposing improvements to the process for valuing coal.”

“Any increase in coal’s royalty rate should come after loopholes in the valuation system are closed,” he told ThinkProgress. “Failure to fully close loopholes in the valuation system while raising royalty rates will further incentivize the largest coal producers to exploit those loopholes and game the system to the detriment of companies that play by the rules.”

This proposed rule would still allow coal companies to pay royalties on a price that is below the true market value at the final point of sale, and as currently written would not reform deductions from royalty payments companies can receive for costs posed by washing and transporting their product.

A proposal from the Center for American Progress would require companies to pay royalties on the sale price at the final point of sale. This means that the actual, “arms-length” sale price would be used to calculate the royalty payment, not an artificially deflated price to a “not-arms-length” subsidiary. Because it would be a change to how royalties are calculated rather than a change to the royalty rate, this would also apply to existing leases, meaning it could be more effective than raising the rate for future leases.

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CoalPublic LandsRoyalties

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Avocado-Hating Actor Allegedly Stole California Water To Grow Avocados

‘Magnum P.I.’ star Tom Selleck is making waves this week for allegedly stealing truckloads of California water to maintain his sprawling avocado ranch in the midst of a historic drought.

But here’s the thing: it looks like Tom Selleck doesn’t even like avocados. It looks like he hates avocados.

“I don’t eat ‘em,” the actor said in 2010, according a report in World Entertainment News Network. “I almost threw up on the Letterman show. He surprised me and he knew I didn’t like them.”

“Honestly, they make me gag,” he said in a 2012 People magazine interview.

So if avocados make Selleck want to “throw up,” as he reportedly said, then why grow them? For one, it looks like he really likes to farm them. In that same report, Selleck described being “hands on” as a farmer. “You don’t want any weeds to grow between your avocados,” he said. “You don’t want any wild flowers to grow between your avocados — because the bees will go to them, rather than the trees.” The actor also reportedly plants trees on his ranch every time a close friend dies.

But in another 2009 interview, Selleck apparently said he grows avocados to sell them.

“I sell them,” he’s quoted as saying. “They don’t look right … They’re wonderful, healthful, good fat — it’s really good for you but it’s not for me. Why eat them when I could sell them. I’ve got a mortgage.”

However, in his interview with People in 2012, he said it’s been “hard to make a living, let alone a profit” from the fruit.

Selleck may not have always disliked avocados. In a 1997 interview in Newsday, the actor was apparently “champing at the bit to finish up his promo duties and get back to his avocado ranch.” “I love my avocados,” he reportedly sighed.

So what happened to turn Selleck off to avocados between 1997 and 2009? It’s unclear right now, but it may be figured out in court. The accusations that Selleck is stealing water for his avocado ranch were filed in state court on July 1 by a California municipal water district in Ventura County, which hired a private investigator to catch Selleck in the act. California’s historic, four-year drought has resulted in unprecedented water restrictions across the state, and has thrown the country’s entire food system into question.

Unsurprisingly, the drought also threatens avocados. It takes 74 gallons of water to grow a pound of avocados, and water is dwindling in California, where the fruit is primarily grown in the United States. The avocado industry is fine at the moment, but could dwindle as scientists expect dry conditions to continue, in part due to climate change.

Selleck is not the only celebrity to be accused of overusing water for leisurely purposes, nor is he the only celebrity who grows avocados in California. His neighbor, Jamie Foxx, also owns a ranch for the green fruit. “I got 800 trees, it’s crazy,” Foxx said in 2012. No word on where he’s getting his water.

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AvocadosCaliforniaDroughtTom Selleck

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How Solar Power Is Learning To Share: The Rapid Growth Of Community Solar Gardens

For much of the recent rise of solar power, the industry has been divided in two: distributed rooftop solar, and utility-scale solar parks. According to a new report from GTM Research, a third type of solar in which consumers share renewable energy installations is set to take off this year — and to represent a large market share of the industry by 2020.

