Thursday, April 16, 2009

CO2 endangerment

Articles have been in the news (one in the WSJ today 4/16/09) on the potential carbon and greenhouse gas endangerment finding that EPA will soon finalize. The primary significance for energy companies, and other sectors, is that once EPA characterizes carbon and GHGs as endangering public health, this provides the reasoning for climate change legislation. This paves the way for Obama's and Congress' proposals to move further. This firms the chance and potentially accelerates the schedule of climate change legislation. Without the endangerment finding, there was no scientific backing to support the need for regulation. We exhale carbon dioxide as we breath. Carbon has been around us forever. Why now would carbon suddenly be dangerous. It's through the intermediate effect of climate change that scientists now deem carbon as endangering public health.

Well, we are all waiting for EPA to pen their final signatures, the John Hancock, to the finding. Endangerment done, climate change legislation here we come.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

This article in the New York Times again hits on the paradox that a country dependent on coal cannot quickly become green. "21 coal-fired power plants that emit more than 75 million tons of carbon dioxide annually and generate 80 percent of Missouri’s electricity," writes Felicity Barringer (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/09/us/09coal.html?_r=1&ref=earth). Nebraska, Indiana, and Iowa also depend on coal generation for power. Coal cannot be out of the picture as environmental groups like the Sierra Club or NRDC paint our future of energy to be. My point is not to suggest that our future won't be full of wind, solar, renewables, etc. I am for alternative energy as long as government funding is available. We cannot be anti-coal or anti-fossil fuel without realistically understanding the scope and volume of alternative fuels available. Even the capacity available is not enough. What about the extra transmission needed to funnel that power where it is needed. Do not be anti-coal until you propose a realistic alternative within a reasonable budget that a capital-constrained economy is willing to fund.