UC Berkeley’s news outlet published a Q&A with me on the important role that California is playing in the Paris negotiations. Here’s an excerpt:
Could you elaborate on California’s leadership around climate change?
In 2006 California passed the first-in-the-nation law to limit our greenhouse gas emissions. Since then we’ve embarked on a suite of measures — investments, policies and programs — to bring down our carbon emissions. So far it’s been an interesting success story, and a great example for the international community, demonstrating that you can decarbonize and still increase economic growth.
We’re on pace to dramatically bolster our renewable energy supply. We have a very aggressive goal to get to 50 percent renewables by 2030, and we’re learning how to site these facilities better and to integrate the variable energy generated by solar and wind facilities. In terms of petroleum usage, California has 40 percent of the electric vehicle sales in the country, as well as strong sales of hybrid cars. We have some good state programs to encourage electric vehicle ownership.
On storage of surplus solar and wind energy, we have the only mandates in the country for utilities to buy a certain amount of energy storage. We’re seeing a huge growth in standalone batteries and other technologies, and we’re trying to build high-speed rail and to electrify more of our transportation. On energy efficiency, we have goals to double the efficiency of our existing buildings by 2030.
Since my expertise is on California’s climate efforts and not the international legal process, I may be overly biased toward the importance of what California is doing. But at the same time, the more time I spend at the Paris COP, the more I realize that all the technological and economic changes that are making climate mitigation achievable for so many countries is due to the leadership and market power of California.
Not that California gets all the credit, but it certainly couldn’t have happened without the state either.
Back in 1920s Paris, an unknown writer named Ernest Hemingway hung out in the local cafes with other aspiring artists. It was an odd group, featuring communists like Pablo Picasso, fascists like Ezra Pound, and right-wingers like Gertrude Stein. But they helped each other, promoting their work and ultimately producing a generation of famous artists captured in Hemingway’s posthumous memoirs A Moveable Feast. I now wonder if the Paris climate talks may serve a similar purpose — galvanizing a diverse network of leaders that can cumulatively promote their cause back home.
I’ve been attending the UN climate summit this week in part to answer the question of why this process matters. As I blogged last week, it’s hard not to feel skepticism about a process that has essentially yielded very little for two decades now. At the same time, the independent work of states and nations like California and Germany have completely altered the economics and technology of climate mitigation for the better — making the UN process feel even more pointless by comparison.
Global elected officials and leaders gather in Paris to listen to the COP 21 plenary.
So in that spirit, I’ve been asking people at the conference why they believe the international process is important. Most of them admit to me that they’re not quite sure how effective it will be, given past failures and the work that remains ahead around the globe. And of course, we still don’t have a final deal, and we don’t know how well Obama Administration lawyers can craft an enforceable executive agreement that won’t need to be ratified by the U.S. Senate.
But the people I’ve spoken with have made a number of important points that shouldn’t be overlooked. Without Paris and all the great expectations associated with it, we wouldn’t have had a number of major developments, such as:
- The papal encyclical casting climate change as a moral issue by an influential religious leader. Or at least the encyclical probably wouldn’t have gotten the coverage it did with the timing that it had, plus the corresponding bump in public acceptance of climate science that it seems to have spurred.
- The California-led Under 2 MOU effort to rally subnational climate leaders, which was explicitly aimed at motivating international negotiators in Paris. At a minimum, each of those subnationals will benefit from the agreement in many untold ways, given the information-sharing and political alliance it has forged.
- The mountain of media coverage and attention on the climate issue that the Paris talks have generated, leading to greater public awareness and possibly support for climate mitigation efforts.
- The network of influential elected officials primed to return to their home jurisdictions and promote the needed climate policies, as I alluded to above. That national and subnational implementation is where all the real work will be. While we don’t yet know how successful these climate leaders will be, at least they’ll be returning from Paris about as well-prepared as possible to take on their domestic challenges.
All of these developments point to the importance of having a singular, global event and discussion on climate change, which Paris has so far produced.
