The corporate money-laundering U.S. Chamber of Commerce has a new target - clean energy. Having helped to elect climate zombie Tea Party Republicans in 2010, their next big move is to scuttle government programs to support clean energy. From The Hill:
Karen Harbert, president of the Chamber’s Institute for 21st Century Energy, in a wide-ranging interview with The Hill late last month said members of Congress should rethink attempts to set aside large amounts of money for the research and development of nascent energy technologies like wind and solar at the expense of conventional forms of energy like oil.
“Can we, in the economic times in which we find ourselves, continue to fund the type of research and development and the types of monies that were spent in the stimulus package on very high-cost energy sources?” Harbert said.
Take a look at the pedigree of Karen Harbert.
Harbert is the former assistant secretary for policy and International Affairs at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). She was the primary policy advisor to the Secretary and to the department on domestic and international energy issues, including climate change, fossil, nuclear, and renewable energy and energy efficiency.
Harbert was also a member of DOE’s Executive Board as well as the Credit Review Board. She negotiated and managed bilateral and multilateral agreements with other countries and international agencies to further the nation’s energy security and research and development objectives. She was vice chairman of the International Energy Agency which advises its 27 member nations on energy policy issues and orchestrates international responses to energy supply disruptions.
Harbert was a high ranking member of the Bush administration's DOE, facilitating our importing of oil and removing regulations covering domestic oil, gas, and coal extraction. She serves the same role for U.S. Chamber of Commerce where she has been the point person for promoting "drill, baby, drill."
Here is her opening salvo after joining the Chamber. Notice the gratuitous estimates of recoverable resources produced under Bush now being used to sell "drill, baby, drill."
What most Americans do not realize is that many of our nation’s energy troubles are self-inflicted and that they can responsibly be remedied right here at home. A substantial amount of our nation’s resources lie beneath federal lands and off the coasts of the United States. Recent estimates indicate that approximately 116 billion barrels of undiscovered recoverable oil resources and more than 650 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas resources lie in these areas. To put these figures in perspective, that's enough oil to replace U.S. oil imports for 40 years and enough natural gas to warm all American households, heated with natural gas, for well over a century.
Her talking points in 2008 were to deregulate the oil and gas industry operations in federally-controlled lands and waters, a position parroted by McCain and his erstwhile running mate.
After the election of Barack Obama, Harbert and the Chamber intensified the attack on any attempt to regulate fossil fuels, dismissing the significance of renewable energy. Here is her testimony before the Senate Finance Committee in May, 2010.
Both the electricity and transportation sectors are dominated by the least cost fuel sources: fossil fuels. In the electricity sector, wind and solar power comprise less than 2% of our electricity generation. Even under EIA’s modeling of H.R. 2454’s (“Waxman-Markey”) aggressive carbon regulations, wind and solar will only comprise 6% of the country’s electricity generation in 2030, requiring us to rely on other sources for the remaining 94%.
In the transportation sector 94% of the energy we consume comes from oil. Despite the valuable progress being made in the development of new alternative fuels and automotive technologies, there is still no viable substitute for oil in this sector. Fossil fuels will remain the backbone of our national and global economy for the foreseeable future. In light of the tragic situation in the Gulf of Mexico, there will be some who call for the United States to forego the tremendous economic and energy security benefits of tapping America’s vast oil and gas reserves.
While Harbert and the Chamber have been reliable shills for fossil fuels, before the 2010 election they at least supported clean energy initiatives.
Regardless of the exact form it takes, Harbert said that it is clear that we must increase the rate of capital formation in the clean energy sector through new, innovative financing to support large-scale adaption of clean energy quickly. While some energy and climate issues have the potential to divide, we believe that there should be broad, bipartisan support for the concept. The Energy Institute will continue to work to see a clean energy bank adopted.
One can question the sincerity of that position given the vehemence of opposition to any legislation promoting clean energy initiatives and carbon pricing. The Chamber and other astroturf organizations spent billions on ads attacking Democrats and even a few Republicans that supported the Waxman-Markey bill in the House and similar bills in the Senate.
Now that the Chamber has been instrumental in packing Congress with climate zombies, the message is changing. No to regulation of fossil fuels and no to incentives for research, development and deployment of clean energy. This is nothing short of an attempt to strangle American clean energy infrastructure in its infancy. Incentives for clean energy in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 were time-limited and extensions expire in 2011. What the Chamber is lobbying for is to kill those incentives for the foreseeable future, limiting competition with fossil fuels, while preserving subsidies and removing regulations for oil, gas, and coal companies.
The Chamber appears to acting in concert, if not hand-in-hand, with dirty energy companies. As noted by Denise Bode of the American Wind Energy Association.
Bode also pointed out, however, that wind power's growing stature within the group of mainstream electricity sources has drawn fire from other industries. "In 2010, fossil fuel-funded attacks put U.S. incentives for wind power at risk," Bode said. "Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal editorial page has been running a series of one-sided challenges to renewable energy, while overlooking all the negative effects of conventional sources, including their enormous costs to taxpayers. And America fell to third place in wind installations behind China and the European Union, both of which have implemented long-term policies to provide a stable environment for wind power to operate."
Renewable energy is extremely popular with the American people, but not with fossil fuels industries. Recent gains in generation have come at the expense of growth in the fossil fuel use. That competition is now in jeopardy. Uncertainty over the status of federal funding for clean energy initiatives has had a sudden chilling effect on projects in America. For example, 2010 was a boom year for wind energy worldwide but a fizzle for American projects.
The numbers posted by the U.S. wind industry in the third quarter of 2010 made for its slowest quarter since 2007. Once the year's final numbers are tallied, they are expected to show that China installed approximately three times as much wind-powered electricity as the U.S. in 2010, and Europe twice as much, as U.S. installations fell to just over half of 2009. Factors in the U.S. decline included an absence of long-term U.S. energy policies (such as a Renewable Electricity Standard), resulting in an unstable business environment, and utilities being less eager to enter wind energy power purchase agreements.
A list of federal programs under attack by the Chamber of Commerce and other fossil fuel allies can be found here. Other innovative programs include the EPA's push to develop renewable energy as part of reclamation of industrial dump and spill sites.
The development of clean and renewable energy on formerly used land offers many economic and environmental benefits. Combining clean and renewable energy and contaminated land cleanup incentives can allow investors and communities to create economically viable clean and renewable energy redevelopment projects. This document provides information about Federal incentives that can be leveraged for clean and renewable energy and development of contaminated land.
In the absence of federal incentives for clean energy and carbon pricing, America will remain dependent on dirty energy and the world's largest carbon polluter per capita. Here is the Energy Information Agency forecast for power generation and greenhouse gas emissions from 2012 to 2035 (assuming business as usual). Coal maintains a 43% generation market share with trivial growth in renewable power over the next 25 years. Likewise, greenhouse gas emissions in 2035 are expected to 5% above 2005 levels instead of the 17% reduction promised in Copenhagen. This is the future being promoted by the Chamber and its fossil fuels allies. By contrast, incentives for clean energy and carbon pricing are expected to produce drastic reductions in coal use and greenhouse gas emissions by 2035.
According to an old African proverb, the future belongs to the people who prepare for it today. If the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has its way, we will be at the mercy of the oil, gas, and coal companies.