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Hillary’s climate-change plan
November 7, 2007
Hillary Clinton has been promising strong action on climate change if she is elected. Now she has made some detailed commitments. (See Edward Luce’s report of her latest speech on the subject here. Details of her proposals are here.) Her goal will be to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions by 80% from 1990 levels by 2050. She says she will negotiate a successor to the Kyoto Protocol in double-quick time. And that’s not all. The plan also proposes:
- A new cap-and-trade program that auctions 100% of permits alongside investments to move us on the path towards energy independence;
- An aggressive, comprehensive energy efficiency agenda to reduce electricity consumption 20% from projected levels by 2020 by changing the way utilities do business, catalyzing a green building industry, enacting strict appliance efficiency standards, and phasing out incandescent light bulbs;
- A $50 billion Strategic Energy Fund, paid for in part by oil companies, to fund investments in alternative energy. The SEF will finance one-third of the $150 billion ten-year investment in a new energy future contained in this plan;
- Doubling of federal investment in basic energy research, including funding for an ARPA-E, a new research agency modeled on the successful Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency;
- Aggressive action to transition our economy toward renewable energy sources, with renewables generating 25% of electricity by 2025 and with 60 billion gallons of home-grown biofuels available for cars and trucks by 2030;
- 10 “Smart Grid City” partnerships to prove the advanced capabilities of smart grid and other advanced demand-reduction technologies, as well as new investment in plug-in hybrid vehicle technologies;
and more besides.
She cannot be faulted, at any rate, for lack of ambition. The plan is comprehensive (to a fault) and the target for reductions in emissions is demanding. To get there, the proposed cap-and-trade regime would have to bite very hard, notwithstanding the effort and resources she proposes putting into promoting energy efficiency. Full marks for saying that she would want all of the emission permits to be auctioned. But deduct some for failing to acknowledge what this regime would do to the price of energy. Her policy document even cites high gasoline prices as part of the energy problem she is setting out to solve (so far as climate change is concerned, high gas prices are of course part of the solution). The strategy is win-win all the way, based on an original screenplay by Al Gore: more jobs, higher wages, faster growth, and all without greenhouse gases. She is cool on nuclear too, saying no expansion will be needed, and correspondingly keen–keen is putting it mildly–on biofuels. Home-grown biofuels, by the way.
As I say, it is bold, with lots of detail for critics to pick apart. This is hardly the vagueness and evasion of which she is being accused by Barack Obama and John Edwards (both of whom have ambitious plans of their own for climate-change mitigation). And the contrast with the leading Republican candidates on this subject could hardly be greater. That makes her stance on the issue quite a risk, though no doubt a carefully calculated one. The polls say that voters are increasingly anxious about climate change. They want promises of action. How much they are willing to pay for those promises is something we will find out.
Thanks for the summary, and the blog (and all the FT blogs).
I suspect that one reason for the specificity and ambition of the Clinton climate plan is to wall off criticism and perhaps even thoughts of a candidacy from potential rival Al Gore. She is giving him no space to operate on his #1 issue.
Of course, the strategy is double-edged, for if she falters in the polls for any reason, Gore would be a natural to inherit this particular agenda.
Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr. | November 7th, 2007 at 5:55 pm | Report this commentIn 1996,Washington was “up” with Hydrogen fuel-cells after lots of push/pressure from the scientific community , and then the Oil Lobby got “warm” with all the neocon team around the Clinton’s and Gore, so the result was no action, no fuel-cells and the slow collapse of GM,Chrysler and Ford, all with gas-guzzlers and heavy elephant-mobiles, a disaster that today explains General Motors 40 billion-oooops ! story, so now Hillary got the same dream-neocon-team around her, even Sandy “9/11ArchivesSocks” Berger is on it, why is she getting the same incompetent advice that 10 years ago ? we are not kids anymore: they will keep the USA addicted to oil to keep the Military , Contractors and Security deals in the Middle East,besides,we know that a MAYOR “HIT” WILL HAPPEN IN ‘08 AND GIULIANI AND MUKASEY WILL MOVE RIGHT IN in the paranoia and terror alert, EVEN THE ELEPHANTS KNOW THAT BY NOW….
we need a total new team in the White House, without the usual neocons,we need a Edwards,Huckabee,Paul,Obama,Richardson,Gravel,
Kucinich,etc.,and without the neocons already “creeping” into these campaigns, the “gentile watchers”, we don’t need them anymore, but hey! ,we are no match to the military precision of the neocons of Giuliani-Mukasey-Podhoretz,they really go for the kill, and we naive christian taxpayers are no match….
after 8 years in the White House and 7 in the Senate, now for election “photo-op”, they come up with an Energy Revolution towards Energy Independence ? what a shame , Hillary !!! get all the neocons out of your campaign staff and start pushing Legislation for Hydrogen Fuel-cells,E-85 in all the 170.000 gas stations of the land and solar panels ,evacuated tubes and turbines/batteries in every new and old home, new PV factories everywhere and geothermal in all the West,and we will believe some of it, otherwise, what an insult !
Posted by: blogger | November 7th, 2007 at 6:28 pm | Report this commentSenator Clinton lists several sensible ways in which the United States could reduce somewhat its contribution to global warming. But she pays no attention to the fact that the world’s developing nations have no intention of hobbling their efforts to improve their living standards by taking the very costly steps necessary to reduce the rate at which they add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
Posted by: Roy C. Ward | November 8th, 2007 at 6:30 pm | Report this commentShe has probably read the IPCC’s 2007 reports on global warming and trusts them to give her the best available information about the warming and how we can counteract its effect. That is unfortunate. As you pointed out on 2 August, the IPCC “is a seriously flawed enterprise and unworthy of the slavish respect accorded to it by most governments and the media.”
Perhaps Senator Clinton would be willing to listen to two climate scientists with impeccable credentials who disagree radically with the IPCC about ways to counteract global warming. T.M.L.Wigley said in Science 314,452,20 October 2006 that by studying the climate system’s reaction to the 1991 eruption of the Mount Pinatubo volcano he estimated that we could counteract even a doubling of the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere if we could put 5 million tonnes of sunlight-blocking sulfur into the stratosphere every year. M.I.Budyko said in 1982 that such jobs could be done inexpensively by using high-altitude airplanes to deliver the sulfur. A fleet of 100 modified Concorde airplanes, each delivering 40 tonnes of sulfur four times per day, could provide the desired mitigation. Such an airplane would cost about $300 million and could be used for about 30 years. The cost of manufacturing the airplanes would thus be about $1 billion per year. Other costs, primarily buying jet fuel, would run the annual bill up to no more than $10 billion. Web page http://home.comcast.net/~RoyCWard/GlobalWarming.html gives details and points out the very serious error that led to the IPCC’s contemptuous refusal (p.21) in its 4 May 2007 report to consider “geoengineering” ideas such as Wigley’s.
If we stop global warming this way instead of funding “Kyoto II”, we will have more money to spend on accelerating the development of alternative energy sources and on alleviating NOW some of the misery in the developing world caused by diseases and by filthy air and water, as Lomborg pleads.