Known as community solar, solar gardens, or more simply shared solar, GTM researchers found that the U.S. “market is approaching a tipping point.” With a total of 66 megawatts installed cumulatively by the end of 2014, the report predicts that installations will grow five-fold in 2015, with 115 megawatts installed. By 2020, there will be 1.8 gigawatts, nearly equivalent to the total amount of solar power installed in the United States in 2012.

The economic, environmental, and social benefits of distributed photovoltaic (PV) have not been available to all consumers.

Designed for those without rooftop access, these shared solar projects will open up opportunities for some 50 percent of current U.S. households and businesses that are unable to host a photovoltaic system due to site unsuitability, ownership, or multi-unit status, according to a recent National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) analysis. The analysis found that by bringing shared solar to these households and businesses that are unable to host on-site PV, shared solar could represent 32 to 49 percent of the distributed solar market in 2020, representing $8.2–$16.3 billion of cumulative investment.

“Historically, PV business models and regulatory environments have not been designed to expand access to a significant portion of potential PV system customers,” said David Feldman, NREL energy analyst and lead author on the report. “As a result, the economic, environmental, and social benefits of distributed PV have not been available to all consumers.”

The GTM analysis found that while there are 24 states with at least one community solar project in operation, California, Colorado, Massachusetts, and Minnesota will install the bulk of the community solar projects at least for the next two years.

On Tuesday, the Obama administration added to the momentum by announcing a new Energy Department program to help build community solar systems as part of a larger effort to install 300 megawatts of solar power in subsidized housing by 2020. White House officials including Brian Deese, Obama’s top energy advisor, told reporters that around half of all U.S. households don’t have access to solar because they are renting or don’t have enough usable space.

“We need to expand opportunities for more families to reap the benefits of using cleaner sources of energy that can also help households save money on their utility bills,” said Deese.

In most instances of community solar, third-party solar developers will contract with utilities to sell them electricity and then go about finding subscribers. In places where community solar legislation isn’t yet in place, utilities will sometimes take on a larger share of the developer’s responsibilities, including customer acquisition and project ownership.

GTM Senior Solar Analyst Cory Honeyman, who authored the report, told ThinkProgress that in all four leading states, legislation helped catalyze community solar development growth.

It’s basically like we took the solar panels off a roof, put them in a field, and made them accessible to everyone.

“In the near term, the rapid growth is pegged to ambitious community solar legislation finally heating up outside of Colorado, and a flurry of development activity in those states from both longstanding community solar developers and leading rooftop solar companies including SolarCity, SunEdison, and NRG,” said Honeyman.

Two of the main longstanding third-party solar developers operating in the United States right now are Colorado-based Clean Energy Collective and Sunshare. According to GTM, these two companies combined have 32 percent of the community solar industry market share.

Karen Gados, director of business development and communications at SunShare, which was founded in 2011 in Colorado Springs, explained to ThinkProgress exactly how their community solar business works.

“For someone who has never heard of community solar before, it’s basically like we took the solar panels off a roof, put them in a field, and made them accessible to everyone,” she said.

Gados said typically a utility administers the program through an “interconnection agreement” with the community solar developer. SunShare has interest in their program from small businesses, school districts, nonprofits, residents, and others without easy access to solar power.

“It varies from people who want to do the right thing for the environment, to those wanting to be involved with something innovative and cutting edge, to those who want to save money and hedge against fossil fuel volatility — it’s usually a mixture,” she said. “The only requirement is for the utility to have a community solar program and for the individual, business, or organization to have an electric bill.”

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SunShare looks to take advantage of economies of scale in order to drive down costs when setting up their programs. Even states like Colorado and Minnesota still have caps on the size that these solar gardens can be in order to assuage the concerns of the utilities when it comes to integrating renewables into the grid and minimize the impact on their business models.

