House OKs renewable energy tax credits

(Photo of windfarm from Flickr and photographer Alessandro Ronchi)

Congressional Round-up: The House voted 236-182 Wednesday to approve renewable energy tax credit extensions, funding them by eliminating tax breaks for 5 big oil companies. This is the fourth time they approved such a bill in the past year. Now comes the hard part. A similar bill has failed to get the 60 votes needed in the Senate to avoid a filibuster. That is likely again, though one tactic under discussion is to try to get some of the package included in the final budget reconciliation bill. The extensions are needed because current ones expire at the end of 2008, and already investment in renewables is slowing down. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) warned that a failure to extend the credits could cost the country 116,000 jobs. The Senate could bring up the bill as soon as next week. The House bill (H.R. 5351) provides:
• A 3-year extension on investment credits for wind, geothermal and other renewables.
• An 8-year extension of incentives for commercial solar energy and 6 years for residential, doubling the top credit for homeowners to $4,000.
• Incentives for plug-in hybrids, energy efficiency and installation of pumps for fuel with 85% ethanol.
The GOP and White House object to rescinding $13.6 billion in tax cuts for integrated oil companies. They say it will thwart exploration and raise prices for consumers. Dems said with oil over $100 a barrel, the 5 companies affected are making record profits and will lose less than 2% of those profits in the next 10 years. Call your Senators to approve this bill at (202)224-3121. Also, check to see how your Rep voted. (Sources: Washington Post, E&E Daily, E&E News PM, Sierra Club)

McCain nets zero on environment from Conservation Voters
Many see Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the presumptive GOP nominee for president, as pro-environment. The League of Conservation Voters disagrees. McCain scored the lowest possible grade, a zero, on LCV’s 2007 Scorecard. Democratic contenders Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) came in at 73, and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) at 67. McCain, who introduced global warming legislation back before it was popular, has twice failed to show up for a vote on renewable tax credit extensions, where his vote could have made the difference. LCV says it’s a pattern and he missed all critical environmental votes last year. His lifetime score is 24. To see how your elected representatives scored, check the LCV scorecard. (Sources: Sierra Club, LCV)

New renewable tax-credit bill in House

Congressional Round-up: The House last week introduced a bill to extend production tax credits, funded in part by the repeal of oil tax benefits. The credits are due to expire at the end of the year, causing uncertainty for renewable energy industries. This bill is very similar to the one passed last summer by the House, but stifled in the Senate by 1 vote. It’s questionable whether the bill could pass the Senate in its current form. It includes:
• Extension of credits for wind, biomass, geothermal, small hydroelectric, landfill gas and trash combustion facilities through 2011, with a cap of 35% of the cost after 2009,
• Extension of solar energy and fuel cell investment tax credits for eight years,
• An end to deduction eligibility for the 5 larges oil companies,
• A 6% cap on benefits for smaller oil companies,
• A new credit for plug-in hybrid cars,
• Extension of tax credits for domestically produced cellulosic ethanol and biodiesel,
• A request that the National Academy of Sciences analyze current science on the production of biofuels and the domestic impact of a dramatic increase.

Proposal would allow power plants near national parks
Rep. Henry Waxman, (D-Calif.), chair of the House Oversight Committee, has urged the EPA to reject a proposal that would make it easier to build power plants near national parks. Waxman told EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson the proposed change in the New Source Review rules would violate the Clean Air Act. He said EPA technical experts acknowledged the change would allow “significant degradation” of the air in parks and national wilderness areas. He gave Johnson until March 5 to say why he ignored the advice of his staff. (Source: E&E News PM)

e-mailbag: Bob R. of Chicago writes, “Despite his admitted support and even sponsorship of environmental legislation, [John] McCain has too many constraints related to his conservative perception of reality to lead the nation effectively against the onslaught of global warming.”

Electric cars are just around the corner

Weekly angst: Cars are here to stay. We’ll never get everyone on the train or bus. And as the world population grows, and poor countries get richer, there’ll be many more cars on the road. So the only way to seriously cut greenhouse gas tailpipe emissions is to change the way cars are built and powered.

A real break with the past requires electric cars, eventually powered by zero-carbon hydrogen. That’s several years in the future – maybe a decade. But electric cars, the plug-in variety with batteries you plug in at night, will start hitting the road very soon (a few are already there.) And when they do, you can bet competition will heat up. It’s already simmering.

Two leaders are Israel and, yes, China.

Israel said last week it will support a large-scale project to put electric cars on the road as early as next year. An Israeli-American entrepreneur, Shai Agassi, is working with Renault/Nissan to test such a car (and supporting infrastructure) in the tiny country, where gasoline costs more than $6 a gallon. He sees small European countries like Denmark, where gas taxes are high, as ideal places to market the cars. Small is good, because these cars can run some distance on electricity alone, before they need recharging or a gasoline engine to kick in.

