Monday, August 3, 2009

from NRDC

Fuels Emissions Cap and Low Carbon Fuel Standard Are Key Parts of House Climate Proposal

Luke Tonachel: Vehicles Analyst, New York City; Blog | About; Posted April 1, 2009 in Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming

Yesterday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee proposed essential policiesfor cleaning up our fuel supply and reducing our dependence on oil. The proposal includes transportation fuels under an economy-wide cap and establishes a complementary, performance-based low carbon fuel standard.

The cap on emissions is crucial to ensuring that we achieve reductions in global warming pollution from the transportation sector. Other policies, such as CAFE and emissions standards, are intensity-based, meaning they reduce emissions per unit of use (e.g. grams CO2e/mile). If fuel use increases due to more driving, total emissions can still increase without a cap. Transportation fuels are responsible for nearly one-third of US global warming pollution, so they must be included in an economy-wide cap if we are going to hit our 2050 emission reduction targets. Including transportation fuels in the cap also increases the size of the allowance trading market and promotes easier access to the most cost-effective reductions first.

Performance standards, such as minimum fuel efficiency requirements for vehicles or a low carbon standard for fuel, are a critical complement to the cap because they drive low-carbon innovation beyond what might occur with a price signal alone. We are largely inelastic consumers of transportation fuel, meaning that our driving distances do not change much, if at all, with small changes in the price of fuel. Under a carbon cap, the price signal at the pump (about 18 cents/gallon at $20/ton of CO2e) will likely be insufficient to change our driving habits, the efficiency of vehicles produced or our choice of cars. Performance standards overcome the market barriers to innovation in the transportation sector.

A low carbon fuel standard, or LCFS, is a full-fuel-cycle emission intensity standard (e.g., grams of CO2-eq/Mbtu of fuels) on the entire mix of transportation fuels sold. Gradually decreasing the intensity standard forces a shift in the fuel pool toward cleaner fuels such as electricity and sustainable biofuels. Since it is technology-neutral, the LCFS encourages greater deployment (by fuel providers) of all low carbon alternatives to petroleum, which powers about 97% of our transportation.

The standard also discourages large, long-lived investments in high-carbon dirty fuels such as tar sands, liquid coal, and oil shale. Since the whole fuel pool must decrease in carbon intensity, adding high-carbon fuels to the mix makes it harder for fuel providers to comply and dirty fuel investments don't hold up to financial scrutiny.

Accurate accounting is an important requirement of the LCFS. It must account for emissions that occur during fuel production both nationally and internationally. These include tar sands development in Canada, where upstream fuel production emissions can be three times that of conventional gasoline. The LCFS must also account for indirect land use change emissions, which occur when US land previously dedicated to food is switched to energy crops and the displaced food is instead grown internationally by cultivating land that previously stored vast amounts of carbon.

By including both fuels in the cap and an LCFS, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 released yesterday establishes a framework that can dramatically cut global warming pollution from transportation fuels.

Tags:: CAFE, energyandclimate2009, fueleconomystandards, globalwarming,lowcarbonfuelstandard, oildependence, transportation

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the debate goes on

How Do We Curb Carbon: The Debate Over an Emissions Cap or a Tax

Yale Environment 360. Posted May 19, 2009.

As the U.S. Congress debates the issue, eight experts discuss the merits of a cap-and-trade system versus a carbon tax.

Emissions trading

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Emissions trading (or emission trading) is an administrative approach used to control pollution by providing economic incentives for achieving reductions in the emissions of pollutants. It is sometimes called cap and trade.

A coal power plant in Germany. Due to emissions trading, coal may become less competitive as a fuel.

A central authority (usually a government or international body) sets a limit or cap on the amount of a pollutant that can be emitted. Companies or other groups are issued emission permits and are required to hold an equivalent number of allowances (or credits) which represent the right to emit a specific amount. The total amount of allowances and credits cannot exceed the cap, limiting total emissions to that level. Companies that need to increase their emission allowance must buy credits from those who pollute less. The transfer of allowances is referred to as a trade. In effect, the buyer is paying a charge for polluting, while the seller is being rewarded for having reduced emissions by more than was needed. Thus, in theory, those who can easily reduce emissions most cheaply will do so, achieving the pollution reduction at the lowest possible cost to society.^[1]

There are active trading programs in several pollutants. For greenhouse gases the largest is the European Union Emission Trading Scheme.^[2] In the United States there is a national market to reduce acid rain and several regional markets in nitrogen oxides.^[3] Markets for other pollutants tend to be smaller and more localized.

cap on carbon emissions

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Gore Urges Cap on Carbon Emissions, Global Climate Pact

He Tells Senators the Situation Is Dire

VIDEO

Gore Urges Action on Economy, Global Warming

Former Vice President Al Gore urged lawmakers Wednesday not to let the U.S. economic crisis get in the way of addressing global warming.

» LAUNCH VIDEO PLAYER

By Juliet Eilperin

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 29, 2009; Page A03

Former vice president Al Gore urged lawmakers yesterday to adopt a binding carbon cap and push for a new international climate pact by the end of this year in order to avert catastrophic global warming.

Appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Gore delivered a short slide show that amounted to an update of his Oscar-winning documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," lecturing some of his former colleagues that even if the world halted greenhouse gas emissions now, the world could experience a temperature rise of 2.5 to 7.5 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100.

"This would bring a screeching halt to human civilization and threaten the fabric of life everywhere on the Earth, and this is within this century," Gore said.

The high-tech display included a graphic illustration of how the Arctic's permanent summer ice cover has melted in recent decades, a pulsating image the Nobel Peace Prize winner described as "30 years in less than 30 seconds," and a short video clip of a scientist who ignited the methane gas seeping out of the melting Arctic permafrost.

After the audience watched the flames leap up and the researcher scurry away, Gore remarked: "She's okay. The question is, are we?"

Gore received a largely sympathetic hearing from the panel.

"Frankly, the science is screaming at us," said the committee's chairman, John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who added that the United States would not make the mistake of leaving emerging economies out of any future climate agreement.

"A global problem demands a global effort, and today we are working toward a solution with a role for developed and developing countries alike, which will be vital as we work to build consensus here at home in tough economic times," Kerry said.

Gore did not sugarcoat his message to senators. While politicians including President Obama have touted the importance of exploring "clean coal technology," the former vice president said it will not be available for years: "We must avoid becoming vulnerable to the illusion that this is near at hand. It is not."

Sen. Richard G. Lugar (Ind.), the committee's top Republican, asked Gore to draw on his experience as "a practical politician" to explain how senators could muster a broad bipartisan majority for any international treaty that could come out of the Copenhagen climate conference at the end of the year.

After distancing himself from his political past -- "I'm a recovering politician. I'm on about Step 9" -- Gore said the chances of a treaty passing the Senate should be boosted by developing countries' willingness to embrace binding climate goals, coupled with the new scientific evidence of recent warming and Obama's leadership.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who supports a carbon tax rather than a cap-and-trade system, said he thinks the only way to construct a bipartisan coalition on climate change is to be honest about what it means to curb greenhouse gas emissions. "I think we can build consensus around transparency," Corker said, adding that when it comes to addressing global warming, "we're really talking about increasing the price of carbon."

Corker said that even lawmakers who have some reservations about a carbon cap's economic impact need to acknowledge it will likely become reality.