In Colorado, where Xcel is also the largest utility, there will be between 6.5 and 30 megawatts of community solar installed this year, depending on the quality of the bids. The Colorado Public Utilities Commission established the 30 megawatt cap last year to give the utility some specific guidelines to plan by.

After a long debate recently, Minnesota’s Public Utilities Commission ruled that independent energy companies cannot have solar gardens larger than five megawatts in sum. Xcel Energy, Minnesota’s largest utility, had received over 1,000 proposed solar gardens by the time the PUC put the limitations in place. Up to two-thirds of these proposals may never get built due to financing or other hurdles, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune.

Minnesota lawmakers originally passed a 2013 law that required Xcel to administer a community solar garden program with eligible projects up to one megawatt in size and no limit on the number of projects that could be developed. The new regulations went into place to address the issue of co-location in which community solar developers locate a number of separate solar gardens together on one site, creating a de facto utility-scale solar installation.

Brian D. Stuart, a renewable energy project manager located in Minnesota wrote an op-ed in the MinnPost about the recent controversy over community solar in the state. He says Xcel’s “dilemma is that it did not anticipate separate projects to be aggregated on the same area of land to the extent that it’s seen in the applications thus far.”

Stuart writes that under the former regime a solar developer could lease a 200-acre area of land and put in 40 projects at the maximum one megawatt size by submitting 40 different applications.

“It doesn’t take much more than common sense to remove these projects from being eligible for the community solar program and labeling them appropriately as utility-scale,” he writes.

With Minnesota having scaled back the ability of community solar operators to group projects and other states having capped markets as well, nationally focused companies like Clean Energy Collective will probably pursue a broad-based growth strategy alongside descending intensely on individual states.

The product will be available … to schools, hospitals, businesses and homeowners, but ideally we will get as many renters as possible.

Paul Spencer, the founder and CEO of Clean Energy Collective told ThinkProgress that CEC is looking to “exponentially expand the proliferation of community solar” through “turn-key” programs that make it easy to quickly and easily implement solar gardens. In June, CEC released something called the Community Solar Platform, a “suite of software tools and services” that will help utilities integrate community solar into their services. Spencer said the software will “navigate the complexities of on-bill crediting, securities and tax laws, tax credits and incentives, consumer protections, operations and maintenance, and sales and marketing.”

“CEC is the first and only company in the roofless solar marketplace to provide software as a service, positioning shared solar for explosive growth,” he said.

It’s old news that utilities are being forced to grapple with the prospect of integrating clean energy into their business models, but now rooftop solar companies may have to confront a new, roofless source of energy that’s competitive in some ways with their desired customer base. While most states still easily have enough potential customers to go around, this could be more of an issue in the future.

Gados said that SunShare is “really supportive of our rooftop solar friends” and that they “don’t target rooftop solar” but that “maybe there’s a few people who choose to do community solar instead of rooftop solar.”

In a nod to the impact the growth of the community solar industry could have on the solar market, SolarCity, the country’s largest rooftop solar installer, recently said it was investing $200 million in Minnesota’s community solar market. In what will be the California-based company’s first solar garden project, it will build 100 Minnesota solar gardens.

“It enables us to provide clean, cheaper energy to renters,” said SolarCity CEO and co-founder Lyndon Rive said of the investment. “The product will be available … to schools, hospitals, businesses and homeowners, but ideally we will get as many renters as possible.”

In December, First Solar, a large solar manufacturing company, announced it had purchased a 28 percent interest in CEC for a reported $21.8 million.

“Distributed generation in the form of community solar expands the addressable market dramatically beyond the traditional residential or commercial sectors,” said Jim Hughes, First Solar’s CEO, at the time of the announcement.

Community solar gardens could soon be coming in a big way to the holy grail states of solar, like California and Texas, which have some of the highest solar potential in the country.

CEC recently announced it was building its first solar garden in Texas and Austin Energy is in the early stages of adding up to 3.2 megawatts of community solar to its grid.

