earth2tech: Smart Grid Stimulus Spending Capped Too Low

With more than $4 billion in stimulus funds allocated to the smart grid, utilities argue that the cap on spending for any one smart grid project is too low.

WSJ Environmental Capital: Al Gore: Passing the Climate Bill a ‘Moral Imperative’

Al Gore came back to Congress today to warn about the perils of climate change and throw his weight behind draft energy and climate legislation.

When it comes to sizing up the scope of the energy and climate challenge, forget pedestrian comparisons such as the Apollo or Manhattan projects—it’s time to think big.

cnet Green Tech: Q&A: Agassi’s Better Place idea–brilliant or nuts?

Shai Agassi is famously persuasive. With just an idea, he was able to raise $300 million to launch Better Place, a venture that plans to build electric car charging spots and battery switching stations in Israel, Denmark, San Francisco, and many other places. But industry executives have voiced skepticism the ambitious plan: Can one company build an electric vehicle charging infrastructure and operate it profitably?

Treehugger: Israeli Cyclists Pump Up The Earth Day Voltage With Pedal Powered Concert

 When I attended a talk by Al Gore about global warming in Oslo in March 2007, I noticed that one of the people clapping loudest — about two rows in front of me — was the head of the committee that awards the Nobel Peace Prize.

Ole Danbolt Mjoes also joined in a minute-long standing ovation for the former U.S. vice president. “A very important message,” was all Mjoes would tell me of Gore’s speech afterwards when I went up and asked him if Gore had a chance of winning.

Gore of course went on to share the prize in December with the U.N. Climate Panel. The photo above shows Mjoes (left), handing the award to Gore in Oslo City Hall.

Gore said on Tuesday he will write a new book, “Our Choice”, for release on November 3 to follow up from his bestselling ”An Inconvenient Truth”. For a story, click here.

“It is time for a comprehensive global plan that actually solves the climate crisis. ‘Our Choice’ will answer that call,” Gore said.

Will it sell?

The timing is good because it will be issued a month before a U.N. conference in Copenhagen is meant to come up with a new global treaty to combat climate change.

But in 2007, Gore’s climate crusade stood out partly because former President George W. Bush was so out of step with his industrial allies by refusing caps on greenhouse gas emissions. (The Clinton administration, in which Gore was vice president, signed up for the carbon-capping 1997 Kyoto Protocol but never submitted it to the Senate for ratification). 

Now President Barack Obama favours cuts in emissions and every government in the world is coming up with plans. So will a new book by Gore about solutions to global warming stand out enough to have a big impact?

Mjoes will probably be among the readers of “Our Choice”.

Are you likely to read it?

 U.S. Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin is making few friends among U.N. climate experts with her view that natural swings, along with human activities, may explain global warming.

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the U.N. Climate Panel, says that evidence is mounting that human activities are the main cause of warming. The panel reported last year that it was at least 90 percent certain that human activities, led by burning fossil fuels, were heating the planet.

He predicted in a telephone interview that Palin’s influence would be limited on climate change if Republican John McCain won the presidency.

“In the ultimate analysis I don’t think the vice president of the United States really matters in these subjects. I wouldn’t really worry too much about her,” he said.

 (…even so, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, with Pachauri’s panel. Or did Gore only become a guru for greens after he left office?)

Achim Steiner, head of the U.N. Environment Programme, also said when asked about Palin’s views that: “We have the science. The debate over the science is over.”

Many delegates at an International Union for Conservation of Nature congress I am attending in Barcelona also say they worry that Palin’s views make it sound as if the science of global warming is far less certain than it is.

So, at least from interviews I have been doing for a Reuters News environment summit, Palin is out in the cold.

Who’s right?

When Al Gore challenged the U.S. to produce all of its electricity from renewable sources in 10 years, his aggressive plan to combat climate change was pitted against another recently-unveiled proposal, from Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens, to reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil.

 Gore, a former Democratic vice president and Nobel Prize-winning crusader on climate change, announced his plan last week and has since promoted it on U.S. television. Expected to cost between $1.5 trillion and $3 trillion,  Gore advocates investment in wind, solar and geothermal energy, energy efficiency and a national power grid. He also wants to retain energy production from nuclear and hydroelectric power plants, and invest in technology to store and capture carbon dioxide from coal and gas.

Inevitably, though, Gore’s plan has been compared to the so-called “Pickens Plan,” which calls for a massive switch to natural gas as a transportation fuel and a dramatic increase in wind power (Pickens, a legendary oil man, is currently spending $10 billion to build the world’s biggest wind farm — a project he expects will be a big moneymaker). Pickens says his $300 billion plan will reduce the amount of imported oil by more than a third in the next decade.

 With a media campaign funded by Pickens’ vast personal fortune, the “Pickens Plan” has its own commercials running on TV. Gore’s plan is backed by his “We Campaign,” a $300 million effort launched earlier this year to mobilize Americans on climate change.

On NBC’s “Meet the Press” this weekend, Gore said he disagrees with Pickens that natural gas should be the dominant transportation fuel, advocating for electric cars instead.  Pickens, however, has said Gore’s plan doesn’t do enough address the nation’s dependence on oil imports.

So who’s right? It’s clear that there is much that the men agree on, and both plans stand in stark opposition to President Bush’s recent move to increase domestic oil production by lifting the ban on oil drilling along most U.S. coastal states. 

But with a new president on the way who is expected to be kinder to the kinds of plans Gore and Pickens are proposing, which man do you think has the right plan for increasing renewables in the United States and reducing our oil consumption?

Millions of people around the world are set to turn off lights and electrical appliances at 8 p.m. local time on Saturday, March 29, to highlight the problem of global warming.

Landmarks from the Sydney Opera House to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco  plan to turn off their lights for the event, pioneered by Australia last year.

Organisers of “Earth Hour” say the idea is to make people aware of the links between global warming and electricity, which is usually generated by burning fossil fuels such as coal and oil which emit greenhouse gases. They say 24 large cities around the world are taking part.  Last year 2.2 million Sydney residents switched off the lights.

I suppose that if you were in space and it went to plan, you might see successive bands of the earth dim slightly on the stoke of 8 p.m. — a bit like a slow Mexican wave in a soccer stadium.

Then again the dimming will probably be hard to spot: street lamps and other lights needed to discourage a one-hour bonanza for burglars or muggers will stay on.

Is this is a great idea or just a gimmick?

Have past initiatives to raise public awareness of the way individuals can help fight climate change, such as the Live Earth concerts organised by former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore in July last year, had a lasting effect?

Will you be turning off your lights?