Green Energy War

By John Geesman

No drumbeat resonates like the mobilization of public opinion for war. In 2008 and 2009, policy elites around the world prepared for US re-entry to the global climate debate. These short narrative bursts capture the heady aspirations of the time, tracing the strategic perimeter of energy initiatives that soon turned comatose – a “weird and unintended prequel” to the exuberant 21 Machetes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Geesman
• Release date: Oct 26, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452376332

John Geesman

From the "ABOUT JOHN GEESMAN" page at www.greenenergywar.com:Ten Time-Weighted Footprints in the Soft Sand of My Public Psyche:1) 19 years (from 1983 to 2002) as an investment banker in the American bond markets, an unavoidably conservatizing experience regarding financial matters. Rule of law, sanctity of contract, ability and willingness to pay debt service as scheduled — these are the underpinnings of civilization, in my view.2) 18 years (from 1951 to 1969) growing up in Lakewood, California, one of the original blue collar insta-suburbs built after World War II on the Levittown assembly line model. Civic equality was presumed with every fourth house a carbon copy.3) 11 years (from 1978 to 1983 and from 2002 to 2008) of government service at the California Energy Commission, most recently as a Commissioner and earlier as Executive Director. Both experiences centered on the efficiency/renewables recipe which has become California’s signature energy policy cuisine.4) 8 years (from 1990 to 1998) on the Board of Directors, including 6 (from 1992 to 1998) as President, of TURN (The Utility Reform Network), California’s largest and most vociferous ratepayer advocacy organization.5) 5 years (from 1997 to 2002) on the Board of Governors, including 4 (from 1998 to 2002) as Chairman, of the California Power Exchange, the first domino to fall in the electricity “deregulation” fiasco. Flawed design, institutional inertia, nonexistent police presence, and ham handed political response — the marketplace equivalent of Hurricane Katrina.6) 5 years (from 1973 to 1978) as a political activist, including work on the campaign staffs of successful candidates for Mayor of Los Angeles and Mayor of San Francisco and unsuccessful candidates for President and State Senate; co-authorship of a book on the sorry performance of the state Consumer Affairs department; lobbying on behalf of the Nader-inspired California Citizen Action Group; and helping to found one of the first solar water heating businesses.7) 4 years (from 1969 to 1973) at Yale when it was described — by the snarkily envious Harvard Crimson — as “the bell-bottoms in the Ivy League family”, originally planning to be a journalist and finding a degree of encouragement as a Managing Editor of the Yale Daily News and stringer for the New York Times, only to succumb to the virulent disease of applying to law school instead.8) 3 years (from 1973 to 1976) of alienation at the UC Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law, immaturely put off by the trade-school-for-shysters aspects (e.g., assigned reading razor-bladed from library books) and prone to the diversions described in #6 above.9) 3 years (from 1999 to 2002) as Chairman of the California Managed Risk Medical Insurance Board, growing enrollment in the State Children Health Insurance Program from 50,000 to 632,000 and creating real benefit for real people.10) 2 years (from 2006 to present) as Co-Chair of the Board of Directors of the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE), carrying a California torch to light (zero emission) bonfires across the planet.February 9, 2008, Sacramento, California

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Green Energy War

Pontifical Years: 2008 - 09

By John Geesman

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2010 John Geesman

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This free ebook may be copied, distributed, reposted, reprinted and shared, provided it appears in its entirety without alteration, and the reader is not charged to access it.

Enjoy John Geesman's other free ebook at Smashwords.com:

21 Machetes

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1: About Green Energy War

Chapter 2: About John Geesman

Chapter 3: Beware the Ides of March!

Chapter 4: Does CCS Establish a Wartime Cost Frontier?

Chapter 5: IPCC Sets Climate Front Timeline

Chapter 6: Carbon Capture and Sequestration in Europe

Chapter 7: Lightbulbs -- Home Front in the Green Energy War

Chapter 8: DOE Efficiency Standards -- Historic Weak Link

Chapter 9: UK Embraces New Nuclear, Coy About Subsidies

Chapter 10: Entergy's Nuclear Spinoff -- No New Construction

Chapter 11: UK Renewables -- Beating Your Head Against a ROC

Chapter 12: Border Carbon Charges -- A Whiff of Mustard Gas?

Chapter 13: Feed-In Tariffs -- A Redistribution of Power?

Chapter 14: Motivating the Generals

Chapter 15: EVs in Israel -- Energy Security on Wheels?