In California, the results of a “shared renewables” bill passed in 2013 are about to start paying dividends in the form of community solar. The bill requires the state’s three major investor-owned utilities — Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas & Electric — to get 600 megawatts of shared solar capacity online by 2019. While 600 megawatts is a big number, solar advocates have concerns with the program’s affordability as well as the one-year contract length, allowing customers’ utility bills to be recalculated on a month-to-month basis after the initial contract.

As part of this program, Pacific Gas and Electric costumers will soon have the option of getting up to 100 percent of their electricity from community solar. The option will have an additional cost of about two to three cents per kilowatt-hour — a number PG&E said will “likely fall over time” as the solar costs decline.

Known as “the green option” the program will be in place by late 2015 or early 2016.

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Community SolarDistributed SolarRenewable EnergyRooftop SolarSolar Gardens

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Congressman: Stop Worrying About Climate Change, Focus On Crimes Against Christians

A Republican Congressman expressed anger at Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials on Wednesday for putting what he claimed was a misplaced priority on climate change.

Instead of studying the security risks posed by climate change — which include threats to infrastructure, disease spread, and increased refugees — Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC) said DHS should worry about other things, including “illegal aliens murdering beautiful innocent lives” and “folks who want to do great harm to Christians.”

“Your priorities are wrong at the Department of Homeland Security,” he said at a House Homeland Security subcommittee hearing:

I think that we’ve got threats of ISIS; we’ve got cartels shooting at helicopters on the border; we’ve got unaccompanied children coming into this country; we’ve got illegal aliens murdering beautiful innocent lives in San Francisco; we’ve got a woman who had her head blown off in Los Angeles by someone.

There are events after events going on around the world that are true threats to the United states, folks who want to do great harm to Christians, want to do great harm to others.

They want to come to this country and end the American way of life, and for whatever reason, we’re now spending out hard-earned dollars on climate science and the belief that this is one of the biggest threats to national security.

Duncan’s comments can be found here, at around the 48 minute mark of the archived webcast.

Duncan’s outrage over DHS studying climate risks may have to do with the fact that he doesn’t think climate change is real. He stated as much on Wednesday at the hearing, asking three high-level DHS officials to explain “why the earth was warmer during the medieval times” (a oft-used claim that is false). He also stated that “this notion that manmade climate change is happening is wrong.”

More than 56 percent of congressional Republicans deny or question the science behind human-caused climate change. By contrast, 97 percent of climate scientists actively publishing research on the subject say climate change is real and humans cause it.

When assessing national security risks, the Department of Defense sides with the scientists. It doesn’t consider climate change a direct threat, but considers it a “threat multiplier” that can worsen direct threats such as terrorism and infectious disease spread.

At the subcommittee hearing, called to examine the DHS’ “misplaced” focus on climate change, one official said that only two to four of its employees worked on the climate components of the agency’s latest Quadrennial Homeland Security Review. In that review, the DHS said natural hazards driven by climate change could pose threats to infrastructure, thereby risking national security in some parts of the country.

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Climate ChangeImmigrationNational Security

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Why This Tea Party Congressman Wants To Stop Debating Whether Climate Change Is Real Or Not

For a Republican from Florida, Rep. Curt Clawson does not sound like a Republican from Florida — at least when it comes to human-caused climate change.

At a Homeland Security subcommittee hearing on Wednesday, the freshman Tea Party Congressman seemed to part ways with his colleagues on the polarizing issue. Instead of denying the science behind climate change, Clawson said he’d rather not have that debate, and instead talk about solutions.

“All the chatter about is climate change real or not, I’m not sure how that helps my constituents,” said Clawson, whose district includes areas of South Florida that are particularly susceptible to sea level rise and storm surge. “I’d just like to be prepared for the next hurricane.”

Of course, Clawson didn’t say he accepts the science behind climate change. When contacted by phone, his spokesman David James declined to elaborate on his position. “The congressman’s words speak from themselves,” he said.

