Study: Hidden health costs from energy consumption top $120 billion

The National Research Council, an arm of the National Academies of Science, released a report today that attempts to estimate the hidden costs of energy production and the use of coal, oil and other sources, such as the impact of air pollution, on human health.

The estimate: $120 billion in 2005.

And that's just a partial estimate, the council notes. The number "reflects primarily health damages from air pollution associated with electricity generation and motor vehicle transportation," a news release on the study says. "The figure does not include damages from climate change, harm to ecosystems, effects of some air pollutants such as mercury, and risks to national security. ..."

Here's the breakdown:  

"Coal accounts for about half the electricity produced in the U.S.," the release notes. "In 2005 the total annual external damages from sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter created by burning coal at 406 coal-fired power plants, which produce 95 percent of the nation's coal-generated electricity, were about $62 billion."

And then there are all the cars and trucks on the highway spewing pollution from their tailpipes. In 2005, motor vehicles produced $56 billion in damage to human health, the study found.

The committee that wrote the report tried to figure out the hidden costs in terms of climate change impact too, but it ran into lots of problems quantifying an amount for those impacts. Nevertheless, it found that "coal-fired power plants are the single largest source of greenhouse gases in the U.S., emitting on average about a ton of CO2 per megawatt-hour of electricity produced. ...Climate-related monetary damages range from 0.1 cents to 10 cents per kilowatt-hour."

Craig Pittman, Times Staff Writer

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EPA proposes own greenhouse gas limits -- a "warning shot" to Congress

On the same day that two prominent senators unveiled a new, slightly tougher climate-change bill, the Environmental Protection Agency popped out a surprise that lend impetus to the bill's passage.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced plans to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, factories and oil refineries -- a move the Los Angeles Times called "a warning shot to Congress that if it does not move to curb global warming, the Obama administration will act on its own."

Jackson's proposal targets only the largest emitters of greenhouse gases, as identified by the nation's first greenhouse gas reporting system, which the EPA unveiled just last week. The new proposal would require industrial facilities that emit at least 25,000 tons of greenhouse gases a year to obtain construction and operating permits from the agency.

As the LAT notes, that's a departure from the Clean Air Act, which requires regulation of any source that produces more than 250 tons of a pollutant covered under the Act.

Jackson said she was trying to reduce emissions "without placing an undue burden on the businesses that make up the vast majority of our economy. This is a common-sense rule that is carefully tailored to apply to only the largest sources -- those from sectors responsible for nearly 70% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions sources."

Although industry lobbyists questioned whether the regulation would stand up in court, the EPA's action follows a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision that rebuked the Bush Administration for refusing to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.

--Craig Pittman

EPA, DOT unveils new emissions, fuel economy standards for cars, trucks

The Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation at last unveiled the government's tough new emissions and fuel economy standards for cars and trucks today.

"The standards would push corporate average fuel economy, or CAFE, standards to a fleetwide average of 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016, four years ahead of the schedule Congress laid out in a 2007 energy law," the New York Times reports. "The carbon dioxide limit under the plan -- which will apply to passenger cars, light-duty trucks and medium-duty passenger vehicles -- would reach an average of 250 grams per mile per vehicle in 2016."

Notes the Associated Press: "The proposal is expected to increase vehicle fuel efficiency by about 5 percent annually and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 950 million metric tons. The plan would also conserve 1.8 billion barrels of oil."

“American drivers will keep more money in their pockets, put less pollution into the air, and help reduce a dependence on oil that sends billions of dollars out of our economy every year,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson said.

President Obama, speaking at a General Motors plant in Ohio, said the new rules were the result of negotiations among groups that in the past would have had a hard time finding any common ground: "Unlikely allies came together -- automakers, the UAW, environmental advocates, Democrats and Republicans, California and more than a dozen other states -- all of them pledging to set aside the quarrels of the past for the sake of the future."

Jackson told USA Today that the next step would be regulating emissions from power plants and other industrial sources -- although she would still prefer Congress pass a new law taking that step.

