274 000 More Jobs with 25% Clean Energy Mandate

A national mandate requiring utilities to generate 25% of power from sources such as wind and solar energy by 2025 will create three times more jobs than the weaker measures US Congress is considering, a study released in Washington last week by renewable energy advocates, while IPO fever is gripping greentech, with rumours circulating that Amryis, the company that made synthetic biology a household word, could be next.

Ayesha Rascoe for Reuters World Environment News ( 5 February 2010):

WASHINGTON – A national mandate requiring utilities to generate 25 percent of power from sources such as wind and solar energy by 2025 will create three times more jobs than weaker measures Congress is considering, a study released by renewable energy advocates said in Washington last week.

RES-Alliance for Jobs, a coalition of green power businesses and trade groups, is using the new study to promote the benefits of a high federal renewable electricity mandate.

“A strong renewable electricity standard is crucial to create a stable investment environment and grow this highly promising sector,” said Don Furman, senior vice president for development, transmission, and policy at wind energy company Iberdrola Renewables.

“Without a strong RES, the US wind industry will see no net job growth, and will likely lose jobs to overseas competitors,” Furman added.

Clean energy backers have been lobbying Congress to adopt a higher national renewable mandate than the measures lawmakers are considering, but they face opposition from lawmakers concerned about raising energy prices during a recession.

The study commissioned by the alliance found the industry would create 274,000 more jobs under a 25 percent renewable power standard than it would create without a mandate.

Such a standard would add three times more jobs than would be gained under a House approved renewable power target and a similar measure that’s pending in the Senate, the study found.

The House passed a bill last year that would require at least 15 percent of electricity generated by utilities to come from renewable sources by 2020.

A mandate approved by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee would also set a 15 percent renewable power target, but states could meet up to a quarter of the mandate through energy efficiency measures.

Lawmakers from regions without a great deal of solar and wind resources have argued against imposing a stringent renewable electricity standard, saying their constituents would be penalized with more expensive power bills.

To counter this opposition, the alliance pointed to the study’s findings that every state would gain more jobs from a higher renewable standard. The Southeast, which is heavily reliant on coal, would benefit from thousands of new jobs in the biomass industries, the study said.

Source: www.planetark.org

Michael Kanellos for GreenTech Media (5 February 2010):

Will Amyris Be Next to File for an IPO?

IPO fever is gripping greentech, and rumors are circulating that Amryis, the company that made synthetic biology a household word, could be one of the next to file.

The company, which spun out of research conducted at UC Berkeley, could file the necessary documents for an IPO in the second quarter, according to sources. So far, Amyris has raised around $165 million. Codexis, which makes enzymes for fuel production, filed its S-1, the prelude to an IPO, in December and Mascoma, which wants to make cellulosic ethanol, has been trying to raise a few hundred million from the private equity markets to pay for a plant.

Amyris specializes in concocting microbes that feed on sugars and secrete made-to-order hydrocarbon molecules that can be converted into jet fuel, industrial chemicals or biodiesel. In nature, yeast ordinarily eat sugar and produce alcohol. (Fine wine is what happens when microbes go to the bathroom, but don’t expect a sommelier to tell you that.) Developing a genome so that yeast secrete hydrocarbons instead of beer or wine is Amyris’ secret sauce.

Amyris, potentially, will be able to biodiesel that it can sell for $2 a barrel at wholesale, CEO John Melo told us in late 2008.

The first product out of the company was an artificial version of artemisinin, an antimalaria drug that drew millions in support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The metabolic pathway for developing fuel is different, but similar to the one for making artemisinin.

“Some people refer to it (synthetic biology) as metabolic engineering on steroids,” Jack Newman, one of Amyris’ founders, told us earlier. “There are a few things we have adopted from plants. Plants are great for making hydrocarbons.”

Although we spoke to Melo and Newman earlier, we didn’t talk to either of them for this story.

If anything, the company has been notably active lately. In December, it paid $82 million to Brazil’s São Martinho Group for a 40 percent stake in an ethanol mill project that the parties hope will be operational by 2011 or 2012. The Brazilian company already controls three ethanol plants that make about 600 million liters (158 million gallons) of ethanol per year.