But his comments are notable if only because Florida seems flooded with high-profile Republican politicians who outwardly deny that the effects of climate change pose a threat to the vulnerable state. State Governor Rick Scott, Sen. Marco Rubio and former state Governor Jeb Bush all either outwardly deny the science or will not talk about it. Scott has even been accused of banning the term “climate change” from all official state communications.

Wednesday’s hearing was called to examine the Department of Homeland Security’s focus on climate change as a security threat. In its latest Quadrennial Homeland Security Review, the DHS said natural hazards driven by climate change could pose threats to infrastructure, thereby risking national security in some parts of the country.

But the hearing’s title implied that DHS’s focus on climate was “misplaced,” and multiple Republicans on the committee questioned why the agency would invest taxpayer dollars into assessing the security risks of global warming.

Clawson, however, did not seem to object to the idea of preparing for climate risks. Instead of questioning the science, Clawson asked DHS Acting Assistant Secretary of Strategy, Planning, Analysis and Risk Thomas Smith about how the agency uses data from NASA and NOAA. Smith responded that NOAA provides DHS with top-line science on things like sea level, and then DHS maps out that data to find the statistical risk of catastrophic events that could impact national security. Clawson seemed pleased with the answer.

“The more ya’ll concentrate on execution, and actually delivering the goods … and less on this debate [over whether climate change is real], I think the better off we’ll all be,” he said.

While Clawson’s statement does seem like a slight evolution for a Republican on the topic of climate change, it’s unlikely that environmentalists will be impressed. A desire to fix the symptoms of climate change without acknowledging that humans are causing those symptoms means that policies will only attempt to fix damage, and not seek to prevent it through reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. In other words, Florida can try to adapt all it wants, but those efforts will mean nothing if the ocean keeps on rising.

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Climate ChangeCurt ClawsonFloridaTea Party

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How This Popular Boy Band Is Raising Awareness On Climate Change

Looks like losing a member hasn’t lessened One Direction’s humanitarian spirit.

Speaking directly to their fans — an extremely loyal bunch known as Directioners — the popular British boy band released a video Wednesday on their website to mark the launch of Action/1D, a campaign aimed at raising awareness about global issues like climate change.

“2015 is a year like no other, and we want you to really make it count,” the video begins. “At two historic summits in September and December, world leaders will make decisions that affect important human issues, like extreme poverty, inequality, and climate change.”

The aforementioned summits — the United Nations Summit for the Adoption of the Post-2015 Development Agenda and the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference — will bring together officials from around the world in the hopes of adopting international agreements on sustainable development and climate change.

“Please will you join us to put pressure on our leaders?” the boys ask. “All you need to do is tell us what you want your world to look like in the future.”

The video has only been on YouTube for a few hours, but it has already elicited thousands of responses from fans, who have sent videos and pictures responding to various “actions” called for on the band’s websites. For those that want to get involved, there are currently two actions available: one that asks fans to show how they would “celebrate” and another that asks what their ideal future world would look like. On Friday, July 10, another action is scheduled to drop (the anticipation is almost too much to bear).

Each band member will also release individual videos (except for Niall and Liam, who are apparently recording theirs together), with the first coming from Louis (the one with “light brown hair, sea green eyes and an amazing smile” according to onedirectioninfection.wikia.com) on July 13.

The Action/1D is part of a larger action/2015 campaign, which launched in January and seeks to make 2015 a defining year in the global fight against poverty and climate change, according to the Guardian. The campaign already boasts a full lineup of celebrity supporters, from Matt Damon to Malala Yousafzai.

Celebrities that take up social causes can use their influence to make an issue more visible, but that’s not the only way celebrities can shape a particular cause, according to Declan Fahy, an associate professor at American University’s School of Communication. In a 2014 interview with Yale Climate Connections, Fahy explained that celebrities can “personify ideas and social issues” and “put a recognizable, individual face on a complex, systemic phenomenon like climate change,” which can “make the issue connect with audiences, engaging them on the issue, and potentially mobilizing them to take action.”

