Green Money = Green Jobs = Green Future

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The United States should pass a comprehensive energy plan to ensure the number of jobs in environmental fields, such as renewable energy and cutting air pollution, will keep rising as they did in the decade to 2007, a Pew report said on Wednesday.

U.S. clean economy jobs grew at rate of 9.1 percent from 1998 to 2007 to 770,385, faster than overall jobs during the decade, said the Pew Charitable Trusts study, which aims to set a baseline to judge how well public policies and investments foster green jobs in the future. In contrast, the traditional energy economy of oil, natural gas, and coal employed about 1.2 million workers in 2007.

"We do believe our report points to trends that show a very promising future for the clean energy economy," Lori Grange, an expert on state policies at the Pew Charitable Trusts, told reporters in a teleconference.

"This sector is poised for explosive growth."

President Barack Obama has said he wants to create millions of "green collar" jobs.

In order to create that work force, more and wider policies are needed, according to the report.

WIDER PLAN

"The (U.S. stimulus bill) has made important investments in spurring economic recovery and protecting the environment," said Phyllis Cuttino, the director of the U.S. global warming campaign at the Pew environment group.

Despite the recession, innovation in the clean economy should continue to rise due to venture capital investments, the cost of fossil fuels, and state and federal policies such as the stimulus bill, the report said.

"But it has to be paired with additional federal policies that support and speed the transition to a clean energy economy. To do so, Congress and the Obama administration must work together to pass comprehensive global warming and energy legislation," Cuttino said.

Obama's stimulus bill included more than $60 billion for clean energy, including $11 billion to modernize the power grid to move energy from renewable energy projects to the cities and $2 billion in grants to develop better batteries for cars.

Obama also supports a comprehensive federal energy plan that would launch a "cap and trade" market on greenhouse gases and national mandates that would force power companies to generate a portion of their electricity from renewable sources such as wind and solar power. An energy bill that would create such a market and mandates is working its way through the House of Representatives, but its future in the Senate is uncertain.

The report showed that states that were early leaders in forming so-called "renewable portfolio standards" that require generation from renewables have also been some of the best in drawing green jobs.

California led the country in the number of clean economy jobs in 2007 with more than 125,000 workers. Texas had nearly 56,000 such workers that year and Pennsylvania had nearly 39,000.

(Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

The Pot Calling the Kettle Black

BEIJING (Reuters) - China must press ahead with new ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions for the world to have hope of containing global warming, a U.S. energy official said, urging cooperation to end distrust between the two biggest emitters.

David Sandalow, U.S. Assistant Secretary for Energy, made the remarks in Beijing, where he and Washington's top climate change policy envoy, Todd Stern, have been seeking to narrow differences with China over a new global treaty to fight global warming.

"In recent years, China has taken significant steps to improve its energy efficiency and reduce its emissions," Sandalow said in speech on Tuesday issued to reporters through the U.S. embassy.

"China deserves significant credit for these actions...Yet China can and will need to do much more if the world is going to have any hope of containing climate change," he said.

Defining what that "more" should be is a crucial issue for negotiators seeking to settle the new global warming pact in Copenhagen in December. Sandalow's speech gave no suggestion that these latest talks have overcome major differences.

China is the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases from vehicles, industry and agriculture, having outpaced the United States, scientists believe. Between them the two nations pump out about 40 percent of the carbon dioxide from fossil fuels that is the main greenhouse gas from human activity.

But Beijing says global warming has become such a threat through the emissions of developed countries, and developing economies must not be distracted from growing and, for some time, should not accept a ceiling on their greenhouse gas output.

Yet if China continues its emissions growth at current "business as usual" rates, global temperatures are likely to eventually rise an extremely dangerous 2.7 degrees Celsius, even if all other nations somehow cut their emissions by 80 percent by 2050, said Sandalow.

The escape from this impasse lies in new energy-saving policies and technology and sources of clean power, he said.

"China has abundant opportunities to cut emissions by improving energy efficiency and promoting low-carbon economic growth," said Sandalow.

The Obama administration has promoted clean energy cooperation with China, and a bill before the Congress aims to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.

But China has demanded rich countries make much bigger cuts, and said they should commit up to one percent of their annual economic worth to helping the developing world fight global warming.

(Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

Nerd Alert: Steven Chu

WASHINGTON (Reuters) Even though he is 15th in the line of succession to the U.S. presidency, Energy Secretary Steven Chu still thinks he's a nerd. And some in Washington wouldn't argue with his assessment.

While many of President Barack Obama's cabinet secretaries zoom around the nation's capital in black sedans, Chu will occasionally pull into Energy Department headquarters on his bike, with his security detail peddling close behind.

In his commencement address at Harvard University on Thursday, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist admitted he may not be as exciting as previous speakers like Microsoft founder Bill Gates and "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling.

"Today, you have me. I am not a billionaire, but at least I am a nerd," Chu said at the beginning of his speech.

Chu went on to talk about the threat of climate change and ended his talk with a line that could have been conjured up by an obsessed adult "Star Trek" fan.

"May you prosper and help save our planet," Chu said.

While not the exact works so often spoken by Mr. Spock, it was close enough.

(Reporting by Tom Doggett; Editing by Christian Wiessner)

Smart Grid is Generating Buzz

The "smart grid" has become the buzz of the electric power industry, at the White House and among members of Congress. President Barack Obama says it's essential to boost development of wind and solar power, get people to use less energy and to tackle climate change.

Smart grids will allow for home thermostats and appliances that adjust automatically depending on the cost of power, a water heater may get juice from a neighbor's rooftop solar panel and on a hot day a plug-in hybrid electric car charges one minute and the next sends electricity back to the grid to help head off a brownout

Utilities will get instant feedback on a transformer outage, shift easily among energy sources, integrating wind and solar energy with electricity from coal-burning power plants, and go into homes and businesses to automatically adjust power use based on prearranged agreements.

"It's the marriage of information technology and automation technology with the existing electricity network. This is the energy Internet," said Bob Gilligan, vice president for transmission at GE Energy, which is aggressively pursuing smart grid development. "There are going to be applications 10 years from now that you and I have no idea that we're going to want or need or think are essential to our lives."

The grid is already being tested around the country.

On the University of Colorado campus in Boulder, the chancellor's home has been turned into a smart grid show-house as part of a citywide $100 million demonstration project spearheaded by Xcel Energy. The home has a laptop-controlled electricity management system that integrates a rooftop solar panel with grid-supplied power and tracks energy use as well as equipment to charge a plug-in hybrid electric car.

Florida Power & Light is planning to provide “smart meters” covering 1 million homes and businesses in the Miami area over the next two years in a $200 million project. Smart meters are being distributed by utilities from California to Delaware's Delmarva Peninsula.

Center Point Energy, which serves 2.2 million customers in the metropolitan Houston area, expects to spend $1 billion over the next five years on smart grid. Residential customers are seeing an additional $3.24 a month on their electric bills, but Center Point says that should be more than offset by energy savings.

An Energy Department study projects energy savings of 5 percent to 15 percent from smart grid. The cost and payback have some state regulators worried.

"We need to demonstrate to folks that there's a benefit here before we ask them to pay for this stuff," says Frederick Butler, chairman of New Jersey's utility commission and president of NARUC, the national group that represents these state agencies.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu, said the current grid stands in the way of increasing the use of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar that "will need a system that can dispatch power here, there and everywhere on a very quick basis."

Right now the cost is going to heavily outweigh the benefits of the smart grid with an estimated 75 billion dollar price tag. Yes, energy being reused from multiple sources rather than just one is better for the environment, but the added cost to build such an infrastructure and upgrade people’s homes might be too high right now with the benefits not coming until much later. Small steps and changes will surely be the best way to implement these new technologies and help offset the cost.

This will be one of our greatest assets in the future as we implement more and more diverse sources of energy and energy production. Just as farmers are producing electricity for their farms and community through methane production from the waste of their animals and are sending the excess energy back to the local grid, one day every individual home owner may be able to contribute to the grid with the excess energy produced via solar panels on their homes.

A power system that has the people contributing to it will bring down costs and reliance on a single source for power. Large scale power outages will be reduced, and as more and more renewable energy is contributed to the grid, the need for fossil fuel-based energy will decline, and in turn will reduce our carbon footprint and our impact on the environment. The sun and wind are our friends!

Check out this interactive map of a smart grid for a better understanding of the system!