Climate Law Update: Climate Change & Sustainable Energy News : Thelen Reid Law Firm : Renewable Energy, Construction, Project Finance Lawyers & Attorneys

California's approaches to cleaning up automobile greenhouse gas emissions are better than those recently proposed by the federal government -- according to California.

The California Air Resources Board this week released a new study that it said "conclusively demonstrates" that the state's mandate for cutting tailpipe emissions believed to contribute to global warming achieved more than 40 percent greater reductions than new federal mileage standards announced last month (see press statement here; full report here).

The document constituted the latest salvo in the continuing war of words -- and lawyers -- between the state and federal government over how best to address potentially climate-changing pollution from cars and other sources. California is currently in court challenging the Bush administration's refusal to allow the state's vehicle standards to proceed (see Climate Law Update story here). State officials have also reacted negatively to the new federal plan, seeing in it a poison pill that would prevent California and other states from moving forward with stricter controls (see Climate Law Update story here).

Release of the new report came as automobile executives and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger met at the state Capitol on the issue. According to some press reports, the leaders discussed some cooperative approaches to reducing emissions, even as they appeared to give little ground elsewhere (see San Diego Union-Tribune story here).   

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A new lawsuit filed by environmentalists challenges Arctic oil and gas exploration efforts the groups contend threaten marine mammals such as whales.

Plaintiffs include organizations that have already sought to force new federal protections for polar bears and other animals because of alleged threats from climate change, a move that could also have implications for oil development in the region.

Filed in U.S. District Court in Alaska on Monday the lawsuit asks a judge to rule that federal authorizations allowing the explorations in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas by Shell  and BP were issued before proper environmental reviews were conducted and that the actions could seriously harm marine mammals. The plaintiffs also asked for a preliminary injunction blocking the activities, at least some of which were planned for this summer (see lawsuit text here; motion for preliminary injunction here).

Seismic surveys planned by the companies "will result in excessive noise pollution in Arctic waters that have not been subjected to such levels of concurrent seismic noise pollution for at least 15 years, if ever," claimed the documents filed by the groups. The plaintiffs, which also include a native village, focused primarily on concerns for the health of such animals as whales and seals. Polar bears are only briefly mentioned in the lawsuit, as inhabitants of both of the seas year-round. 

Officials of the federal Minerals Management Service, which issued the seismic survey permits, and the National Marine Fisheries Service, which was also named as a defendant, told Climate Law Update they would have no immediate comment on the case.  Both oil companies, neither of which was named in the lawsuit, also declined comment specifically on the case but they each defended the environmental soundness of their exploration practices.   

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• Methane coming from a landfill near San Francisco could soon fuel the garbage trucks serving the site, under a plan to be announced by Waste Management, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.  
• European leaders on climate change say they do not expect much from President Bush on the issue but they have hopes a new administration will be different, writes Reuters. 
• Rising demand for food and biofuels that prompted farmers to plant more crops has helped produce a shortage of fertilizer, according to the New York Times. 
• Australian government officials and representatives of that country's agriculture community have been discussing the industry's role in climate change policy, Sky News reports.
• Global warming could take a break in the next decade, thanks to a natural shift in ocean circulations, but long-term the planet's temperature will rise as previously expected, according to an AFP report on a study in the British journal Nature.
• Miami-Dade County government should invest in a wide range of actions to prepare for climate change, including high-tech mapping and financing fuel-efficient taxis, an advisory task force recommends, reports Miami Today.
  

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The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has partially approved Pacific Gas and Electric Company's request that allows the company to recover from customers at least some of the costs related to a 1,000-mile transmission project intended to deliver power from renewable sources.

In the words of a statement from the federal agency, it gave partial approval to the Northern California utility's "petition for a declaratory order for recovery of prudently incurred pre-commercial and abandonment costs" related to the effort (see text of statement here; see full text of decision here). The $3.2 billion project would deliver up to 3,000 megawatts of new renewable power to California from Canada's British Columbia and from states in the Pacific Northwest.

The project will also be designed to take advantage of the fact that demands in the region peak at different times of the year, according to a statement from one of the commissioners. 

