Obama’s Bold Move

Thank you to Richard Levangie for providing us with this encouraging editorial.

His blog is One Blue Marble
http://www.one-blue-marble.com

With one bold stroke, President Barack Obama has changed the dynamic between Canada and the U.S. and rendered the federal budget obsolete before it was even tabled. Our politicians in Canada haven’t being paying attention.

How do I know? Easy. On the day that Obama was sworn into office, Environment Minister Jim Prentice said that his government will work closely with the new administration, adding that Obama’s environmental principles are “virtually identical” to those of the Conservatives.

January’s federal budget showed Prentice’s words were empty rhetoric. The Conservative budget was neither groundbreaking nor farsighted, and it wasn’t layered with programs to hasten a Green Revolution in Canada. We’ve already lost. We’ll become poor relations, unable to compete on the same world stage as the Americans.

Now, everyone knows the first part. The US Congress has unveiled a $900 billion stimulus program that will invest heavily in infrastructure and job creation and hasten the American transition to a low-carbon economy. Obama has pledged $11 billion to modernize the electrical grid, $8 billion to boost renewable energy, and more than $18 billion for energy-efficiency retrofits and home weatherization packages.

If you’re an environmentalist, those numbers made you happy, but you probably weren’t dancing in the streets.

And then Obama’s team dropped a bomb, the quiet provision that changes everything. 

The back story is important. About a month ago, Obama’s man — California Rep. Henry Waxman— waged a divisive battle with Michigan Rep. John Dingell for control of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee. The contrasts between the two men are remarkable. Dingell is a champion of big business, the Big Three, and laissez-faire politics, while Waxman has fought hard for cleaner air and water, and corporate responsibility.

Waxman unexpectedly prevailed, ousting the man who had held the chairmanship for the better part of a generation. And two week ago, the California Democrat added a provision to the stimulus package: Any state accessing these federal funds is required to “decouple” utility profits from sales. That means utilities have the potential to make more money by  reducing their customers’ electricity demands — more than they can by promoting consumption.

As a result, California-style energy programs will sweep across the United States, and electrical utilities will be investing hundreds of billions to bring energy efficiency to their customers. Coal might be a cheap, but energy efficiency is cheaper still. In California, demand for electricity has remained steady for three decades. In the rest of the U.S., it’s grown by 60 percent.

A wave of clean tech investment will transform how Americans use energy. Millions of homes from Maine to New Mexico will be insulated, and smart meters will be installed throughout the country.

Smart meters are revolutionary devices that control home energy use; they actually communicate with utilities and enable customers to use energy when rates are lowest, so they can run energy-hungry appliances like dishwashers, and clothes dryers when demand on the grid is low and rates are cheap. Smart meters can reduce power bills substantially, and American utilities will now pay to install them because they, too, can make money. Plans for new power plants will be mothballed, leaving even more money for the energy-efficiency war chest to promote clean technologies like super-efficient co-generation plants.

That Obama is acting so decisively, in his first days in office, caught many analysts by surprise, and it means that he’ll act with similar urgency to cut carbon emissions. His Energy Secretary, Nobel-prize winning scientist Steven Chu, is frightened by the pace of global warming, telling that The Los Angeles Times “We’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California.” So utilities know they must cut carbon and turn to renewable and sustainable energy sources.

Click here to read the Climate Progress story on Chu’s remarks.

Smart meters will make it easier for utilities to smooth demand, so utilities will also throw their considerable weight behind electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) that can run for 50 miles or more solely on electricity. These cars and trucks are already in the last stages of testing and will be on the market by 2010. America’s clean transportation industry will become a juggernaut.

Battery-powered vehicles will be crucial to American utilities because they can work as mobile energy storage centers that regulate supply. Millions of these cars and trucks will eventually work in tandem with power companies, providing energy to the grid when demand is high, and recharging overnight when power generators have excess capacity, but nowhere to put it. Since electricity supply from renewable sources fluctuates by its very nature, PHEVs and EVs will make it easier to plug those power sources into the grid, ushering in a era of clean energy. Most Americans will jump at the chance to cut their annual gas bill by 80 percent. Money that once went to OPEC — and Canada — will now stay in the US.

The noise you hear is Alberta’s Tar Sands dreams deflating. With this one provision, Obama has signaled that he doesn’t want dirty energy to power America’s future. 

I don’t expect Harper to understand. He’s a 19th-century politician in a 21st-century world. His political fortunes are tied to Alberta, and he will fight tooth and nail to lock us into a fossil-fuel economy.

The Conservative budget didn’t decouple utility sales, didn’t support wind and wave energy development in Atlantic Canada and BC, didn’t provide incentives to green Ontario’s transportation industry, and just threw lunch money at energy efficiency. 

Certainly, our children will pay for our shortsightedness. But we’re going to pay, too.