Maryland raised $18 million this week in an auction of rights for power plants to release climate-changing pollution, officials recently announced. The bulk of the proceeds from this week’s auction in New York will finance energy-saving projects and help low-income residents pay their power bills.

The auction of allowances for power plants in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic to emit carbon dioxide yielded a total of $106.5 million for the 10 states participating in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

This was the second auction held this fall. About 31.5 million allowances were sold at a “clearing price” of $3.38 each, an increase over the $3.07 price paid for rights sold in the first auction in September. Maryland received $16 million from the initial auction.

The regional initiative is the first mandatory “cap-and-trade” program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. The participating states have all imposed caps, or ceilings, on carbon dioxide emissions from their power plants.

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Global warming is an issue pertaining to the world, and is as a result of human interferences and activities. It has not only put the world at risk of a complete ‘meltdown’ of the ice at the poles, but also is destroying the very atmosphere which helps us breathe. Car emissions, burning of fossil fuels, volcanic eruptions, forest fires, all contribute to the increasing amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a global catastrophe which the world is trying to cope with. The number of laws set and agreed upon by many a nation, wasn’t signed by USA, the largest polluter in the world, leading to a steady rise in greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) over the past few years. Let’s find out what led to this rapid rise in GHG over the last few years in USA.

Greenhouse gases are atmospheric gases, both natural and anthropogenic, which emit and absorb radiation of the infrared radiation emitted by the sun and reflected by the clouds. This cycle is known as the greenhouse effect. When anthropogenic gases like pollutants are released into the atmosphere, they can trap radiation, resulting in a heating up of the atmosphere. This process causes global warming.

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European Union leaders accorded recently to battle climate change by ordering that a fifth of Europe’s energy mix should come from renewable sources within 12 years.

The agreement, hailed as a “landmark” deal and a come through by politicians and the green lobby alike, came ahead of an all-important EU summit opening in Poland tomorrow at which 27 prime ministers and presidents are alleged to finalize an ambitious package to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2020.

The accord reached yesterday paves the way for a law obliging all EU countries to meet national targets for renewable energy. Two points had threatened to derail the legislation: the insistence that biofuels comprise 10% of transport fuel by 2020, and an endeavor by Italy to loosen the law by ordering a review of progress on renewables in 2014. The review date was retained, but the compulsory target and national quotas also survived.

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Barack Obama, our President-elect, can’t win. Since his energy plan proposes carbon cuts before the technology is in place to achieve the goal, the coal associations are not convinced. Environmentalists are cautious as well and argue that his “clean coal” plan does not add up.

Coal will always be an important energy source. Development and improvement of the tools that are required to make it cleaner is not a contradiction to alternate energy production methods. In reality, long-term energy demands will continually grow, making a diversified fuel mix necessary. All resources must be developed fully. This includes coal, which will be subject to increased pressure now that Washington is under Democratic control.

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Building upon his allegiance to bringing down greenhouse emission and expanding the state’s renewable energy capacity, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed Executive Order S-14-08 (EO) to streamline California’s renewable energy project approval process and increase the state’s Renewable Energy Standard to 33 percent renewable power by 2020.

The Governor also will nominate legislative language that will codify the new higher criteria and call for all utilities, public and private, to meet the 33 percent target and spread implementation costs across all ratepayers with safeguards for low-income customers.

To enforce and track the progress of the EO, the California Energy Commission and the Department of Fish and Game signed a Memorandum of Understanding formalizing a Renewable Energy Action Team (REAT).

To streamline the application process for renewable energy development, the CEC and DFG will produce a “one-stop” permitting process with the goal of reducing the application time for specific projects in half. This will be accomplished through the creation of a special joint streamlining unit that will concurrently review permit applications filed at the state level.

To jump start Natural Communities Conservation Plans under the EO, the REAT will initiate the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan in the priority Mojave and Colorado Desert regions and identify other preferred areas that will benefit from a streamlined permitting and environmental review process.

Also, the CEC, DFG, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management signed a Memorandum of Understanding to establish a coordinated approach with federal partners in the accelerated permitting process. This aligned approach will significantly reduce the time and expense for developing renewable energy on federally-owned California land.

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President-elect Barack Obama’s 30-point energy agenda asks for prominent changes to address carbon emissions, fuel efficiency, renewable power and efficiency.