--Craig Pittman

Hybrid trucks, not cars, the focus of bill that passed House

"The House on Wednesday passed a bill to encourage research and production of hybrid-powered commercial vehicles," according to Congressional Quarterly. Yep, we're talking trucks here -- panel vans, semis, you name it.

Right now the Energy Department is focused exclusively on development hybrid and electric cars for personal use. It isn't offering any competitive grants for developing hybrid trucks. Heavy-duty trucks typically rely on diesel or gasoline engines for power, and thus "have lower fuel economy and higher emissions than cars or SUVs because of their size and weight," notes CQ.

The bill, which last year passed the House but not the Senate, "would create two phases of the research program for grant recipients, who would be eligible to receive $3 million annually for three years to complete both phases. ... To be eligible, recipients would have to produce trucks with a gross weight between 14,000 and 33,000 pounds."

Craig Pittman, Times Staff Writer

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Electric car charging system expanding in time for launch of Leaf

An Arizona company has vaulted to the front rank of racing to build networks of electric vehicle charge stations in major metropolitan markets before the launch of the Nissan Leaf, the New York Times reports today.

Ecotality secured almost $108 million in federal and state grants this summer, enabling it to deploy its charging stations around San Diego -- one of five designated test regions, which also include Nashville, Phoenix/Tucson, Portland and Seattle. 

The company has a strong motive to move quickly. In 2010 Ecotality is supposed to market 5,000 Nissan Leaf electric vehicles and install 12,750 charge stations in urban areas and at strategic highway locations, the NYT says.

“This is the largest deployment of EV chargers and vehicles ever,” said Colin Read, the firm’s vice president of corporate development. “The success of this program will help dictate the future of EV transportation in the United States.”

If they need an ad for the product, here's a catchy new children's song by They Might Be Giants (from their new CD Here Comes Science) that might fill the bill:

Craig Pittman, Times Staff Writer

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Lobbyists kept clunkiest cars out of 'Cash for Clunkers' program

"Nearly 5 million of the nation's most polluting vehicles were quietly excluded from the popular 'cash for clunkers' program after lobbyists for antique auto parts suppliers and car collectors persuaded the government to shut out cars built before 1984," the Los Angeles Times is reporting.

The exemption was the handiwork of the Specialty Equipment Market Association, which "represents more than 7,000 companies that make all manner of auto-related products, including reproduction Model T tires and AMC Gremlin upholstery. The powerful interest group has won legislative battles nationwide to protect owners of classic cars and hot rods from laws covering vehicle noise, emissions tests and much else," the paper reports.

The exemption hurts any environmental gains by blocking the owners of some of the nation's nastiest clunkers from participating in the program, environmental groups said. And the paper quoted critics who said it doesn't really make sense for car collectors either.

"If I own a 30-year-old Mustang, the value of my car goes up if others get destroyed," said Chris Edwards, an economist for the libertarian Cato Institute. "It is a typical industry loophole that doesn't protect the little guy, but does protect some special interest group."

Craig Pittman, Times Staff Writer

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Smog lowers children's IQ, beginning in the womb, new study says

Air pollution lowers children's IQs, a process that starts even before they're born, according to a new study of New York moms and their babies published today. It marks "have linked air pollution exposure before birth with lower IQ scores in childhood," the Associated Press reports.

"The five-year-old children of city mothers who regularly breathed in car- and truck-polluted air when they were pregnant scored significantly lower on IQ tests than kids with less exposure," the New York Daily News reported.

The study, by the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health at Columbia University, tracked 249 children of New York City women who wore backpack air monitors for 48 hours during the last few months of pregnancy. "The moms lived in mostly low-income neighborhoods in northern Manhattan and the South Bronx," the AP reports. "They had varying levels of exposure to typical kinds of urban air pollution, mostly from car, bus and truck exhaust."

Then, when the kids were 5, they were given IQ tests, and those exposed to the most pollution before birth scored lower than the children with less exposure.

The center has previously done studies suggesting that babies whose moms are exposed to smog while pregnant are more likely to develop asthma, and that the closure of a coal-fired power plant in China helped boost cognitive abilities among children who lived nearby. In short, as center director Frederica P. Perera wrote last year, "Children are likely to suffer most from our fossil fuel addiction."