But in attending the conference, I’ve also seen first-hand the value of having such a global networking event. From “climate justice” activists to clean technology purveyors to big business leaders to nonprofit advocates to elected officials from every corner of the globe, these summits offer idea-sharing and networking that carry benefits well beyond the gathering, leading to collaboration and ideas with as-yet-undefined but likely benefits.
Of course, there’s still the risk that Paris fails to produce an agreement — or a good one. Or that so much hope is placed in the process that even with a seemingly good agreement we take our attention off the all-important implementation phase at the national and subnational level.
But so far it seems like this conference has little downside. The leading national and subnational players will still need to get the work done on climate back home, but Paris will provide some wind at their backs. And it may deflate the objections of some opponents, who could previously cite the lack of international action as a reason to do nothing.
So even when the conference pavilions come down, my guess is this climate feast at Paris will continue to move.
On Sunday the Sacramento Bee published my op-ed on how California can boost in-state production of low-carbon biofuels — not the wasteful Midwestern corn kind of biofuels. Here’s an excerpt:
[T]he state has not yet taken full advantage of the the ndiverse opportunities for low-carbon biofuel production from in-state biomass. While policies such as the state’s recently revised low-carbon fuel standard have put California on a leadership path in incorporating low-carbon biofuels into our transportation fuel mix, more federal and state action could ensure that California maximizes the environmental and economic potential of in-state innovation and production.
Federal and state leaders could:
- Provide greater support for in-state biofuel production, taking into account the full range of local biofuel carbon benefits and co-products, like biochar compost that can sequester carbon, and thin-film plastic to bed strawberries and tomatoes.
- Offer financial incentives for automakers and gas stations to allow and sell greater amounts of low-carbon biofuels and higher blend rates.
- Improve access to and financial support for in-state feedstock production, particularly on idled farmland and forestland to reduce wildfire risks.
Ultimately, California should set a goal of providing at least half of its low-carbon biofuel from in-state sources. Locally produced, low-carbon biofuel is an important bridge fuel to meet the state’s long-term climate goals, and it will benefit California’s environment and economy in the process.
You can read our new UC Berkeley / UCLA report on the subject here.
What started as a series of informal conversations about a year ago among Governor Brown, his senior staff, and a few world leaders, has turned into a veritable global movement. The “Under 2 MOU,” which I blogged about on Thursday, just bumped its total from 57 signatories last week to 80 today, with each representing a city, state or region around the world that is pledging to limit global warming to under 2 degrees by 2100. That signatory number is expected to increase further this week during the UN climate negotiations in Paris.
Governor Brown and the U.S. Ambassador to France, Jane Hartley (fresh off hosting President Obama at her residence), co-hosted a signing ceremony at the Ambassador’s Residence in Paris today, which I attended as part of Berkeley Law’s sponsorship of the luncheon that followed.
The signing ceremony included signatory states and regions from places like Brazil, Holland, and Australia, as well as cities closer to home like Austin and Oakland. The event featured a press conference with remarks from the ambassador, governor, and a representative from the German state of Baden-Württemberg, which launched this effort with California earlier this year. With 30 media representatives in attendance, the hope is that this effort will get strong publicity both in California and around the world to encourage international negotiators this week in Paris to strike a more aggressive climate agreement.
Governor Brown addresses the luncheon following the Under 2 MOU signing.
In the luncheon that followed for Brown Administration officials, California’s business delegation, and other environmental leaders and elected officials from around the globe, Governor Brown noted that even the “Under 2” goal by 2100 many not be enough. Scientists say that even with two degrees warming, it only gives humanity a 50% chance at averting catastrophic climate change. “I don’t know about you,” Brown said, “but how many of us would board an airplane if it only had a 50% chance of not crashing? I want to see that 50% chance of catastrophe become 0%.”
But short of changing the name to the less-catchy “Under 1.5” MOU, this subnational effort may be one of the best chances that climate advocates have for pushing strong, global action on climate change. Particularly with the international process getting bogged down by deference to the lowest common denominator, as Ted and Cara have blogged about, an agreement among more progressive subnationals could lay the foundation for strong global coordination, albeit at a different level than what negotiators will hopefully be finalizing this coming week.