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 gave the commission authority to encourage greater investment in the power grid, including granting incentives allowing the recovery through rates of the costs associated with the projects. Barbara Connors, a spokeswoman for the commission, declined to put a dollar figure on the items so far approved by the panel.

     

 

 

 

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Greenhouse gas emissions in the United States dropped by a somewhat lower fraction than earlier reported, according to final estimates released this week by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

However, the annual Inventory of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks still showed a 1.1 percent drop between 2005 and 2006, compared to a draft report’s estimate earlier this year of a 1.5 percent decline (latest report can be accessed here; EPA press statement here). It also indicated that previous years’ emissions were a bit lower than had been previously estimated.

Both versions of the report also concluded that a variety of factors, including increased use of natural gas and renewable power sources, warmer winter weather and rising fuel prices contributed to the decline (see previous Climate Law Update story here).

The agency recalculated some of the base figures used in the report, which produced estimates lower than those previously reported. Those changes also helped narrow some of the gaps between the years. For instance, the earlier draft report showed total emissions in 2005 were equivalent to 7.3 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, dropping to just more than 7.2 billion in 2006, a difference of about 112 million tons. In the revised report, those figures were about 7.1 billion and 7 billion, respectively, a difference of approximately 75 million tons.

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Global warming is bad, and developing renewable energy to help solve the problem is good, right? While that might be a popular view, the reality is a bit more complicated, as experts in the field have begun noting with some frequency lately.

Talk of what UCLA School of Law Professor Ann Carlson (pictured) calls “localized environmental values clashes” over renewable projects was in the air at a recent conference at the University of California-Berkeley’s law school, Boalt Hall.

Speakers at the two-day event, “California and the Future of Environmental Law and Policy,” noted that, in particular, legal and policy fights over transmission lines pose a significant challenge for renewable development. Among them was Karen Douglas, who formerly spearheaded California climate change efforts for the  group Environmental Defense (now known as Environmental Defense Fund). She is now a member of the California Energy Commission which, among other duties, licenses large new thermal power plants in the state, as well as the transmission lines connecting them to the grid. Douglas crystallized the issue this way:

“It’s kind of a different challenge to do renewables because you’ve got to generate the power where the renewable resources are and then bring it where the people are. So that means often a lot of power lines. People don’t want that through their neighborhoods. It’s hard to site and hard to build and so on, so one issue is transmission.”

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California utility regulators have voted to commit more than a half-billion dollars – paid for by the ratepayers of the state’s privately owned utilities -- to a research and development effort devoted to finding new technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and getting them to market.

The five members of the California Public Utilities Commission, meeting at the commission's San Francisco headquarters (pictured) unanimously approved the proposal creating the California Institute for Climate Solutions. However, not all of them were fully pleased with the result. Commissioner John Bohn said the decision pushed the boundaries of the commission’s jurisdiction almost to the breaking point and he questioned charging ratepayers for investigating new technologies that might never be successful.

Commission President Michael Peevey, who carried the proposal, said California had long been a leader in environmental issues and that it was again time “to take bold and immediate action.”

The plan (see CPUC press statement here; full text of decision here) calls for $60 million a year for 10 years in ratepayer funds to go toward the institute. Most of that money, at least 85 percent, would be used to fund grants for applied research intended to support greenhouse gas reductions, as demanded by California’s landmark law, AB 32.

The institute was charged with targeting research focused on “practical and commercially viable technologies that will reduce" greenhouse gas emissions, as well as the means of adapting to the impacts of climate change that may now be inevitable. It is also intended to speed "the transfer of these technologies from the laboratory to market place," according to the lengthy decision approved by the commission Thursday. 

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By any measure, it’s been a tough few weeks in the spotlight for biofuels such as corn-based ethanol and other alternative sources for transportation energy, including hydrogen.

A Time Magazine cover story not-so-subtly titled: “The Clean Energy Scam,” set the tone for the criticism. But it was met by a spirited rejoinder from the biofuels industry, which sees itself as helping to lead the way toward sustainability.  

The scrutiny focused on biofuels didn't stop with the magazine. 