Five days later, it entered into letter of intent agreements with three other Brazilian companies-Acucar Guarani, Bunge Limited and Cosan-to produce ethanol and high value chemicals. Later in that month, it hired a chief commercial officer (Peter Boynton) and a COO (Mario Portela).

The company is also working with the state of Alabama to build sugarcane plantations and yeast-powered fuel refineries in that state. Amyris does not want to license its technology. Instead, it wants to produce fuel itself with industrial partners and sell it, initially to large fleet buyers.

If Amyris does file for an IPO, and Codexis follows through a public offering, it will mark a notable moment in biofuels. Investors have plunked hundreds of millions into cellulosic ethanol and biodiesel companies in the last five years. So far, though, only a few of these companies have produced much fuel and no one really is producing large, commercial volumes. Successful IPOs could jumpstart the market by giving these two companies the needed capital to build factories. The U.S. is also woefully behind in meeting its own biofuel mandates so expect some support and encouragement from the government too.

Then again, the road to fuel nirvana has been paved with delays. Back in 2008, Melo said he hoped the company would be able to produce 200 million gallons or so out of its first Brazilian plant. Hey, wait. 2010 is now.

Amyris has said that the company could produce 600 to 800 gallons of fuel per acre. That’s far better than corn ethanol and somewhat on par with sugarcane ethanol. However, it is lower than what cellulosic ethanol and algae growers say they will get. Some algae companies claim they will get 5,000 gallons per acre per year.

Source: www.greentechmedia.com

With Great Social & Economic Change Expect Periodic Backlashes

The so-called climate gate scandal has reignited opposition to the low-carbon economy, and it is time business leaders fought back, says editor of the BusinessGreen James Murray. Environmentalism and the transition to a low-carbon, sustainable economy will inevitably face occasional backlashes that challenge both the conventional thinking on climate change science and the policy proposals for tackling global warming.

James Murray, Editor of Business Green, UK (2 February 2010):

The backlash is upon us.

In many ways it was to be expected. On their own, the failure of the Copenhagen Summit to deliver on expectations; the undoubtedly orchestrated campaign to discredit climate scientists working at the University of East Anglia and contributions to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) would have proved damaging. Taken together they are manna from heaven for the climate sceptics and those with vested interests who are attempting to block the transition to a low-carbon economy.

More generally, a backlash has been inevitable for some time. Any movement demanding great social and economic change faces periodic backlashes. Feminism has been locked in a two-steps-forward-one-step-back cycle of progress and backlash for decades, while the civil rights movement has sadly got well used to the periodic re-emergence of ugly and occasionally violent challenges to its demands for equality.

Environmentalism and the transition to a low-carbon and sustainable economy is no different. It will inevitably face occasional backlashes that will challenge both the conventional thinking on climate change science and the policy proposals for tackling global warming.

It is hard to appreciate it right now – when every story about the so-called “climategate emails” prompts screeds of irrational “told you so” taunting from people who still cannot tell the difference between neither one-off data points and underlying climatic trends, one flawed report and a canon of work, nor the essential difference between conspiracy and cock-up – but backlashes can bring numerous benefits. They make advocates of progressive change constantly test their arguments against the real world and the latest available evidence, while also helping to eradicate any flabby thinking and lax standards that may have crept in – something the IPCC evidently needs if its ludicrous claim that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035 is anything to go by.

However, these benefits can only be realised if the backlash is resisted, and with many media outlets taking sceptics’ warped interpretations of the climategate affair at face value and surveys consistently showing that climate change is slipping down the public and political agenda, that is not guaranteed. Which begs the question: how do business leaders who remain convinced that urgent action if needed to tackle climate change resist the backlash and keep their low-carbon strategies on track?

Again, there is much to be learned from previous social revolutions. The golden rule of challenging a backlash is to return to the fundamental issues that originally inspired action – to get back to brass tacks.