Credit for this Under 2 MOU certainly goes to the governor and other elected officials, but also to his senior advisor (and Legal Planet guest-blogger) Ken Alex, who helped brainstorm the idea, as well as a dedicated staff from California’s “State Department” in the Brown Administration. With so many roadblocks on the U.S. national and international scene, it’s encouraging to see how much progress California is making at home and now globally.
When we think of ways to reduce emissions from petroleum-based transportation fuels, electric vehicles get much of the headlines. Battery electric transportation certainly offers a viable, long-term alternative to petroleum fuels. But we’re still a few years away from an affordable, mass-market electric vehicle, and battery technology may be decades away, if ever, from being suitable for uses like long-haul trucking and aviation.
So what do we do in the meantime, if we hope to achieve California’s carbon reduction goals? Transportation, after all, is the single biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the state.
The response may in fact be growing all around us. Biofuels from agricultural sources like canola and corn, as well as algae, forest residue, and food waste, among others, can provide a low-carbon alternative to petroleum fuels, depending on its source and type. Certainly not all biofuels are environmentally beneficial, and one of the knocks on the federal Renewable Fuels Standard statute, with just-released new implementing rules from EPA announced on Monday, is that the law promotes biofuels that may actually be worse for the environment than petroleum fuels, given their production pathways and land use impacts.
But here in California, we have the opportunity to meet our climate goals while producing as much as half of our biofuels from low-carbon, in-state sources. To suggest policies that could boost this in-state production, UC Berkeley and UCLA Law are today releasing a new report “Planting Fuels: How California Can Boost Local, Low-Carbon Biofuel Production.” The report is the 16th in the two law schools’ Climate Change and Business Research Initiative, generously supported by Bank of America since 2009.
While California has a small but growing amount of biofuel production and consumption, federal and state leaders could do more to boost low-carbon, innovative biofuels. These leaders could:
- Provide greater support for in-state biofuel production, taking into account the full range of local biofuel carbon benefits and co-products, like biochar compost that can sequester carbon and thin-film plastic to bed strawberries and tomatoes;
- Offer financial incentives for automakers and gas stations to allow and sell greater amounts of low-carbon biofuels and higher blend rates; and
- Improve access to and financial support for in-state feedstock production, particularly on idled farmland and forest lands to reduce wildfire risks.
With these steps, California could power our cars, trucks and airplanes in a more environmentally beneficial manner, while boosting local economies in the process.
To learn more about the report and its recommendations, please join us for a webinar on December 14th from 11am to noon. Speakers will include:
- Tim Olsen, energy and fuels program manager at the California Energy Commission
- Lisa Mortenson, chief executive officer at Community Fuels
- Mary Solecki, western states advocate for Environmental Entrepreneurs
You can register via this site. We hope you can join for further discussion on this important topic.
Thursday I’m off to attend the UN climate change negotiations in Paris, primarily to highlight California’s effort to achieve a strong subnational agreement on greenhouse gas reductions. The “Under 2 MOU” is an impressive commitment by diverse subnational entities to keep warming to under two degrees Celsius by 2100. It already has 57 signatories, constituting the largest combined GDP in the world.
I’m looking forward to the trip, as I hope to learn a lot and meet people working on climate change all around the globe. But I have to confess, I’ve been a longtime skeptic of the UN process on climate change and am still unsure of what can be meaningfully gained there this time.
If we want to solve climate change, the world needs to do two things: put a meaningful price on carbon and reduce the cost of clean technologies, like solar panels and batteries. As I look to Paris, I wonder what authority the UN and the high-level attendees there have to actually make progress on those two fronts.
In terms of setting a price on carbon, it seems politically impossible that we’d ever have a UN-mandated carbon tax. That price will have to come from nations willing to impose it, and that means votes from members of parliaments and congresses across the globe (or party leaders, if we’re talking dictatorships here). Those decision-making bodies will be hardly represented in Paris, or bound by what comes out of it, as it seems most negotiators are agency heads and their deputies. In other words, President Obama and John Kerry do not have authority to impose a national carbon tax in the United States, they need congressional representatives to vote for it, and they won’t — at least in the current congress.