Recently, reports have emerged that American biofuel subsidies have, in the characterization of the Wall Street Journal’s Environmental Capital, been “boomeranging” across the Atlantic (see story here). Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reported a California biofuels manufacturer was “short on cash and suffering from higher corn and plant construction costs” which threaten the company. The paper also noted a number of other plants that have been put on hold across the country, citing narrowing margins between the cost of production and the selling price of ethanol (see story at newspaper's Web site here).

Then, late last week, reports began emerging that corn had hit a record $6 a bushel, prompting the food industry to pin the blame rising prices squarely on government encouragement of ethanol production. The Grocery Manufacturers Association said the "ripple effects" are being "felt throughout the economy" (see statement here).  

On the hydrogen front, the San Jose Mercury News tweaked California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who four years ago proclaimed the creation of a “hydrogen highway” that would allow motorists to fill up fuel cell cars. So far, however, the newspaper reported (see story here), “not a single hydrogen fueling station has been built under the program.” The article cited a number of possible reasons, from economics to politics, for the failure. The paper also reported that Mary Nichols, the chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board, believes up to 100 stations will be built by 2015, five years later than expected.

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At least U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen L. Johnson, presumably, still has friends in the executive branch. Because he’s facing some opposition in the other two arenas of government.

The EPA, which this week landed in court action because of Johnson’s decision to take his time to study whether to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, could find itself getting new marching orders from Congress.

Two senators, one a Democrat and the other a Republican, have announced they're backing legislation to set a 60-day deadline for the agency to complete a critical step on the road to restricting climate-changing gases (see press release and text of bill). The measure sponsored by Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-California (pictured), and Olympia Snow, R-Maine, would also require the EPA to reconsider its denial of California’s attempt to regulate tailpipe emissions believed to contribute to global warming (see previous Climate Law Update story).

The EPA had only a bare-bones response to the announcement.

"We will review any legislation that is passed by Congress," wrote Jonathan Shrader, the agency's press secretary, in an e-mail to Climate Law Update.   

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A legal action led by Massachusetts and supported by 17 other states and nearly a dozen environmental organizations was launched Wednesday to force the Environmental Protection Agency to issue a critical document that would trigger nationwide regulation of greenhouse gases.

The new move, in the form of a petition for a writ of mandamus, was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. It sought to require the EPA to put forward its formal determination of whether emissions of the climate-changing gases endanger the public’s health or welfare. Such an “endangerment” finding, the filing  charged, has already been made but it is being withheld (see text).

“It is a necessary and critical step, which is why the administration is making its stand there,” said David Bookbinder, chief climate attorney for the Sierra Club, one of the groups filing the action, during a nationwide conference call with reporters. “They know once the endangerment finding is made they’re obligated to begin controlling greenhouse gases.”

He acknowledged that no final regulation was likely to be in place until after a new administration comes into office. However, he and others said that it was important to move forward now to get the process started.

“Time is not on our side,” said James Milkey, chief of the environmental protection division under Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley (pictured).

 

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An attorney for one environmental group that has actively sought to bring the tools of endangered species protections into the fight against global warming says the tactic could have multiple effects.

Brendan Cummings, a lawyer for the Center for Biological Diversity, suggested in an interview with Climate Law Update that the organization’s recent success in getting the National Marine Fisheries Service to examine climate-related endangered species protection for several species of seals could produce impacts both locally and much broader in scope. The agency last week announced it would review the ribbon seal, a mammal that inhabits Alaska’s Bering Sea, for listing under the Endangered Species Act, as well as three other seal species: bearded, spotted and ringed (see press release and formal notice).

The fisheries service said it was acting on a petition presented last year by the environmental organization asking it to list the seal as threatened or endangered (see text of petition). Last week's statement by the agency came a few days after the environmental group threatened to bring a lawsuit to force the government to act.  

At a regional level, the group’s petition to the government agency cited threats to the seals from such sources as oil and gas development, commercial fishing and Russian harvesting of the animals. But it also warned that the ice on which the seals live is rapidly melting due to global warming.

 

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U.S. Transportation Department officials Friday formally took steps to begin complying with a federal appellate court ruling last year that, among other things, required the agency to consider global warming when setting fuel economy standards for certain motor vehicles.