This tactic is deployed time and again by equality campaigners who respond to opposition from those seeking to perpetuate gender or race inequality by pointing out the continuing differentials in salary and other economic indicators that are imposed upon different groups. It is such a well-worn argument because it is unanswerable. Backlashes against efforts to tackle inequality tend to wear themselves out on the implacable crux of the problem: namely that entirely unjustified discrimination and inequality still exist.

The same tactic can and should be being deployed by an environmental and green business movement that to date has been thoroughly outmanoeuvred in the fight for public opinion. Not least because the fundamental issues that have driven the low-carbon economy thus far are uncontestable and far more compelling than any cooked-up scandal over a few misplaced weather stations.

This is what we know.

Global average temperatures vary from year to year and decade to decade, but they have been on an upwards trajectory for decades. This is an observable reality. You can see it in temperature records and if you don’t trust them, you can see it with your own eyes in the forms of now and then photographs of retreating glaciers. We also know that if temperatures continue to rise unchecked, it will have a catastrophic effect on biodiversity, weather systems, sea levels and the global economy.

On top of this, we know that greenhouse gases trap heat. Again, this is an observable reality – if you have some baking soda, a couple of plastic bottles and a thermometer, you can do the experiment yourself. There has not been a single peer-reviewed scientific paper in recent history that challenges the underlying hypothesis that the increase in greenhouse gas emissions resulting from man’s activity is far and away the most likely cause of rising global temperatures.

The contrived scandal over the climategate emails and the IPCC’s inclusion of a number of exaggerated predictions in its last report does absolutely nothing to challenge these realities. The area where there is genuine debate among climate scientists is at the fringes of our understanding. It deals with questions involving how fast temperatures will rise; what effect they will have; how natural cycles in warming and cooling, such as the one we have experienced over the past decade, will accelerate or slow the underlying increases in temperature; and how carbon sinks will be affected. That scientists admit they do not know the answers to these questions should make us more concerned about pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, not less.

None of this will convince your average climate sceptic, who can come up with a cavalcade of nonsense to try to undermine each of the points above, while singularly ignoring the inconvenient reality that the simple balance of risk makes urgent action to curb carbon emissions highly desirable.

However, the backlash against the low-carbon economy has been far quieter in challenging the numerous other benefits it will bring. The fundamental point that a low-carbon economy will bolster energy security, reduce air pollution and associated health costs, insulate countries against the rising price of oil and natural resources, and create jobs, goes largely unchallenged by those opposing the low-carbon economy on the simple grounds that the case is unanswerable.

As president Obama observed in his State of the Union address: “I know that there are those who disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change. But here’s the thing: even if you doubt the evidence, providing incentives for energy efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy.”

It is far easier for opponents of sustainable developments to fixate on leaked emails taken out of context or rare errors from climate scientists working to try to better understand the world in which we live, than it is to address the fundamental realities of risk and reward that are driving the emergence of the low-carbon economy. And it is these underlying facts that will eventually defeat the current backlash.

BusinessGreen.com is the first publication in the UK that is dedicated to green business information. It  provides companies with information on how to plan and undertake successful green initiatives that both cut costs and enhance the brand values of their organisations.

Source: www.businessgreen.com

No.13 …….Lucky Last

We have taken note of some readers’ wishes at least.  We have decided to slightly reduce the size of Express and will now attempt to restrict ourselves to 13 items/articles an issue. It is difficult because there is so much good material out there. So for the Lucky Last feature this week we draw on some sensible words from a politician past – former Coalition Leader John Hewson. He appeared on Sky News the other day and here’s a report from  the ABC, showing that party politics is not all it is cracked up to be. He also criticises the media for focusing on the colour of the political debate rather than the substance of the science. He has publicly put the proposition that “in a true carbon economy, where everyone understands their carbon footprint and is working to reduce it, and where the government’s target is something realistic like a 40% reduction by 2020 towards a 90% reduction by 2050, the introduction of a relatively ‘pure’ market based ETS will be substantially positive in terms of growth and employment”. Read More

By Online political correspondent Emma Rodgers

Former Liberal leader John Hewson has taken aim at Opposition Leader Tony Abbott’s climate change policy, accusing him of using fear to win over voters.