On the clean technology front, the UN may be better suited to develop a pot of money for rich nations to fund for clean tech. Already we’ve seen Bill Gates and other wealthy people step up for a “clean innovation” fund. So maybe we’ll see some progress there. But again, much of the support for clean technology will come from domestic programs, like the U.S. solar tax credit or California’s energy storage mandate. The people who make those decisions won’t be in attendance or negotiating and won’t have to abide by any resulting agreement.
So is Paris pointless? Well, sure, if we don’t get a good agreement. But if we do, what’s the upside? For starters, it can’t hurt to have a strong, international political signal that countries everywhere are willing to do something on climate. Maybe that statement will embolden decision-makers in these various countries to follow through on the needed policies, described above. And at a minimum, it could be useful to have information-sharing among the countries and a framework for more aggressive action in future years. So all of that is reason to support what’s happening in Paris.
I don’t mean to be a Debbie Downer, but I also don’t want the UN process to give everyone a false sense of progress, or distract from the real work that needs to be done. That work is happening now in places like California, Germany, Japan and other progressive states and nations. They need support and action to demonstrate to the world how to reduce emissions and grow the economy. Because ultimately those examples are what will motivate action in other places — not a voluntary international agreement.
I may return from Paris singing a different tune on the negotiations. But before I go, perhaps in the spirit of Pope Francis, I feel compelled to confess this pessimism.
BP isn’t exactly synonymous with clean and green energy, given the oil blowout in their Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico back in 2010. But their analysis of the future of green energy is pretty positive [PDF]. As Greenbiz summarizes:
Bringing together previously internal analysis from BP’s energy experts, the document predicts the world will have a plentiful supply of affordable energy through the next few decades thanks to advances in all forms of energy technologies — from battery storage innovations to better extraction techniques for oil.
BP predicts the global energy system will remain heavily reliant on fossil fuels for decades to come. However, it also envisages strong growth potential for clean energy systems and supporting technology such as battery storage and electric vehicles.
What struck me among the five key points was #3, regarding the need for — and effect of — carbon pricing on future energy scenarios:
3. Carbon pricing will have a massive impact on competitiveness of renewables
Without a carbon price, gas and coal will remain the lowest-cost options for generating electricity in North America through 2050, according to the BP analysis. However, with the introduction of a relatively modest carbon price of $40 per tonne of CO2, new-build gas and renewables will start to displace coal.
With a higher carbon price — $80 per tonne of CO2 — onshore wind will be cost-competitive with natural gas by 2050, according to BP. This is based on analysis that applies a grid integration cost to renewables because of their intermittent energy supply.
This conclusion points to the importance of the international talks in Paris next month, where for the first time international negotiators may finally agree to even a modest floor on carbon pricing worldwide. We’ll need it as something to build on, while subnational entities like California and more progressive nations move forward to implement their own carbon pricing, either through cap-and-trade or direct taxes.
The Volkswagen emissions cheating scandal is another sad example of corporate malfeasance. For those not following the story, the basics are as follows: Volkswagen secretly installed “defeat devices” on approximately 11 million vehicles worldwide that could detect when the cars were being tested for emissions and then reduce the emissions to avoid being penalized. While the vehicles performed well during laboratory testing, in reality the emissions were up to 40 times the legal limit. You can see the map of affected areas from the pollution via Grist here.
So what remedies should California, as the state most immediately affected, seek from VW? At a minimum, state leaders should use the opportunity to bolster reduced emissions from vehicles going forward. And that means improving the deployment of battery electric technologies in vehicles.
VW should do more than NRG to support electric vehicles.
California has gone down this path before. When Enron and other energy companies defrauded electricity ratepayers with the rolling black-outs in California back in 2000 and 2001, the state eventually settled with NRG, the corporate entity that assumed the liability through corporate acquisitions. State negotiators required that NRG spend $100 million on electric vehicle charging infrastructure.
But that settlement has so far not worked out well. NRG is way behind schedule and state auditors are investigating what’s going on. So state leaders need to learn from that experience and find a more direct way for VW to pay for its malfeasance and pollution.