If Obama acts out the energy plan he laid out during his campaign, American taxpayers will each get a $500 discount check — funded by a windfall profits taxes on big oil companies.

In addition to taxing oil giants more, Senator Obama’s detailed 30-point energy agenda demands big changes to address carbon emissions, fuel efficiency for vehicles, and domestic and renewable power and efficiency.

While many candidates’ platform assures are cast away when political opposition looms, the Obama energy plan seems constitutional to his promise to get the economy restarted, some experts say.

Some of the highlights of Obama’s energy plan includes:

·         Putting 1 million plug-in-electric hybrid vehicles (PHEVs) on the road by 2015 — cars that can get the equivalent of 150 miles per gallon.

·         Creating 5 million new green jobs by investing $150 billion over 10 years to stimulate clean-energy infrastructure and manufacturing such as wind-turbine plants and solar panels carpeting the nation’s rooftops.

·         Cutting US oil consumption, within 10 years, by the amount currently imported from the Middle East and Venezuela combined.

·         Requiring 10 percent of the nation’s electricity to come from renewable energy sources like wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass by 2012. By 2025, raise that to 25 percent.

·         Establishing an economy-wide cap-and-trade program that cuts US greenhouse gas emissions by charging for every ton of carbon dioxide that goes into the sky from coal- and natural gas-fired US power plants.

Can Obama do all that and more — or will governmental and economical obstructions ultimately turn the plan into a much more humble effort? How much was campaign window dressing, and how much energy shift will the US undergo?

Some components of Obama ’s energy plan are costly, but also vital to the rest of the plan. For instance, sales of pollution permits from the cap-and-trade program to limit CO2 emissions across the economy are key to helping fund the plan’s $15 billion per year (for 10 years) expenditure on renewable energy research and development.

But some say rising electric rates — the result of costs involved with greenhouse-gas emissions — could stir political opposition and derail implementation, especially given the economic depression.

While no one has recalculated the cost-benefit for Obama’s official energy plan, some earlier calculations for similar — albeit rosy — plans suggest that the net effect would still be an addition for green jobs and the economy.

The Apollo Alliance, a labor-environmental alignment, has put forward a proposition that contains proposals similar to those in the Obama plan. The alliance calls for a federal investment in clean-energy technology and green building that’s twice as large ($300 billion) as Obama’s. Their analysis calculates more than $1.4 trillion in savings and economic growth.

The pedigree of Obama’s plan also suggests that it is more, not less, likely to be implemented.

Much of the Obama plan accompanies the National Commission on Energy Policy’s (NCEP) 2004 plan, a consensus document in which — as in the SAFC plan — energy-security hawks joined environmentalists and industry. In fact, NCEP director and plan coauthor Jason Grumet is a likely candidate for an energy post in the new administration.

Besides the advantage of having been pre-vetted by energy, foreign policy, and industry experts, the plan also has something of an authorization. Obama often touted the need for a new energy equation during the campaign. Renewable-energy tax credits were blocked regularly in the US Senate this year. So an Obama mandate could help win over a Senate in which Democrats are now just three votes short of a filibuster-proof majority — with three races still in contention.

One of the fastest ways to lower energy costs is efficiency. Obama’s energy plan touts tougher efficiency standards and decries the Bush administration for missing 34 deadlines for improving energy-efficiency requirements for appliances and electrical equipment.

During its term of office, the Bush White House enacted just two new energy-efficiency standards, one for electrical transformers and one for home furnaces, both of which were considered too weak and are now being challenged in court by states and environmental groups.

If all 25 Obama-proposed energy-efficiency standards were acquired, they could economize the yearly equivalent of all the power produced by 57 large power plants.

An early test of the new administration — and its willingness to risk industry displeasure — will come in June. That’s when a new rule on commercial lighting — to improve the efficiency of those ubiquitous four-foot-long fluorescent tubes used in office buildings nationwide — comes up for final approval.

It’s a big deal. If the Department of Energy enacts a tough rule, it could have one of the most significant energy-efficiency impacts in US history, saving the equivalent of $66 billion in power costs over the next 30 years. That’s enough to power every home in the US for one year.

A strong rule could mean that the US could essentially replace 15 large power plants with the energy savings and slash carbon dioxide emissions by 950 million tons. The Bush administration could still propose a weaker rule in its waning days.

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