Climate activists and policy wonks are gathered in Cancun this week for the latest round of global climate talks.  Expectations are low.  In the meantime, one bright spot is California’s Global Warming Solutions Act, which survived a fierce oil industry attack in November (Prop 23).  The devil, however, is in the details, and the California Air Resources Board is now in the process of figuring out how exactly carbon emissions will be priced and capped in the Golden State.

One of the pretend solutions to climate change is burning ‘biomass’ to generate electricity instead of fossil fuels.  ‘Biomass” has a pleasant eco-friendly ring to it but, upon closer inspection, it’s a dangerous boondoggle (I’m not sure what exactly a “boondoggle” is but it’s a great word, isn’t it?).  Biomass is any natural material you can burn–food waste, cow poop, crop residue, forest debris.  In certain limited situations, it may make sense–for example, I know a walnut farmer who generates all his own electricity using discarded walnut shells as feedstock.  But, in general, what biomass proponents like to think of as “waste” is actually vitally important materials needed to replenish agricultural soil and forest floors–as these materials decompose (in a compost bin or simply left to slowly rot in the forest), they release nutrients back into the earth. If we interrupt this process by burning these materials, we’re essentially mining nutrients from the earth without replacing them.  That’s a practice with an inevitably ugly endgame.

This just in from sungevity.org partner, the Center for Biological Diversity. If you love your California forests, please help protect them–allowing trees to be clearcut and burned as “biomass” is not the solution to climate change…

On December 16, the California Air Resources Board will consider adopting a cap-and-trade program that would allow industrial polluters to purchase carbon “offset credits” instead of reducing their own greenhouse gas emissions.

Under the current proposal, a large number of those carbon offset credits could come from forest management projects that allow clearcutting. This not only subsidizes the most environmentally damaging logging practices, but also threatens to incentivize the conversion of natural forests into tree farms.

The proposed cap-and-trade rule also would allow industrial polluters to avoid greenhouse gas emissions limits by burning forest “biomass” — including whole, live trees — to generate energy. Biomass combustion would be exempt from the carbon cap, even though the actual greenhouse gas emissions would be even higher than burning fossil fuels.

This not only would encourage the logging of California’s forests to provide fuel for industrial and electrical power generation, but also would risk increasing overall greenhouse gas emissions. Please take one minute today to tell the California Air Resources Board that the cap-and-trade program must not be allowed to threaten forest ecosystems.

–Erica Etelson (with extensive plagiarizing from the Center for Biological Diversity)

Sungevity hit the ground running in the Maldives yesterday. We’re there to install 11.5 kW of solar power on the roof of President Mohamed Nasheed’s residence, “Muleaage.”

President Nasheed accepted Sungevity’s offer to heads of state around the world to solar power their residences. The installation, the first of its kind in the capitol city of Malé, will help the Maldives meet its goal of 100% carbon neutrality by 2020.

The Maldives is at the epicenter of our planetary emergency. Its chain of 1192 islands would be inundated by a mere one-meter rise in sea levels, displacing its 400,000 residents and triggering a massive climate refugee crisis. The 48 solar panels will offset 195 tons of carbon and save the Maldives $300,000 in electricity costs over the life of the system. Sungevity is proud to support an outspoken climate change activist like President Nasheed and to help a developing nation transition to renewable energy.

Sungevity is designing, installing and supporting the system for free. From halfway around the world, Sungevity’s Remote Solar Design Team was able to configure the rooftop array. Now, a team of eight Sungevity installers are on the ground (or on the roof) at Muleaage installing the system. They’ll be joined up on the roof by President Nasheed on October 7, in observance of the 10/10/10 Global Work Party sponsored by Solar on the White House partner 350.org.

Sungevity is grateful for the generous support of our project partners: LG donated the panels; Ironridge donated the mounting system; and KACO donated the inverter.

Stay tuned throughout the week for daily updates on the installation and photos of this island paradise.

–Erica Etelson

Though its title is one only a bureaucrat could love, the new Economic Analysis of California’s Climate Change Scoping Plan is chock full of reassuring conclusions about how implementation of AB32 (California’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006) will affect the economy.

Quick refresher:  AB32 calls for California to reduce its emissions by 80% below 1990 levels by 2050.  It will achieve this feat through a combination of energy efficiency, renewable energy, transportation and land use policies, and a regional cap-and-trade program.

The Air Resource Board reckons that, if all of the mandated carbon-reduction measures are implemented, California’s economy will continue to grow by 2.4% a year, the same rate it would grow without AB32.  And get this:  Implementing AB32 will reduce our fuel costs by 4.9% by 2020 (because we’ll be using less fossil fuels)-this should come as welcome new to anyone who remembers Enron or the sky high oil prices during the summer of 2008 (and to anyone who suffers asthma or other respiratory illnesses made worse by car exhaust and power plant pollution).

Here’s some more good news:  Small businesses (which employ 54% of the state’s workforce) will not bear the burden of AB32 regulation and will suffer negligible net job loss.  Some types of small business (namely energy efficiency and alternative energy) are expected to grow.  We hope to be one of them.

–Erica Etelson

What do novelist Barbara Kingsolver, actor Ed Begley, Jr., singer Bonnie Raitt and NASA’s chief climatologist, James Hansen, have in common?  They’re among the first to sign the People’s Petition to cap greenhouse gas emissions at 350 ppm (the upper safe limit of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere).

Be a star, and sign the petition today.  If you really want to be a rock star, forward this post to your friends, family and co-workers, and post it on your facebook wall. As we prepare to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, we need to do more than buy bamboo salad tongs or even solar panels–we need to make everyone understand that 350 is the most important number in the world for polar bears, for our children, for ourselves.