Of the nearly 10,000 responses currently posted on the band’s website, respondents seem to skew young and female, which could be good news for those that care about climate change. According to an analysis of public attitudes and behaviors related to climate change compiled by Purdue University, older people tend to be more concerned about the environment than younger people, especially in Europe. Similar analysis by the Yale Center for Climate Change Communication found young people relatively disengaged on the issue of global warming — at least by some indicators — compared to older generations.

So One Direction probably won’t single-handedly solve global warming — but they could help encourage a younger generation to care about the issue.

And that’s what makes them beautiful.

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The post How This Popular Boy Band Is Raising Awareness On Climate Change appeared first on ThinkProgress.

The Ironic Reason Why A Wind Farm Won’t Get Built Next To Donald Trump’s Golf Course

In a week that saw billionaire real estate mogul and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump lose major partners — including NBC, Macy’s and the PGA — due to his controversial comments about Mexican immigrants, an ironic twist in an Irish legal battle has given him something to write home about.

Trump didn’t want a nine turbine wind farm constructed within sight of his Doonbeg golf course along Ireland’s Atlantic coast, and now — thanks to a small, freshwater pearl mussel — the wind farm has been denied approval.

While the wind farm attracted 42 objections, including opposition from local environmental groups on the grounds that the turbines might harm the nearby aquatic habitat, the charge against it was led by Trump and his legal team.

According to the Irish Examiner, Trump International Golf Links employed consultants that claimed the wind farm would “have a detrimental impact on the viability” of the Doonbeg golf resort. They stated that “the resort primarily relies on bookings from international and, in particular, the North American market and a reduction in bookings as a consequence of the visual impact from the proposed development will have a serious negative impact on tourism in the area.”

The inspector in the case recommended the 413-foot high wind farm be refused for a number of reasons, including the way the wind turbines would alter the view from the golf course. In the final decision to deny the wind farm, the board refused it on only one condition — the impact it would have on the mussels.

The EU-protected freshwater pearl mussel is an ancient species that hasn’t evolved for some 50 million years, and can live up to 120 years. Nearly 9/10ths of these mussels died out across Europe over the last 100 or so years, and it is estimated that around 7,000 of them live in the Doonbeg river near the golf course.

In nearby Scotland, Trump has also been bashing wind farms and promoting golf courses. At the opening of a new golf resort in June, Trump accused former Scottish first minister Alex Salmond of destroying “some of the great beauty of the world” by advancing green energy. Scotland is a global leader in onshore and offshore wind power. The Scottish government hopes to generate enough renewable energy to power 100 percent of the country’s demand by 2020, and in 2014 it got halfway there.

An Edinburgh court recently dismissed Trump Organization’s claim that a European Offshore Wind Deployment Centre about two miles away from his Scottish golf course would interfere with the Aberdeenshire facility. According to The Financial Times the court said none of the evidence supplied by Trump’s lawyers came “anywhere near to supporting the petitioners’ suspicions.”

If only there was an endangered species nearby that Trump could use to his advantage.

While Trump is clearly engaging the debate around large-scale renewable energy and local environmental impacts for his own personal gain, there is a serious discussion to be had about how solar parks, wind farms, and other massive energy projects like hydropower dams take a toll on local ecology. In the desert, solar parks can disrupt turtle habitat, as has occurred in inland California. Both wind farms and solar parks can cause bird deaths, and large hydropower plants can uproot communities and submerge important habitats underwater.

Trump generally has not engaged in discussion about energy or climate change unless it relates to his business interests, but he has taken to Twitter some 41 times since 2011 to air his doubts about climate change — especially when the weather is cold. As ClimateProgress recently reported, in that time he has used cold weather and unexpected (or unwanted) snowfall to make this argument eight times, and tweeted five times solely about snow to refute mainstream climate science.

