renewable energy

Canada’s Green Energy and Jobs Programs Butt Up Against WTO Rules, says Japan

by Fran Smith on September 22, 2010 · 2 comments

in Energy, Environment, Global Warming, International, Trade

Do green energy and green jobs mandates run counter to World Trade Organization rules?  Japan says “yes” in relation to Canada’s program for renewable energy generation and green jobs in Ontario. Japan is complaining to the WTO that Canadian measures that mandate domestic content requirements for renewable energy generation equipment are inconsistent with WTO rules because they discriminate against equipment produced outside of Ontario and also represent a subsidy prohibited by the WTO. The country has asked the WTO for a formal consultation with Canada on the issues it raises in its September 13, 2010 filing. Consultations are often the first step in trying to resolve an issue before a country opens an official case with the WTO’s dispute settlement body.

Primarily Japan’s complaint hits Canada’s domestic content requirements in its “feed-in tariff” (FIT) program for Ontario, which requires that the renewable energy equipment, such as solar panels, wind turbines, biomass, and waterpower generation equipment, be produced in Ontario in whole or in part. (Feed-in tariffs are renewable energy payments that electric grid utilities obligate themselves to pay to purchase electricity generated from renewable sources.)  Under the program guaranteed prices for renewable energy electricity production are provided through long-term contracts.

According to a provincial government backgrounder on FIT, the domestic content requirements are intended to support “new green jobs in Ontario”:

Domestic content requirements for both FIT and microFIT projects are intended to help support the creation of 50,000 new green jobs in Ontario. MicroFIT projects will help create new local businesses and green jobs as demand grows for technologies such as solar panels, wind turbines, biomass and waterpower generation equipment, and for Ontarians who can design, build, install, operate and maintain these technologies.

And the domestic content requirements can be very specific (and somewhat ridiculous).   Here, for instance, is the one for silicon ingots and wafers:

Silicon ingots and wafer, where silicon ingots have been cast in Ontario, and wafers have been cut from the castings by a saw in Ontario.

From my quick review of the Canadian program, Japan seems to have a real cause for its complaint. Other countries looking to follow Canada’s example for green jobs creation should be wary about including their own protectionist measures.

H/T/ Julie Walsh

Renewable Energy Not Necessarily Cleaner Than Coal

by Jonathan Tolman on April 13, 2009

in Energy, Environment, Global Warming

One irony of mandating renewable energy is that it isn’t necessarily any cleaner than coal.  One example of this is North Carolina’s mandate for renewable energy derived from chicken litter waste.   Chicken litter waste is composed of wood shavings and of course chicken droppings.  There are plans to build a chicken litter waste plant in North Carolina and one has already been built in Minnesota.

As it turns out, burning chicken litter waste tends to produce a high level of particulates, high levels of carbon monoxide, high levels of nitrogen oxides, and a high level of arsenic.  The reason the plants produce high levels of particulates and carbon monoxide is because the wood shavings don’t burn as hot as coal and so there is often incomplete combustion.  The high levels of nitrogen oxides come from the fact the chicken waste is high in ammonia and urea.  In fact, chicken waste is often used as a source of nitrogen fertilizer on farms.   The reason for the high levels of arsenic is that most commercial chicken feed contains Roxarsone, which is an arsenic based compound that is added to the chicken feed to prevent the birds from developing parasites.

The emissions at the Minnesota plant are apparently so problematic the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency  has pending legal action.  So much for clean green renewable energy.

LibertyWeek 36: We Go Green

by Richard Morrison on April 1, 2009

in CEI Projects, Podcast

Hosts Richard Morrison and Cord Blomquist join Michelle Minton in welcoming you to LibertyWeek 36: The Green Episode. We begin our environmental adventure with an update on the high cost of renewable energy and the good news from the coal laboratory. We then pass on advice for drinking green in Beer News and celebrate the recent observance of Human Achievement Hour. This brings us to the featured interview with our distinguished colleague and author Steve Milloy – where we explore his new book Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Ruin Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them and its targets, from the Audubon Society to Zero Population Growth. Finally we round out the program with a little Olympic News.