The move by the department’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration came a day after the California Air Resources Board reduced its previous requirements for the number of zero-emission motor vehicles that manufacturers must sell in the state in coming years. However, the air board’s chairwoman Mary Nichols also moved toward streamlining California’s automobile emissions standards, including those that deal specifically with greenhouse gases, so that they synchronize (see press release).

At the national level, the highway transportation agency published a notice in the Federal Register (see text) that it was moving ahead with plans to prepare an environmental impact statement on its fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks. The notice said the agency in preparing the document would “consider issues raised” in the litigation that resulted in a Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling last year throwing out the Bush administration’s earlier standards governing sport utility vehicles and other light trucks such as pickups. That ruling was based, in part on the fact that that officials gave no value to carbon dioxide emissions reductions (see text of ruling). The court ordered the agency to come up with new standards and to prepare a full environmental impact statement.

Friday’s notice did not say precisely when all the work would be completed, only that it expects to prepare a draft environmental statement for public comment and a final document to support the new standards “later this year.” It said the document would "consider the potential environmental impacts of new fuel economy standards for model year 2011-2015 passenger cars and light trucks" that the highway safety agency would be proposing pursuant to last year's Energy Independence and Security Act. That new law mandates improved vehicle mileage (see President Bush's press release).

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Stephen L. Johnson, the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, might be feeling a bit besieged after the reaction to his decision to go slow on regulating greenhouse gases. But he’s still got friends in the industrial community and elsewhere.

“I think he made a very sensible move,” Hank Cox, a spokesman for the National Association of Manufacturers, told Climate Law Up date Friday. The association, headed by former Michigan Gov. John Engler (pictured), has itself been urging a cautious approach to addressing climate change and it recently released a study warning of major economic and employment losses if Congress enacts legislation such as the Lieberman-Warner bill (see recent Climate Law Update story), which would establish a national emissions cap-and-trade system.

Johnson provoked outrage among Democrats and environmental organizations when he informed lawmakers he was going to take more time to study the regulation of greenhouse gases before acting. Some critics accused the Bush administration of acting according to an “industry script” on the issue.

Johnson’s action came nearly a year after a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Massachusetts v. EPA, which said the agency had the authority to regulate the emissions believed to contribute to global warming as pollutants, and it ordered its officials to look into such questions as whether the gases pose a threat to people. Critics threatened a new round of legal action to force the EPA to move on the issue (see Thursday’s Climate Law Update story).

Cox said he believed his organization made its views known to the EPA before Johnson announced his decision Thursday.

“I’m sure we did,” Cox said.

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U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen L. Johnson, declaring that he wanted to avoid “rushing to judgment on a single issue,” informed lawmakers Thursday he'll be taking additional time to study the critical issue of whether to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Outraged critics, including Sen. Barbara Boxer (pictured), said the move makes it virtually certain no action will be taken during the remainder of President Bush's term in office.

Johnson, in a letter to key members of Congress (see text), outlined an administrative procedure that would ramp up this spring and would then be followed by a period in which the public could comment. It was not immediately known how long the process would take to produce a final decision, although skeptics predicted it would push any ultimate determination into the next administration. Environmental groups vowed to return to court to force the agency to act.

The announcement, coming nearly a year after the U.S. Supreme Court in its landmark Massachusetts v. EPA ruling held the agency had the authority to regulate the gases as pollutants under the Clean Air Act, immediately provoked the condemnation of environmentalists and others. The Supreme Court ruling did not require the agency to issue regulations but it told the EPA it had to consider such issues as whether public health was endangered. While the ruling came in the context of regulating emissions from motor vehicles but many now want the EPA to wield broad control over substances believed to contribute to climate change, from whatever source.

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The coal war, it seems, is heating up by the day. And the battlegrounds are not always in places commonly associated with aggressive environmentalism

Take Kansas and Utah, for instance.

The Kansas City star reports that lawmakers are trying to revive a modified version of a bill vetoed last week by Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius that would have allowed construction of two new coal-fired plants over the greenhouse gas-related opposition of a state regulator.  Among her objections was the lack of support for wind power in the legislation (see text of vetoed bill and Sebelius press release with attached veto message). 

Farther west, a dispute over a proposed new coal plant in Utah is creating a legal vortex drawing industry, environmentalists and other states, including California, into a debate over the extent of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate emissions blamed for climate change.