A relatively simple way to do it would be to require VW, via settlement terms, to purchase a set amount of “zero emission vehicle (ZEV)” credits from automakers making battery electrics. That would boost their supply and reduce the costs of electric vehicles. Or VW could pay into a fund that reduces the cost of purchasing or leasing electric vehicles, via a point-of-sale cash rebate, for example. And to be clear, these requirements should not be the only settlement terms, but the ones directly related to repairing the harm to the environment from this cheating.
Of course, we have years of litigation to come on this scandal. But state leaders should start thinking now about how to make some lemonade out of these bitter VW lemons, while learning from past experiences.
Kauai island’s electricity co-op (KIUC) is running circles around pretty much every other utility in the U.S. when it comes to renewables and energy storage. The utility just brought online Hawaii’s largest solar installation to date, with a 12 megawatt facility.
But the bigger news is that the solar PV is paired with a 6 megawatt lithium ion battery system, as UtilityDive reports. The 60-acre facility will supply 20 percent of the island’s annual power needs.
What about the cost? Well, given that Hawaii imports diesel fuel to burn for electricity, this plant will be an economic winner. KIUC announced that the project will save the utility $250,000 each month on operating costs alone, with the storage helping to smooth the intermittent solar power.
Overall, Kauai is lapping everyone else when it comes to renewables. California just patted itself on the back for setting a goal of 50% renewables by 2030, which is great. But Kauai is on the way to meeting its goal of 38% renewables just by the end of 2015, with 50% by 2023 and 100% renewables by 2045, as a new Hawaii state law will require.
This progress shows what can happen when you have a cooperative ownership model for electricity, as opposed to an investor-owned utility or even municipally owned utility. It also helps of course that Hawaii has high electricity prices and abundant renewable resources. But the leadership at KIUC deserves kudos for pioneering a range of important policies and projects:
KIUC, for its part, has been making waves in the power sector lately with it aggressive adoption of solar, storage, and rate structures to optimize their use.
In September, the cooperative unveiled a deal with SolarCity to construct what it calls the first fully-disptachable solar-plus-storage system, a combination of a 13 MW solar array with a 52 MWh battery system.
That month, KIUC also announced it would conduct a pilot program offering discounted electric rates to encourage customers to shift their energy use to the daylight hours to take advantage of the utility’s solar resources. The program will offer a 25% discount on standard electric rates from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Let’s hope that state regulators and the retrograde investor-owned utility on the other islands take note of KIUC’s success, as well as utilities all across the country. KIUC is showing how you get it done, cleaning the environment and saving ratepayers money in the process.
California’s unprecedented drought is finally bringing down some of the big trees in the state. After four years of little rain, they’re starting to succumb in droves. I was struck by this when in Yosemite a few weeks ago. Huge stands of pines looked like ghosts, dotting the mountains almost like fall colors in the east. The picture above (not mine) illustrates it to some extent.
The Brown Administration in California is trying to make lemonade out of these lemons. Specifically, they want to clear the trees out rather than have them burn in destructive, out-of-control wildfires and then use the biomass to generate electricity. As the San Gabriel Valley Tribune reports:
The governor is asking various state agencies, including Caltrans and Cal Fire, to identify the areas where dead trees pose the highest risks. “He is directing state agencies to remove dead and dying trees in those areas,” said Greg Renick, information officer with the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services Southern Region.
He said the governor is asking the state to provide counties in affected areas with heavy equipment, such as wood chippers. Caltrans can use the wood chips as mulch, according to the proclamation. Brown may use his emergency powers to increase the days allowed for burning tree waste. He may ask the California Public Utilities Commission to fast track new bio-fuel plants using tree waste from impacted areas.
I’m all in favor of using this kind of biomass, as well as biomass from thinning forests more generally, as feedstocks for energy production. Our forests in California and across the west are badly overgrown after 19th century clear-cutting followed by a century or more of forest fire suppression. We need to improve the health of the forest and ensure that these feedstocks don’t just burn up in catastrophic wildfires, returning more carbon to the atmosphere. Instead, we can use that carbon to offset petroleum and other fossil fuel emissions through bioenergy.