In an opinion piece for the ABC’s The Drum which denounces both sides of politics for “squibbing” action on climate change, Dr Hewson has also criticised the media for focusing on the colour of the political debate rather than the substance of the science.

Dr Hewson has urged both Mr Abbott and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to show leadership on the issue instead of “wallowing in the colour and movement of grossly irresponsible politicking”.

“I am particularly disturbed by the way our current ‘debate’ on the challenge of climate change is unfolding,” he writes.

Dr Hewson’s comments come as today’s Nielsen poll in the Fairfax media shows voters prefer the Coalition’s policy over Mr Rudd’s emissions trading scheme.

Recalling having been “done slowly” by former prime minister Paul Keating over his doomed attempt to bring in a GST before the 1993 election, Dr Hewson says Mr Abbott’s strategy could work because it will gain media attention.

“The media fascination back in 1993 was in the colour and movement of my slow death,” he writes.

“To be clear, Abbott’s response is mostly political.

“While there is merit in soil carbon, tree planting, solar, etc, if they were to be well developed policies , as part of a more broad-based overall response, his strategy is the belief that you can frighten and fool most of the people, all of the time.”

In selling his policy to the public Mr Abbott has used the line Mr Keating employed in his campaign against the GST in which he told voters: “if you don’t understand it don’t vote for it”.

Dr Hewson says Mr Rudd has failed to counter Mr Abbott’s “scare campaign” with an adequate explanation of how the emissions trading scheme will work.

“Rudd has the resources of Government,” he writes.

“He should be able to expose a political fear campaign for what it is.”

The Government has the option of a double dissolution election on climate change, with its ETS legislation already having been defeated twice in Parliament.

But it has re-introduced the bills into Parliament and debate will continue today over the scheme, which puts a price on carbon and charges companies to pollute.

Mr Abbott’s alternative policy involves spending $10 billion over 10 years to encourage business and farmers to use direct action measures to reduce emissions.

Source: www.abc.net.au

Former Liberal leader John Hewson was also talking on Sky News the other day, confirming his genuine belief that climate change was very real and we can – and must – do something to deal with it. He has some strong views on how this country can deal with emissions on a much higher level than the Labor Government has even considered. Here’s what he wrote a year ago on Open Forum:

In my professorial days I used to tease my students, in an attempt to encourage them to think for themselves, to think beyond the text books, by asking them what particular conclusion they wanted to reach on some economic policy issue, and them claiming that I could build an economic/mathematical model to “prove” it!

I was particularly keen to ensure that their thinking was not constrained by any particular theoretical or model framework and to get them to understand the limitations of any particular models that they were working with.

In those days students, and their teachers, had become enamored with, if not addicted to, the “precision” or “science” of economics, and there was a danger that these “models” would become an end in themselves, rather than just a means to an end, simply a means to aid their thought processes. 

It was all too easily forgotten that the discipline of economics is as much an “art” as it is a “science”, and we are hoping to develop a “society”, and not just an “economy”.

Against this sort of background, I am of course disappointed by the recent climate change debate, and in particular the discussion about the likely consequences of a sensible and responsible set of targets for emissions reductions by 2020/2050, and the introduction of an emissions trading scheme.

Today, almost everybody has their own economic model which they claim “proves”, or at least “shows”, the mostly negative effects of an ETS etc. But all they have really done is prove my point that you can build a model to substantiate your conclusions, to show what you want to argue. They still have to demonstrate that such conclusions are sensible, reasonable and responsible.

They all mostly start with the assumption (and a model’s outcome is always predetermined by the assumptions, provided of course that the model is internally consistent) that the introduction of an ETS, which if effective simply puts a market price on carbon, must have a negative effect on economic growth and employment, the key point of their exercise simply being to demonstrate just how much negative.

However, there is absolutely no reason why we should start with a negative assumption. And in saying this, it is most important to recognize that it is really beyond the capacity of Treasury-type economic models to properly capture the effects of the development of significant new industries in this context.