All of this comes against a background of work in Congress on greenhouse legislation that would establish a market system for reducing emissions (cited by Sebelius), and more coal-specific developments, including a recent decision by a federal agency to back away from funding such projects (see recent Climate Law Update story). Lawmakers are also working on other federal legislation that would allow new coal plants to move forward only if they can capture and store the vast majority of their carbon emissions (see press release and text of bill).

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Despite all the talk about greenhouse gas reductions and the means to achieve them, including establishing new trading schemes for carbon, a pair of new studies suggests the nation has a ways to go.

One of the documents, in which a former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency official has parsed the latest government data, shows that carbon dioxide emissions from power plants appear to be back on the rise (see press release and report and appendices). That follows on the heels of government study released only this month showing overall carbon emissions, including those from power generation, had fallen just a year earlier (see study and Climate Law Update article).

In addition, a Department of Energy study of Western utilities suggested that some of them are including fairly optimistic estimates about the impact of trading mechanisms on carbon prices. The study (which can be seen here) appeared to gently urge them to boost those figures. At the same time, it found that the utilities are aggressively planning to increase efficiency and add new renewable generation to their portfolios.

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Top California officials Thursday laid out a vision of a reduced-carbon future that included some very un-California-sounding notions, such as denser cities and cars driven fewer miles.

“I’m not even sure this is politically helpful to you,” California Attorney General Jerry Brown told about 200 local government officials and planning experts at a gathering in Oakland. “It may actually be harmful.”

But Brown and Mary Nichols, chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board, outlined similar notions of the challenge facing the state as it grapples with reducing greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and the 2006 emissions-cutting law AB 32. The simple message: Patterns of development and urban and suburban living likely will have to change, possibly dramatically.

Both Brown and Nichols have been deeply involved in the effort for some time, although they have not always seen eye-to-eye. Brown, under the auspices of the California Environmental Quality Act, has been pressuring local governments and industry to come to grips with greenhouse emissions and the mandates of AB 32 in planning efforts and when contemplating new facilities. The board Nichols chairs has been given primary responsibility for carrying out the greenhouse gas law, and by this June is expected to unveil a proposed blueprint for achieving the statute’s requirement that emissions be reduced to 1990 levels by 2020. Thursday’s session was the first of five workshops on the issue planned for local government officials this spring.

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Environmental groups are pursuing a slew of lawsuits against a U.S. Department of Energy determination that large areas in the Southwest and Mid-Atlantic states could suffer from electric transmission congestion. The energy department action opens the regions to a process under which federal regulators can approve new transmission lines, even if states object.

The latest case (see docketing statement and petition for review), filed a few days ago in the 9^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals headquartered in San Francisco, opens a new front in the legal battle over the energy department's designation of two National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors.  Those are areas the department determines to be facing transmission congestions or constraints that harm consumers. Environmental groups earlier this year filed similar lawsuits in lower federal courts in Los Angeles and Pennsylvania separately challenging each of the corridor delineations.

All of the cases raise allegations that the energy department's decision violated the National Environmental Policy Act and the Energy Policy Act of 2005 when it designated the transmission corridors. The Los Angeles lawsuit, filed by the Center for Biological Diversity, was recently amended (see press statement) to include a claim under the Endangered Species Act, like its sister case in Pennsylvania. Additionally, the Pennsylvania lawsuit cites the National Historic Preservation Act.

A department spokeswoman said Wednesday the designations didn't themselves affect the environment and she insisted all parties had gotten a fair chance to comment.

 

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Legislation in Congress to reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions might carry a hefty economic price tag, according to a new analysis released Friday by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. But sponsors of the bill, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., and Sen. John Warner, R-Va., said the report actually demonstrates that the country could accomplish the cuts without sacrificing its prosperity.

Even as the costs of addressing climate change sparked discussion,  there were new signs global warming itself could prove economically destructive. Earlier in the week, another government study suggested potentially dire consequences from unchecked climate change on the nation's Gulf Coast, a vital part of the nation's shipping and petroleum infrastructure.