Chapter 16: NRG -- Candor on What Holds Back Nuclear Energy

Chapter 17: CARB's ZEV Retreat -- Dunkirk or Dien Bien Phu?

Chapter 18: McKinsey -- 17% IRR from Productivity Investments

Chapter 19: McKinsey, Pt. 2 -- Where the Gold Is Hidden

Chapter 20: McKinsey, Pt. 3 -- Seizing the Gold

Chapter 21: 10 Candles for the California ISO

Chapter 22: LBNL -- Reading the Utility Planning Tea Leaves

Chapter 23: EIA Oil Price Forecasts -- the Limits of Intelligence

Chapter 24: Feed-In Tariffs Pull AES Solar Strategy Away from US

Chapter 25: Misunderestimating Bush's Climate Prattle

Chapter 26: Misunderestimating Bush, Pt. 2 -- Clean Coal Katrina

Chapter 27: Misunderestimating Bush, Pt. 3 -- Thumb on the Scale

Chapter 28: Misunderestimating Bush, Pt. 4 -- Contempt of Court

Chapter 29: Biofuels Smackdown – When Words Fail

Chapter 30: Biofuels – Wouldn’t We Miss 500,000 Barrels a Day?

Chapter 31: Biofuels – Confusion, Conflict Among Allies

Chapter 32: Biofuels – Low Carbon Fuel Standard to the Rescue?

Chapter 33: Will Edison’s Solar Play Trigger a Feed-In Tariff?

Chapter 34: New EIA Oil Price Forecast – Oops, We Did It Again

Chapter 35: How Big a Nuclear Renaissance Did We Buy?

Chapter 36: CBO Nuclear Report, Pt. 2 – Construction Cost Peril

Chapter 37: CBO Nuclear Report, Pt. 3 – Mitigating Factors?

Chapter 38: CBO Nuclear Report, Pt. 4 – EPAct’s Limited Role

Chapter 39: Where, Oh Where, Have the CCS Projects Gone?

Chapter 40: General Motors – The Consequences of Strategy

Chapter 41: IEA Climate Report – The Relentless Logic of War

Chapter 42: IEA Report, Pt. 2 – Decarbonizing Generation

Chapter 43: IEA Report, Pt. 3 – Transport Sector Most Difficult

Chapter 44: IEA Report, Pt. 4 – Five Weak Links

Chapter 45: German Cabinet Bolsters Merkel’s Hokkaido Stance

Chapter 46: Stage Set for New Renewables Strategy in UK

Chapter 47: A Policymaker’s Cookbook for Feed-In Tariffs

Chapter 48: EIA Fudges Update to Longterm Oil Price Forecast

Chapter 49: California’s Climate Plan Snowball Starts Its Roll

Chapter 50: UK Renewables Policy – No ‘Rule, Brittania’ Just Yet

Chapter 51: UK Renewables, Pt. 2 – Churchill or Friedman?

Chapter 52: Will the UK Require New Coal Plants to Use CCS?

Chapter 53: Discount Rates – The Divine Right of Economists

Chapter 54: Discount Rates, Pt. 2 – Why They Matter So Much

Chapter 55: So How Expensive is US Gasoline Anyway?

Chapter 56: Enhanced Geothermal – Drill Here, Drill Now?

Chapter 57: Enhanced Geothermal – Drill Here, Drill Now, Pt. 2

Chapter 58: Feed-In May Ease Southern California Squeeze

Chapter 59: Efficiency – California’s Oldtime Energy Religion

Chapter 60: A Return to Arms

Chapter 61: McKinsey Finds $680 Billion Tumor on US Economy

Chapter 62: Who Brainwashed Texas on Renewable Energy?

Chapter 63: The Coming Nuclear Assault on the US Treasury

Chapter 64: Why Moody’s Thinks New Nukes Are for Losers

Chapter 65: A Welcome Maturation in the LEED Rating Process

Chapter 66: Will Areva’s Finnish Fiasco Spook US Taxpayers?

Chapter 67: Upon Being Named a Clean Power Champion

Chapter 68: UK Energy Leaders – Losing Their Religion?

Chapter 69: Free Trade, Global Warming, and Beliefs of Elites

Chapter 70: PG&E’s Sham Ballot Measure Brings the War Home

Preface

Kierkegaard probably got it right when he confided to his diary that life must be lived forwards but understood backwards. While Barbara Tuchman waited some five decades before trying to make sense of the run-up to World War I, the DIY instant analysis made ubiquitous by the internet places a higher premium on the time capsule itself than on the reflections it spawns. And so I submit my message-in-a-bottle chronicle from a propitious time.

