Barack in the Buckeye State

Dem presidential candidate talks up energy plan in Ohio

Posted by Kate Sheppard at 12:06 PM on 13 Jul 2008

Barack Obama gave a speech on energy policy in Dayton, Ohio on Friday, and used the opportunity to rip on rival John McCain. He knocked the candidate's calls for offshore drilling and a "gas-tax holiday," and accused him of being part of the problem in Washington.

"A few days ago, Senator McCain said our dangerous dependence on foreign oil has been 30 years in the making, and was caused by the failure of politicians in Washington to think long-term about the future of the country," said Obama. "The only problem is that out of those 30 years, Senator McCain was in Washington for 26."

Rather than open up new areas to drilling, Obama called for policies to force oil companies to drill on the 68 million acres of land and offshore areas that are already available and increased investment in technology to extract more oil from existing fields.

But he emphasized the need to move away from oil. "We have to remember that these domestic resources are finite," said Obama. "Even if you opened up every square inch of our land and our coasts to drilling, America still has only 3 percent of the world's oil reserves."

Instead, he called for a $50 billion stimulus package that would issue energy rebate checks to taxpayers, as well as a $1,000 middle-class tax cut to help cover rising energy prices. He also restated the components of the energy plan he released last fall, which called for a $150 billion investment in a clean energy fund, plans to double fuel mileage standards by 2030, and the creation of a venture capital fund to provide $50 billion over five years to support clean energy technologies. He included a $1 billion-a-year set-aside to modernize factories and automobile manufactures create more efficient vehicles.

He called for standards that draw 25 percent of the nation's electricity from renewable sources by 2025, upping the production of two billion gallons of cellulosic biofuels by 2013, and investment in clean coal and nuclear safety and storage. He pledged to make businesses and government 50 percent more efficient by 2030.

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But what about the tide?

"He called for standards that draw 25 percent of the nation's electricity from renewable sources by 2025, upping the production of two billion gallons of cellulosic biofuels by 2013"

But did he order the tide to go out?

Assuming that people are willing to pay more for cellulosic (since no one has yet figured out how to make it competitive with oil) and assuming that we're willing to keep mining the soil to remove all that biomass for conversion to alcohol, Obama's 2 x 10^9 gallons a year works out to about 98,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day.

Assuming a miraculous decline from our current 21Mbbl/day usage to only 20Mbbl/day, that's a full 0.5% of our liquid fuels. Boy, that'll sure show 'em.

The 5% Project

by JMG at 12:43 PM on 13 Jul 2008

"that's a full 0.5% of our liquid fuels"

I guess that I missed the part where Obama said that we should stop increasing our cellulose ethanol after 2013.

Now, let me ask you a question.

How would you suggest we fix the problem at hand?

Perhaps bury our heads in the sand?

by Bob Wallace at 2:43 PM on 13 Jul 2008

JMG,

You're right; cellulosic ethanol isn't going to stop global warming by itself. If this were a cornerstone of Obama's policy, it would be complete bullshit.

As one more petty detail, though, it's pretty damn good. A .5% reduction in oil consumption--or even .4%, or whatever it actually turns out to be--is well worth pursuing, as long as it doesn't take more .5% of the resources we've got for conservation as a whole.

Now, if you really want an ecological stick to bludgeon Obama with... He just handed you a pair of big ones. "Clean coal" and "policies to force oil companies to drill on the 68 million acres of land and offshore areas that are already available and increased investment in technology to extract more oil from existing fields"... Can we say, bad, bad politician? No biscuit?

by Pathos at 11:02 PM on 13 Jul 2008

Well, Bob, since you asked

How about carbon taxes and changing "renewable" fuel subsidies so that they only apply to the actual net energy content of the so-called renewable fuels, so that we're not paying to launder fossil fuels into liquid form?

By the way, recently heard that there is a proposed ethanol plant near the Oregon/Idaho border that plans to use imported coal to convert imported corn or, possibly, local sugar beets into ethanol. As Yakov Smirnov would say, "What a Country!" Apparently they don't even have to get an air operating permit because they maintained the old one when the sugar beet processing facility crashed -- thus they have a perfect legal right to essentially create a new coal-fired power plant to harvest subsidies ...

What was that you were saying about burying heads in sand?

The 5% Project

by JMG at 7:27 AM on 14 Jul 2008

Question of the day...

Okay, JMG, you're right about pretty much everything in that post. The plant in question would be making sugar ethanol, which, as much as many of us wanted to believe otherwise, is in fact complete bullshit. It increases deforestation, contributes to the soaring cost of food prices, and provides a negligible reduction in GHG emissions--which can easily become an increase if land is cleared for the purpose.

The question is, would cellulosic ethanol be better? Last I knew, the consensus was that it would actually save energy compared to oil, but the tech wasn't expected to be mature for a few more years. Is that still the case? Is the tech any closer to being viable? Anyone been keeping up?

by Pathos at 10:07 AM on 14 Jul 2008

The rest of the story?

Other aspects of Barack's energy plan, which he apparently highlighted, but which were not stated in the cursory post above, may be more enlightening than the question of whether "cellulosic" works this year or not.

The plan says he would "IMPLEMENT A 100% AUCTION CAP-AND-TRADE PROGRAM TO REDUCE GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS. and, Reduce Carbon Emissions 80 percent by 2050.

Q. Is that better than a carbon tax? maybe not in terms of reaching the entire market of domestic carbon footprints. But maybe it's more feasible politically. My concern is it will continue to reward the current system of centralized energy production (utilities holding all the cards) and may not spur the necessary shift to distributed renewable energy production (consumers win and probably more stable from a national security standpoint).

The plan itself includes a whole lot of other stuff like:
"Barack Obama will use some of the revenue generated from the cap-and-trade permit auction to invest in climate-friendly energy development and development. This will transform the economy and create millions of new jobs. Obama will invest $150 billion over 10 years to advance the next generation of biofuels and fuel infrastructure, accelerate the commercialization of plug-in hybrids, promote development of commercial scale renewable energy, invest in low emissions coal plants, and begin transition to a new digital electricity grid."

Personally I'd like to see the advanced biofuels research look at algal oil biodiesel rather than fermented alcohol based cellulosic fuels that need to be grown on the same land that we depend on for our food crops. It seems much more economical to culture algae which doubles in mass every 2 days rather than a crop that takes all summer to mature. We could actually treat wastewater with this technology and reduce nutrient loading pollution of our rivers, with this type of approach. I know this R&D is happening now, maybe it will mature in the timescale being contemplated in these plans.

Barack's plan touts "low carbon coal technologies", which evidently involve carbon capture and sequestration (which may require even more coal burning to power the sequestration processes). The problem of mountaintop removal mining and valley fill destruction of rivers and streams, remains a significant obstacle though.

Best in the plan which I like to see is emphasis on reform to encourage bicycle transportation. "Obama will build upon his efforts in the Senate to ensure that more Metropolitan Planning Organizations create policies to incentivize greater bicycle and pedestrian usage of roads and sidewalks, and he will also re-commit federal resources to public mass transportation projects across the country. Building more livable and sustainable communities will not only reduce the amount of time individuals spent commuting, but will also have significant benefits to air quality, public health and reducing greenhouse gas emissions."

Overall it's a fairly comprehensive plan, the 80 percent goal is a good one and it's a far sight better than what our nation has been operating with up to now.

Moving toward sustainability with hopefulness, one revolution at a time.

by 2wheeler at 11:59 AM on 14 Jul 2008

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