I don’t have the time or space to demonstrate by way of a new model, but let me develop the argument by way of anecdote and personal business experience.

I start with the proposition that in a true carbon economy, where everyone understands their carbon footprint and is working to reduce it, and where the government’s target is something realistic like a 40% reduction by 2020 towards a 90% reduction by 2050, the introduction of a relatively “pure” market based ETS will be substantially positive in terms of growth and employment. The debate and onus of proof should therefore concentrate on just how positive.

Being involved with the National Business Leaders Forum on Sustainable Development for many years, six years as Chairman, and that Forum having brought the likes of Al Gore to Australia some five years ago in an attempt to stimulate debate on climate matters (alas somewhat ahead of our time), I became frustrated with the paucity of the business interest and skepticism and decided to get involved with a number of New Age climate response industries to satisfy myself of the significant and profitable(in time) business opportunities that would inevitably flow from an appropriate national response to the challenge of climate change.

I was, and in some cases am still, involved with the early development of alternative technologies for the treatment of household waste, energy efficient lightbulbs, biofuels including  the building of the largest biodiesel plant in the world, and green data centres , as well with as a host of proposed new technologies and businesses. I am also presently involved with a large carbon credit trader that is in the process, even in this recessed economy , of hiring some 2000 new staff in relation to its installation of home efficiency packages.

In every case the economic growth and employment consequences were substantial, and my limited experiences are just the tip of the iceberg of what I firmly believe will be a technological revolution, which will lead to a substantially new and significant industrial base to our economy.

The opportunity is there for us to grasp, or lose!

There are interesting parallels with the protection debate of the 80s and early 90s. The “old guard” industries lobbied governments to sustain or increase their tariff and other forms of protection, threatening dire growth, trade and employment consequences if they weren’t listened to.

True, some of these protected industries declined and, in some cases, disappeared, but only to be replaced by new ones, to the extent that our economy went into probably the longest period of sustained growth with historically low unemployment.

The point is that our present industrial structure and lifestyle is unsustainable. The challenge is how we most effectively make the transition to a “carbon economy” and maximize our long tern economic, business and lifestyle opportunities.

We simply must reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, dramatically improve our energy, soil, water and transport efficiencies, reduce our carbon emissions wherever possible, by developing new, more carbon efficient ways of doing things.

In these terms, we can learn much from the protection and other past debates particularly, I believe, about the most effective ways to cushion and facilitate the essential industrial transition with appropriate financial support, re training, etc, where perhaps it wasn’t done as well as it could have been in the past.

We also have a significant opportunity to lead the world in the development of some of these technologies with considerable export possibilities, the most obvious being clean coal technologies- but to refer back to my own experience, we are already doing it with alternative waste technologies.

The transition must be made. Time is of the essence! It’s not an issue where we can hope to play catch up! It’s not an issue that can be fobbed off to someone else’s watch!

Unfortunately, the climate change debate to date does not adequately reflect this inevitability, this urgency. Indeed, it’s dominated by blatant, short term vested interests and political game playing of the worst kind.

We all have an economic, social and a moral responsibility to do better!

Dr John Hewson is an economic and financial expert with experience in academia, business, government, media and the financial system. Dr Hewson’s business career, before entering politics in 1987, was as a company director and business consultant, including a role as Executive Director, Macquarie Bank Limited. Dr Hewson’s political career included seven years as a ministerial advisor and a further eight years as the Member for Wentworth. He was Shadow Finance Minister, Shadow Treasurer, Shadow Minister for Industry and Commerce and Leader of the Liberal Party and Coalition in Opposition for four years. Since leaving politics in 1995 Dr Hewson has run his own investment banking business and was, until December 2004, Member, Advisory Council of ABN AMRO, having previously been Chairman of the bank. He is Chairman to Osteoporosis Australia and KidsXpress. He is also Director of a number of other public and private companies. Dr Hewson also writes a regular opinion column for the Australian Financial Review. In February 2009 he will take on the role of Chairman of the GAP initiated Carbon Economy Taskforce.

Source: www.openforum.com.au