The Israeli cars will be able to go 124 miles on a charge. Usually the batteries will be recharged at home at night, when electricity is cheapest. But service stations will be able to recharge or change out the batteries. The cars – from Renault and Nissan – will be subsidized, with a monthly fee for service. Operating costs are expected to be half that of a gasoline-powered car.

The prediction is that several thousand will be on the road next year, with 100,000 by the end of 2010. (In Israel, about 10% of the cars are replaced each year.)

The company sees this concept as a money-maker and is eyeing the Chinese market as well. Chinese auto company Chery apparently is interested.

China has plans of its own
Shanghai, which may well become the Detroit of the 21st century, has a program to experiment with a variety of clean technologies, according to “Zoom: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future,” a new book by Iain Carson and Vijay Vaitheeswaran.

Gang Wan, head of the program, had worked at Audi and decided it didn’t make sense to try to catch up with foreigners’ head start on the combustion engine. Instead he is looking at electric, hybrid gasoline/diesel-electric, compressed natural gas and hydrogen fuel cells to power automobiles.

Hoping to have 1,000 clean cars and buses on the streets of Beijing for the Olympics, the project’s longer-range goal is for mass production of hydrogen fuel-cell cars by 2020. General Motors has signed on to help with both the fuel cells and the filling stations that will be needed.

China has many advantages in producing fuel cell technology, according to “Zoom.”
• It doesn't have the extensive investment in internal-combustion engines or the infrastructure of gas stations the West does, so there will be little resistance.
• Its giant dams produce enough excess hydropower to fuel 37 million cars by 2010 and 56 million by 2020.
• The potential market in China alone is huge.
• The government can mandate the changes.

Maybe you’ll drive one of these
Most auto companies have a plug-in in the works. A few will be ready in the next year or two. Here are a some examples:
• Chevrolet’s Volt is scheduled for a 2010 launch. GM will road-test it this year. The plug-in Volt goes 40 miles on a battery charge, with a gasoline engine as back-up.
• Toyoto says it too will build a plug-in hybrid by 2010, for use by governments and corporations. The general public will have to wait a bit longer. And Toyota is testing a fuel-cell car, which has traveled 350 miles on a tank in Japan. A newer version can go 466 miles, the company said.
• Fisker Automotive’s plug-in Karma is an $80,000 luxury car, which goes 50 miles before a small gasoline engine generates electricity to recharge it. Fisker says Karma is ready to be mass produced.
• Italy’s Pininfarina, aims for a 2009 launch of its small 4-seater electric car. It goes 155 miles before recharging and the company says it could produce up to 15,000 a year if the demand is there.
• Tata Motors in India is partnering with Chrysler to make an electric version of its mini-truck, Ace, for sale in the U.S. Tata is working with other foreign partners on hybrids and fuel cells. (Tata is the car-maker that just released a $2,500 car in India, putting car ownership within reach for millions.)
• Subaru’s G4e (Good4Earth) is a plug-in electric commuting car and can go 124 miles on an overnight charge. Quick-chargers, located at supermarkets and other public places, will give an 80% charge in 15 minutes. If the car is plugged in at night, the energy per mile could be 1/10th that of gasoline fueled cars.
• AFS Trinity has the Extreme Hybrid, a retrofitted Saturn Vue, which can go 40 miles on electricity and then on gas.
• General Motors is test-driving its Equinox fuel-cell cars in 3 cities. The car probably won’t reach mass production for 10 years, GM says.

Cutting GHG emissions
Switching to plug-ins could do a lot to help the environment. The Electric Power Research Institute and Natural Resources Defense Council say mass use of plug-in hybrids could cut greenhouse gases by more than 450 metric tons a year by 2050, the same as removing 82.5 million cars from the road.

But Honda CEO Takeo Fukui predicts the future for the auto industry is in fuel cells, which produce no carbon. He sees the plug-in hybrid as a battery-powered car with an unnecessary fuel engine and tank.

Fuel cells, which use hydrogen and oxygen to generate electric power, are 2-3 times more efficient than the internal combustion engine, according to the Society of Automotive Engineers. They have no moving parts and the only byproducts are heat and water. Of course, with new technologies, new companies can horn in on the majors' act.

And infrastructure is no small matter in the United States. About 12,000 of the country’s 170,000 filling stations will have to be converted to serve up hydrogen, GM says. No doubt there will be a lot of resistance.

For more on green autos, check out greenauto blog.

(Sources: “Zoom,” New York Times, E&E Daily, Greenwire, PlanetArk, AOL Auto, Chicago Sun-Times, Salon.com.
(Picture courtesy of Flickr and ourgreencommunity.org)

P.S. Debates silent on global warming

You may have noticed there have been virtually no questions about global warming in the presidential debates. The League of Conservation Voters and Sierra Club helped end the drought with petitions from 200,000 of us. Tim Russert asked the first climate change question in the last debate. In fact he asked two. Now it’s time to call CNN and tell Wolf Blitzer to ask about global warming in this Thursday’s debate. Call (404)827-1700.