Renewable Energy Jobs Will Have To Wait

by Jonathan Tolman on February 2, 2009

in Deregulate to Stimulate, Economy, Energy, Environment, Odds & Ends, Politics as Usual, Stimulus to Nowhere, Zeitgeist

The porcine stimulus bill passed by the House contains $15 billion in capital investments and loan guarantees for renewable energy projects and new electric transmission lines.  But the billions of dollars targeted toward renewable energy aren’t likely to generate many “green collar” jobs anytime soon.  That’s because the environmental and permitting regulations for these types of projects typically take years.  This is particularly true for new transmission lines.  And without the new transmission lines, new solar or wind power stations won’t bring many benefits.

For example, the Tehachapi Transmission Project, a 250 mile transmission project to deliver electricity from wind farms in Southern California, took over 10 years to design, permit, and begin construction.  One of the reasons for the long wait is that all of these projects have to go through a lengthy environmental review process to comply with NEPA before they can obtain a permit from the Federal Energy Regulatory Agency.

If Congress is serious about focusing the stimulus on creating jobs as soon as possible, it should grant a categorical exclusion from NEPA for projects funded with the stimulus.  There is actually some precedence for this.  In the Energy Policy Act of 2005, Congress modified the environmental compliance requirements for a broad range of energy related projects.

Without a more streamlined regulatory process it’s unlikely the renewable energy stimulus will be creating any jobs any time soon.  But this problem of delayed spending isn’t just true for renewable energy and electricity transmission.  According to the Congressional Budget Office, the federal government will only be able to spend $432 billion in 2009, and estimates that the government won’t finish spending all of the $820 billion until 2019.

Obama Inaugural Speech Spurns Notion of Apologizing

by Christine Hall on January 20, 2009

in Energy, Environment, Global Warming

Listening to President Obama’s inaugural address today, I was struck by his rhetoric with respect to “apologizing for our way of life.” It was a bit unclear, but hopefully he was referring, not only to threats to our national security, but to energy consumption — the notion that we (Americans, westerners) should not apologize for the energy we consume, which enables us to live better, more productive, healthy lives.

With old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet. We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.

As my colleagues have noted, many of Obama’s energy and environment appointments have a long track record of supporting anti-energy policies, such as renewable energy mandates, that drive up energy costs for the rest of us. But, for a moment, it would be nice to think that our new president doesn’t want us to apologize for the energy that empowers all of us to live better lives.

Stimulating Alternative Energy

by Iain Murray on January 9, 2009 · 4 comments

in Environment, Global Warming, Politics as Usual, Stimulus to Nowhere

In his speech on the stimulus package Thursday, President (Elect) Obama promised to double alternative energy use in three years. How likely is this?

Well, for a start we don’t use much alternative energy to begin with – slightly less than 7 quadrillion BTU of the 101 quads we use as a nation annually. Of those 7, 2 quads are related to the use of wood as fuel, something which is not normally viewed as environmentally friendly, and 2.5 are hydropower, an energy source once thought as environmentally friendly but now usually opposed as destructive. Of the remaining 2.5 quads, biofuels provide about 1 quad, and biofuels have become increasingly controversial and opposed – rightly – by many green environmental groups (source for these figures here).

So the more “acceptable” forms of renewable energy – “waste” biomass, geothermal, wind and solar – only provide just over 1 quad between them. Wind provides 319 trillion BTU and solar just 80. If these two forms of renewable energy are going to form the basis of Obama’s promise, the increase in scale needed to provide 7 quads between them in three years is simply inconceivable. A seventeenfold increase in these forms of energy would be a vast achievement, and one that would surely be trailed in the speech. It would presumably also require at least a seventeenfold increase in subsidies ($740 million in 2007 – see Table ES5 here) to about $13 billion annually, about the same as the Detroit bailout.

It seems likely, therefore, that, while there will be some wind and solar investment, perhaps some significant amounts, to meet a target of an extra 7 quads of energy, the only feasible source that is scalable to the intense required will be biofuels, but even that will require a massive expansion, and one that will have significant implications for crop prices, food prices and land use. The consequences may prove unacceptable to all but the agribusiness lobby and farm state politicians.

So it seems likely that the target of doubling the use of renewable energy does not actually refer to the full range of renewables at all, but just to those “acceptable” alternatives. This would imply that the target is only 1 extra quad of renewable energy by 2011, which, while it would represent a significant expansion of those industries, would amount to just a “drop in the bucket” of total US energy use. And, as we hear in the debate over ANWR every time it comes up, a “drop in the bucket” is just not worth doing…

It appears that this part of the stimulus package is, at most, a shibboleth.