[AP photo: Smog blankets New York]

--Craig Pittman

China, world's largest CO2 emitter, now pushing ahead on wind, solar, other alt fuels

Last year China's carbon dioxide emissions jumped ahead of the emissions levels from the United States, long the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. China's booming population growth and its embrace of coal and other fossil fuels for power supply seemed to guarantee that those numbers would continue to rise dramatically, even as visibility continued to decline in smog-shrouded Beijing.

But this year, according to today's New York Times, "China is on track to pass the United States as the world’s largest market for wind turbines — after doubling wind power capacity in each of the last four years. State-owned power companies are competing to see which can build solar plants fastest, though these projects are much smaller than the wind projects. And other green energy projects, like burning farm waste to generate electricity, are sprouting up."

It turns out the threat of climate change "is driving Beijing to take a series of initiatives to restrain the country's greenhouse gas emissions by power plants," reports Reuters.

"China is set to raise its wind power capacity to 100 gigawatts (GW) by 2020, eight times its current level and more than Britain's entire current power capacity, as part of a stimulus package aimed at boosting renewable energy," the wire service says.

The Times notes that right now China is building six immense wind power projects, "each with the capacity of more than 16 large coal-fired power plants. Each of the six projects 'totally dwarfs anything else, anywhere else in the world,' said Steve Sawyer, the secretary general of the Global Wind Energy Council, an industry group in Brussels."

[AP photo: Smog in Beijing just before 2008 Olympics]

Craig Pittman, Times Staff Writer

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EPA lets California set own auto emission standards; Florida can't because of Legislature

As expected, the Environmental Protection Agency today approved California's longstanding application to set tougher auto emission standards as a tool for combating climate change, reports the Associated Press.

"The California regulation requires automakers to increase the fuel economy of cars and trucks sold in the state by 40 percent over the next seven years, to an average of 35.5 mpg," the AP reports. California had been asking for the waiver since 2005, but the EPA under the Bush Administration had turned it down.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, in an agency news release, said the decision "puts the law and science first." As Reuters notes, it comes just over a month "after Obama on May 19 ordered the struggling auto industry to cut emissions and improve gas mileage."

Two years ago, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist signed an executive order that would set the exact same emissions standards as California, as soon as California got its EPA waiver. It would be one of 17 states following California's lead.

But the following year the Legislature passed a law that said Crist couldn't set those standards without legislative approval. And this spring, a bill to approve the tougher emissions standards were held hostage in the House by lawmakers who wanted to allow offshore drilling within 3 miles of Florida's beaches, according to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. And it didn't even get out of committee in the Senate.

Automakers had hired super-lobbyist Wade Hopping to press their case in Tallahassee, and he successfully argued that Florida lawmakers should wait until there is a national emissions standard rather than simply following what California does, according to the Miami Herald

"You shouldn't give away your authority to another state,'' Hopping said as the bill sputtered and stalled.

Craig Pittman, Times Staff Writer

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California considers global warming fees, first ever for nation

California air regulators today will consider leveling the nation's first statewide carbon fee on utilities, oil refineries and other industries as a way to pay for the state's landmark greenhouse gas emissions law, the San Jose Mercury News reports.

"The fee - about 12 cents per metric ton of carbon dioxide - is not designed to penalize emissions. Instead, it would pay for creating and enforcing the state's global warming regulations, the result of California's landmark 2006 law to fight climate change," reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

The fee would cost the average cement plant, for example, about $200,000 a year, and the average power plant would have to pay $1.3-million a year, the two papers report.

It won't be an easy choice. "The move comes at a time of rising unemployment and great economic uncertainty in the nation's most populous state, prompting concerns that the regulatory fee will impose yet another burden on California's struggling business climate," the San Jose paper reports.

The fee is supposed to raise $51.2 million annually for the next three years to fund the bureaucracy needed to implement California's 2006 global warming law, known as Assembly Bill 32. The total would drop to $36.2 million by the fifth year.

The California Air Resources Board "also will discuss regulations to capture methane from landfills and require glazed, heat-deflecting car windshields, which cut the amount of energy needed to keep cars cool," the Chronicle notes.

Craig Pittman, Times staff writer

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