EPA's forecasts covered a variety of possible impacts. The agency predicted the economy might feel a drag on growth of less than 1 percent by 2030, but that the punch could also be nearly four times as strong. Among the "many uncertainties" it cited were the availability of new technologies and what other countries do regarding climate change.   

The EPA’s report followed by a day another set of estimates – this one prepared by the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Council for Capital Formation – showing the bill dragging on the economy to the tune of millions of fewer jobs and slowing the growth of the gross domestic product (see press release). The Environmental Defense Fund, an environmental group, immediately attacked the business groups’ findings, noting they did not analyze the costs of doing nothing to stop climate change.

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Utility and power plant regulators in California this week agreed on basic approaches, including implementing a cap-and-trade system, for reducing the state’s greenhouse gas emissions. But they left some critical decisions until later in the year.

In separate unanimous votes Wednesday and Thursday the California Energy Commission and the California Public Utilities Commission approved a joint set of recommendations for how the state’s electricity and natural gas industries should meet the demands of the groundbreaking 2006 law, AB 32 (see CPUC press release here). The CPUC regulates privately owned utilities in the state, while the energy commission carries out a number of forecasting and planning duties, as well as licensing large generating plants. 

The document now goes to the California Air Resources Board, the primary agency charged with implementing the California Global Warming Solutions Act. The law aims to reduce California’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, approximately a 25 percent cut. Electric power generation accounts for more than one-fifth of the state’s greenhouse gases, according to the energy commission.

The recommendation approved this week endorses a mix of methods for achieving the reductions, and it reflected proposals put forward by Michael R. Peevey, president of the state utilities commission, last month. They include prodding electricity providers, regardless of ownership, to exceed the state’s current goal of having 20 percent of their power come from renewable sources; backing the establishment of a cap and trade program for the electricity sector and designating the companies that deliver power to the state’s grid as the entities directly responsible for complying with AB 32’s requirements under such a program.

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Officials of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District in San Francisco are pursuing what they believe to be the first regulatory fee on greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.

The new fee, which would be set at 4.2 cents per metric ton, would generate an estimated $1 million annually, according to a district spokeswoman, Karen Schkolnick. The money would go toward the district's Climate Protection Program, for projects that  include developing a regional inventory of the gases.  The proposal is laid out in a series of documents, including the planned rule itself, a fact sheet and an announcement of a workshop that occurred Feb. 25.

 

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U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson, who has been under fire from environmentalists, politicians and even some agency staffers for his decision last year to deny California's greenhouse emissions standards for cars, issued his formal reasoning for the rejection Friday (Feb. 29).

In short, there's nothing so special about the state's problems relating to global warming that means California ought to be able to go it alone in regulating such emissions, according to Johnson. California had sought permission under a section of the Clean Air Act that gives California, and by extension other states, authority to set its own pollution standards for motor vehicles. In a 47-page filing headed for the Federal Register, Johnson (pictured; EPA photograph) wrote his decision was based on his finding that California does not need the standards to meet "compelling and extraordinary conditions":

"While I recognize that global climate change is a serious challenge, I have concluded that section 209(b) [of the Clean Air Act] was intended to allow California to promulgate state standards applicable to emissions from new motor vehicles to address pollution problems that are local or regional. I do not believe section 209(b)(1)(B) was intended to allow California to promulgate state standards for emissions from new motor vehicles designed to address global climate change problems; nor, in the alternative, do I believe that the effects of climate change in California are compelling and extraordinary compared to the effects in the rest of the country. Based on this finding, pursuant to section 209(b)(1) of the Clean Air Act (Act), CARB’s waiver request for its GHG standards for new motor vehicles must be denied."

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Daniel Yergin, a widely known energy expert who closely advises  the oil and gas industry, is predicting a rosy future for renewable energy, and other "clean" technologies such as nuclear and hydropower, partly as a result of public concern over global warming and driven by subsidies and government mandates. 

"High energy prices, climate change and energy security are converging as the new engine driving the development of clean energy," Yergin (pictured at left), chairman of Cambrige Energy Associates, told a gathering at the National Governors Association in Washington, D.C. (Feb. 23). "There is a major shift in public opinion towards clean energy, which is being bolstered by the growing conviction that new carbon policies will reshape the competitive landscape of the global energy business."

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