When I completed my term on the California Energy Commission in early February, 2008, I centered my post-government calendar on a cognoscenti-focused blog (www.greenenergywar.com) and my speaking schedule as the board co-chair of the American Council on Renewable Energy. What follows are the individual blog posts and podcasts, although web vernacular would characterize Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 as free standing pages from the greenenergywar site.

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s global celebrity (I was a late-term, holdover appointee of his predecessor) drew considerable attention to California’s climate policies. My perspective was rooted in the earlier, unforgiving financial pragmatism that tilted the state’s energy dialogue so heavily (and controversially) toward efficiency and renewables in the late 1970s.

Advocates bring some shortcomings to the job of punditry, especially if they observe the sports discipline of not kvetching while their team has the ball. Mothers advise children that silence is the correct response when nothing nice can be said. Literary critics often glean more meaning from the white space, what is not written, than from the words on a page.

Still, the primary virtue in the dwindling number of entries after late 2008 may have been the pressure build-up of a capped well. Inevitably, the feedstock for this ebook – white space included -- became a weird and unintended prequel to the exuberantly nonfiction novella, 21 Machetes.

The opinion polls suggest that California voters next week will decisively reject Proposition 23, which would have effectively repealed the state’s Global Warming Solutions Act (aka AB 32). If so, the electorate will affirm a decades-long embrace of a high expectations energy policy. And send a welcome signal to a despairing world.

JG

Orinda, California

October 26, 2010

Chapter 1: About Green Energy War

February 9, 2008

War as metaphor is a dubious tradition in modern American politics. Presidents use it to effortlessly summon urgency, priority, mobilization and (implied) sacrifice for a crusade against some amorphous foe. In the past several decades, various Commanders in Chief have declared wars on Poverty, Crime, Drugs, Cancer, Inflation, and Terror.

Many will observe that these jihads never succeed, especially when measured by the grandiose objectives and optimistic time frames announced at launch. With no Homosapien adversary from which to extract a formal surrender, how are these wars supposed to ever end? How will we know when we’ve won? Politicians’ use of war as metaphor may rely more on the Cold War perpetual struggle trope than the WW II finite resolution model. This realization doesn’t undermine the original motivation behind the policy as much as it limits the ongoing conceptual usefulness of the metaphor.

Within 90 days of taking office in 1977, President Carter declared U.S. energy challenges the moral equivalent of war, borrowing a phrase from the early 20th Century pacifist philosopher, William James. With the exception of preventing war, Carter said, this is the greatest challenge our country will face during our lifetimes.

Carter’s take was centered on resource scarcity: We simply must balance our demand for energy with our rapidly shrinking resources, he said. Our energy problems have the same cause as our environmental problems — wasteful use of resources. He called for a shift to strict conservation, and to the use of coal and permanent renewable energy sources, like solar power. The alternative to his proposals, by Carter’s estimation, may be a national catastrophe. As he observed, Our decision about energy will test the character of the American people and the ability of the President and Congress to govern.

Well …

Without rehashing the Carter Administration’s political effectiveness, technological choices, or allegiance to market mechanisms — all worthy topics better left to a more contemporary context — one conclusion seems beyond dispute: the United States (and the world) is in a worse energy position today than it was when Carter spoke. U.S. oil imports, the most politically salient indicator, tell the story in shorthand: an annual average of 8.6 million barrels per day in 1977; reduced to 4.3 million barrels per day in 1985; and increased to 12.4 million barrels per day in 2006, the most recent data available. Dependence on imports went down from 47% in 1977 to 27% in 1985, but ballooned to 60% by 2006.

Blame it on the policies. Blame it on the commanders. Blame it on the troops. Blame it on the public. Regardless the cause, the Moral Equivalent of War evolved pretty quickly into the Moral Equivalent of Desertion.

Concern about accelerated global warming was not on the policy radar screen during Carter’s era. The momentum with which policy elites around the world have taken up the climate change imperative may reinvigorate the war metaphor. Al Gore, in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, observed that, without realizing it, we have begun to wage war on the earth itself. Now, we and the earth’s climate are locked in a relationship familiar to war planners: ‘mutually assured destruction.’ (Ironically, the aforementioned William James, opposed to war but impressed by the civic bonding associated with