–Erica Etelson

In my last post, I took a pretty dim view of the looming climate legislation battle.  Treehugger has a different and more upbeat take, reporting that 22 high-on-health-care Democrats have already whisked off a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pressing for clean energy and climate legislation this year.

But let’s turn now to what a certain one-celled creature has to say about climate change and the need for a solar power revolution:  Last week, the National Academy of Sciences reported on the results of their efforts to create iron-rich phytoplankton blooms that could sequester carbon dioxide.  The researchers were able to generate massive blooms by dumping liquid iron into patches of ocean.  So far so good.  Except the iron-fertilized phytoplankton was found to harbor high levels of a toxin that is fatal to seabirds and marine mammals and can sicken humans who consume tainted shellfish.

Phytoplankton is the base of the marine food chain, so poisoning it doesn’t seem like such a hot idea.  The results of the 12-year experiment are a major setback to scientists who held out hope that fertilizing the oceans with iron could be a silver bullet in the fight to stop climate change. As lead researcher Charles Trick conceded, “It is an indication that we are not masters of nature when it comes to large-scale ecological manipulations.”

So what do poisonous plankton have to do with solar power?  The experiment should serve as a wake-up call:  We shouldn’t be wasting resources and time pursuing dangerous and improbable high-tech carbon sequestration schemes when we have proven, reliable and safe technologies like wind and solar that will prevent us from generating so much darn pollution in the first place.

There are all kinds of dicey ploys floating around, from geo-engineered trees and crops to shooting clouds of sulfur into the atmosphere.  There’s no need for desperate measures (yet).  Let’s start with what already works and reserve apocalyptically dangerous strategies for if and when there’s no other option.

–Erica Etelson

One of these days Congress is going to try to pass some kind of climate bill, and the word around the Beltway is that politicians with ties to the fossil fuel industry will dig their heels deep into the earth’s crust to eviscerate it.  In other words, if you think the health care brawl was tough, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet (and remember, the Senate passed the health care bill back when it had a filibuster-proof majority).

The climate bill/international treaty we need to stop catastrophic global warming is one that rapidly brings atmospheric carbon levels down to 350 ppm.  But the numbers floating around the Hill are more in the neighborhood of 450 ppm or no upward limit at all.  Legislating 350 ppm is the climate equivalent of a single payer health insurance system-it’s what the experts say we need and the pundits say is a political non-starter.

So if we don’t get the climate bill we need, where does that leave us?  It leaves us at the mercy of private industry (just like the health care bill leaves our well-being in the hands of private insurers).  Having just watched Capitalism: A Love Story, that proposition strikes me as pretty grim indeed.   On the other hand, there are some businesses (and we like to think Sungevity is one of them) that are deeply committed to selling goods and services that help people and businesses reduce their carbon footprints, and there’s not a climate skeptic in the world who can stop us.

By bringing solar down to a price that any homeowner can afford, solar companies are driving nothing less than a renewable electricity revolution.  If the government won’t do it, and the utilities won’t do it, we will…with your help. Become a solar evangelist by telling everyone you know about your solar lease, and help homeowners outside of California find local installers or PACE programs that offer assistance with financing.

Solar power alone won’t get us to 350.  But in conjunction with wind power, energy and fuel efficiency, and whatever climate bill or treaty does eventually pass, solar will be a big part of the solution.

For the rest of this week, I’ll be blogging on the theme of why we need a solar revolution–even the phytoplankton agree, as we’ll see in tomorrow’s post.

–Erica Etelson

Have you calculated your carbon footprint lately?

The CoolClimate carbon calculator covers it all–transportation, energy, even the food you eat and the stuff you buy.  Be sure to check out the feature that lets you compare yourself (or your small business) to other households or businesses–but remember, even if you have the smallest footprint of any American, you’re still generating tons more carbon than most people in the world, so don’t skip the “Take Action” link.

The Good Widget

After calculating your carbon footprint, you might feel a bit despondent, so here’s something to renew your optimism.  The widget below, courtesy of the Carbon War Room, shows the number of solar watts being installed in the US.  Relax and enjoy the lovely vision of the flickering, ever-rising number.

The Wicked Widget of the West

Last but not least, prepare to get depressed again when you check out the Atmospheric CO₂ widget which, like the solar widget, is endlessly ticking upwards.  And on that note…use the tools, share them with your friends and turn off your computer when you’re done.

–Erica Etelson

Reflect for a moment on how earth-shattering (or, should I say, “earth-saving”) Gates’ epiphany could be:  Here’s one of the wealthiest and most influential individuals on the planet asserting what we climate freaks have been trying to communicate for the past decade–that if we want to have a life-sustaining planet, we can and must get to zero.  And when Bill Gates talks, people with money listen.

Gates begins the talk with a simple math equation even I was able to understand:  Global CO2 levels = # of people on the planet  x services people use (eg. electricity, food) x energy required per service x CO2 per unit of energy.  As you might recall from 4th grade, if the product of an equation is zero, at least one of the factors being multiplied must be zero.  Of all the factors, the only one that could conceivably be reduced to zero is the amount of CO2 per unit of energy.  To do so will require major advances in the scale and reliability of five energy technologies–solar PV, solar thermal, wind, nuclear and carbon capture.  Gates believes we must work intensively on all five fronts by investing heavily in research & development and creating market incentives to move away from fossil fuels.

We couldn’t agree more (with respect to the first three energy technologies on Gates’ list).  Dubious and unsafe technologies aside, we applaud Gates for embracing the gravity of our energy predicament and using his platform to inspire innovation.