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EPA Slams House Republicans For Trying To Gut Environmental Protections

The heads of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) fired back Tuesday against a proposed budget from the the Republican-led House, telling reporters the appropriations bill is “short-sighted” with “terrible real-world consequences.”

The House of Representatives is currently debating an appropriations bill that would reduce the EPA’s budget by $718 million, or by 9 percent, and prohibit certain environmental regulations, including a sweeping proposal from the Obama administration to tackle carbon emissions.

“We are deeply disappointed in the bill,” OMB Director Shaun Donovan said on a call Tuesday. “Representatives are attempting to hijack the appropriations process.” Donovan told reporters the overall budget locks in sequestration for agencies like the EPA and reflects the lowest real levels of funding in a decade. Nearly every state has water or conservation projects that would be put on hold, he noted.

EPA chief Gina McCarthy echoed Donovan’s concerns, rattling off a litany of cuts the agency would experience. Under the appropriation bills, the EPA would be prohibited from finalizing the Clean Power Plan. The bill would also delay implementation of the Waters of the United States rule, which offers protection to two million miles of streams and 20 million acres of wetlands. A grant program to revitalize brownfields would be reduced by a third.

“The protection of public health and the environment will be compromised,” McCarthy said. She added that the practical results will also be more costly than implementing the programs. Thousands of construction jobs will be lost just through cuts to the revolving fund, a financing mechanism that allows states and municipalities to invest in clean water projects, she said.

The cuts are included in the Interior and Environmental budget proposed in June by a Republican-led House Appropriations Committee. The committee’s goal was to “fight job-crushing regulations, protect the nation’s natural resources, and promote safe and sustainable American energy.”

The bill includes extra-budgetary provisions to block EPA implementation of the proposed Clean Power Plan and the newly released Waters of the United States rule.

Attacking environmental protections has emerged a key priority for House Republicans, who have often accused the Obama Administration of a “war on coal.”

Globally and in the United States, coal is a major contributor to global warming. In 2013, coal accounted for three-quarters of emissions from the electricity sector — the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions.

But the idea that regulation costs more than it is worth has been raised and often disproved throughout U.S. history. “Regulatory requirements to protect the environment, workers, and consumers often lead to innovation, increased productivity, and new businesses and jobs,” according to a report by the Pew Charitable Trusts, which found that “historically, compliance costs have been less and benefits greater than industry predictions.” A separate report by the Economic Policy Institute’s concurred, saying that not only does industry routinely overestimate the cost of compliance, but the EPA also historically underestimates the benefits of its regulations.

Recently, though, several states and a coal company sued to stop the Clean Power Plan, which will restrict the amount of carbon emitted by the electricity sector, saying it is bad for business.

The EPA estimates the Clean Power Plan will have “climate and health benefits worth an estimated $55 billion to $93 billion per year in 2030,” which include the prevention of “2,700 to 6,600 premature deaths and 140,000 to 150,000 asthma attacks in children.” Another, independent report found that the rule will create 100,000 jobs.

In another case, the Supreme Court recently put another EPA regulation, the Mercury Air Toxics (MATs), rule in jeopardy, finding that the EPA should have considered the costs of the regulation earlier in the rule-making process. The rule, which was expected to prevent 11,000 premature deaths each year and has been an administrative priority, was estimated to have monetized benefits of between $37 billion and $90 billion. It was expected to cost $9.7 billion to implement the pollution reductions.

Ironically, the budget — which covers the Forest Service — was proposed as wildfires rage across the western United States and Canada. For years, the Forest Service has been underfunded, burning through its fire-fighting budget and being forced to borrow funds from its prevention programs to continue services.

The bill would cut the funding for the Department of the Interior, the EPA, the Forest Service, the Indian Health Service, and some related agencies by $246 million from last year to $30.17 billion in base funding. The total allocation is $3 billion below the White House’s requested amount.

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