The New Green Leaders - page 1

ENVIRONMENT AND LEADERSHIP
The New Green Leaders
The eco-movement is turning governance upside down. Who's winning this brand-new game?

By Barrett Sheridan and George Wehrfritz | NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated May 5, 2008

With less than a year left in office, President George W. Bush will probably never win the Greenpeace seal of approval. He is, after all, the leader who, in one of his first official acts back in 2001, rejected the Kyoto Protocol, keeping the United States from participating in the effort to curb carbon emissions. He also told a skeptical Congress that opening Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling was essential to national security. Lately, however, Bush is turning … well, if not green, then at least lime or chartreuse. In mid-April he announced that the United States would be willing to commit to binding emissions targets. He has also signed into law the first increase in auto-efficiency requirements in three decades and embraced alternative fuels. What is behind Bush's late-term epiphany about the environment?

The answer: public opinion. The state of the environment has begun to loom large in the minds of Americans. In 2007, the Pew Global Attitudes Project found that 37 percent of Americans named environmental problems as a top global threat, a 61 percent increase from just five years earlier. Sensing this groundswell of environmentalism, Bush knows that he risks being labeled in history books as the last major leader to ignore the environmental perils facing the world. The two Democratic candidates for Bush's job, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, as well as the presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain, have all come out in favor of ambitious plans to roll back climate change, including a cap-and-trade program to cut carbon emissions.

The green tilt can be felt not only in the United States. The Pew survey included 46 other nations, and in all but three the environment had swelled in importance between 2002 and 2007. (The laggards were Jordan, Lebanon and the Ivory Coast.) Between 45 and 66 percent of Western Europeans named environmental issues as a top threat last year, as did 70 percent of Chinese. People in India, Brazil and other large developing nations also felt strongly. Chalk it up to the blizzard of doomsday predictions from scientists or Al Gore's PR blitz—either way, it equates to a rising global demand for environmentally sound leaders, and a public that will give them unprecedented support for tackling the thorny problems facing the planet. It should also give fresh impetus to climate talks now underway for a post-Kyoto agreement, which this time around is likely to include China and India.

Leaders that truly want to prove their green worth would do well to look north. In Iceland, a country better known for cod than clean technology, an amazing 80 percent of energy comes from renewable sources like hydroelectric and geothermal power plants. That achievement has been decades in the making—Iceland has long tapped its rivers and volcanoes for electricity. Prime Minister Geir H. Haarde now wants to export his country's success in alternative energy. With government backing, Icelandic companies are taking their expertise in renewables to places as diverse as Djibouti, China and southern California. Although Iceland, with its geothermal reserves and tiny population, may be in a unique position, other heads of state might find an idea or two by looking to Reykjavik.

Still, getting citizens to sacrifice income for the environment's sake will be easier in Stockholm than in Tokyo and London. Although Western Europe and Japan have been far ahead of the rest of the world on the environment, old-fashioned politics still temper the greenest rhetoric. Many of the measures environmentalists are calling for and politicians give lip service to are meeting stiff resistance from lobbyists and entrenched bureaucrats. Whereas Britain's Tony Blair made the environment his calling card, and Angela Merkel has initiated climate-change measures in Germany and the European Union, both Merkel and Blair's successor, Gordon Brown, are struggling to implement their green agendas. Brown has taken flak for his support of coal-fired plants and a new runway at Heathrow airport. Merkel has been reluctant to confront Germany's coal, steel and cement industries over carbon emissions. Nicolas Sarkozy has tried to make himself out to be France's green president, but he's lately run into trouble with environmentalists over genetically modified foods. And Japan's Yasuo Fukuda has made the environment a high priority—it will be on the agenda of the G8 summit in July, which Japan is hosting—though he's been in office too short a time to accomplish much.

The appetite for change is more evident elsewhere, especially in Asia. Australia's recent presidential election highlights the shift in political climate. The vanquished John Howard—the country's second longest-serving prime minister—was famously friendly to industry, defended his country's domestic coal businesses and denounced carbon trading as a "knee-jerk reaction" to global warming. His rival, Labor Party candidate Kevin Rudd, was better tuned to the Zeitgeist: after stumping on the pledge to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, he won by a margin so large the media dubbed it a "Ruddslide."

Geothermal energy

Geothermal Heat Pump Technology, the "Energy Under Our Feet" can provide us with a "Triple E" solution, Energy Independence, Environmental Security and Economic Prosperity. Currently we have less than a 2% share of the market, in my document "The Road to 30%" it shows that with a 30% share of the market (HVAC & water heating) we could achieve and pass the goals set by the Kyoto agreement, we could lessen our dependency on foreign oil by at least 25% and we could retain or create 5 million jobs. All this and we provide comfort to the constituency.
We need to have the Utilities involved and have the ground loop heat exchangers (the pipes in the ground) qualify for emission credits or renewable energy credits, that way the Utilities could own the loops and use the credits for their generation plants that need the credits. It becomes a win, win, win situation. The customer gets a system that uses less energy and provides comfort, the green collar worker (installer, driller, designer etc has the work and the Utility gets the emission offset. We would have to train more of the infrastructure but that is a positive also. Once again, the "Energy Under Our Feet" is a 60 year old new technology that can solve a major portion of the problems that are currently plagueing our country. Jack DiEnna, Springfield, PA 19064 (Sent Wednesday, January 28, 2009 5:49 PM)

NT Times article

Published: January 13, 2009
To most people the word “geothermal” means hot springs and geysers — like parts of Iceland or Yellowstone National Park where water is heated by the presence of magma near the surface of the earth. But the earth’s heat lies below everywhere, and it offers a virtually untapped energy reserve of enormous potential with a very short list of drawbacks.

Times Topics: Geothermal PowerIn 2006, a panel led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology surveyed the prospects for electricity production from enhanced geothermal systems. Its conclusions were conservative but very optimistic. The panel suggested that with modest federal support, geothermal power could play a critical role in America’s energy future, adding substantially to the nation’s store of renewable energy and more than making up for coal-burning power plants that would have to be retired.

Following up on the M.I.T. study and a separate survey of its own, the Bureau of Land Management issued a decision last month that would open up as many as 190 million acres to leases for geothermal exploration and development. These lands are mostly in the West, where hot rock lies closer to the surface than it generally does in the East.

There is a lot of research yet to be done about geothermal sources, new techniques for deep drilling and energy generation at the surface. But the basics are clear enough. Water is injected deep into the earth where it absorbs heat from the surrounding rock. As the fluid returns to the surface, that heat is used to generate electricity. The fluid is then re-injected. The system forms a closed loop. It creates almost no emissions and is entirely renewable. It also occupies a smaller surface area than either solar or wind power.

Still, large-scale commercial production is at least a decade away and will require improvements on currently available technology. Geothermal development also will mean still more competition for scarce water, more holes in the ground and more roads to service those holes.

The M.I.T. report’s statement that the success of geothermal production “would parallel the development of the U.S. coal-bed methane industry” is no doubt meant to be reassuring. Yet in parts of the West, coal-bed methane has been an environmental disaster, both for fragile landscapes and the wildlife that depend on them.

Geothermal development must not be allowed to foster another drilling free-for-all of the kind we’ve seen during the past decade. Done right, it could help free the country of the grievous environmental burden of coal-burning power plants. Done wrong, it could create grievous environmental problems of its own. Mindful of the dangers, the next administration should commit to developing this extraordinary resource