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As the CEOs of Detroit's Big Three automakers pleaded for a $25 billion bailout from Congress this week, conservatives have been looking for an easy culprit to blame for the auto industry's seeming collapse. First it was the unions. Now conservatives have turned their attention to the modest fuel economy (CAFE) standards - fleetwide average of 35 miles per gallon by 2020 - imposed in last year's Energy Independence and Security Act. Last night on Fox News, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney echoed other conservatives in pointing the finger at the fuel economy changes: - MITT ROMNEY: Well, government did [cause a lot of this]. There's no question but that the CAFE standards have put an unusual burden on the domestic automobile manufacturers. And our energy policies as a country continue to put burdens on domestic manufacturers. That's just - that's reality. [11/19/08]

The timing is extraordinarily appropriate, and not just because energy is the campaign issue of the week. The wave of Republican mockery currently assaulting Barack Obama's recommendation that Americans properly inflate their tires flows squarely within the tradition of scorn and derision that conservatives have heaped on Carter for decades -- in part because of his call for conservation and sacrifice in 1977.

The Huffington Post has an interesting post on the main problem facing the Democrats in the upcoming US elections - the conservative media (and the usual vote rigging tactics being put into play once again)

The American Physical Society has just released a report on improving energy efficiency in the transportation and buildings sector: Energy = Future Think Efficiency There are links from the above to an Executive Summary and the full report (100 page PDF). This is not just a "change your light bulbs" document, but rather a comprehensive, information-filled challenge to the status quo with regards to government inaction with regards to energy conservation. It is also not a document on energy production and future difficulties in being able to do enough of this to keep the lights on -- even with better efficiency. But it is well worth a read, with lots of data on energy use and great graphics.

I've been mindful of the amount of water I use when making a pot of coffee ever since learning that one-third of the tap water used for drinking in North America is actually used to brew our daily cups of joe-and that if each of us avoided wasting just one cupful of coffee a day, we could save enough water over the course of a year to provide two gallons to every one of the more than 1.1 billion people who don't have access to freshwater at all.

A new audit by DOE's Office of Inspector General takes a close look at how the agency is following up on directives to improve energy efficiency and to reduce energy costs. The report focused on energy associated with information technology, and Y-12 and ORNL were among the facilities audited and cited for less-than-laudatory practices. "Despite its recognized energy conservation leadership role, the Department had not always taken advantage of opportunities to reduce energy consumption associated with its information technology resources," the report said. Among the findings was that DOE had not fully reduced the power consumed by laptop and desktop computers.

Three environmental groups want the state to throw out a permit it just issued that would allow TVA to dump water tainted with mercury, selenium, arsenic, and other chemicals from the Kingston coal-fired power plant into the Clinch River. The Clinch, which lies below the power plant, has already received ash moving down the Emory River from the massive ash spill last December. Earthjustice, Environmental Integrity Project, and the Sierra Club on Thursday filed an appeal of a water discharge permit that the Tennessee Department of Environment & Conservation issued four weeks ago. They say letting TVA pipe one million gallons of wastewater a day from a pond with gypsum into the river isn't wise. The material will be a byproduct of the plant's new air pollution system.

Three environmental groups want the state to throw out a permit it just issued that would allow TVA to dump water tainted with mercury, selenium, arsenic, and other chemicals from the Kingston coal-fired power plant into the Clinch River. The Clinch, which lies below the power plant, has already received ash moving down the Emory River from the massive ash spill last December. Earthjustice, Environmental Integrity Project, and the Sierra Club on Thursday filed an appeal of a water discharge permit that the Tennessee Department of Environment & Conservation issued four weeks ago. They say letting TVA pipe one million gallons of wastewater a day from a pond with gypsum into the river isn't wise. The material will be a byproduct of the plant's new air pollution system.

"Massachusetts has a law mandating a portfolio of renewable energy, including energy derived from wind, solar, and biomass. But a new study says that replacing coal power with biomass will actually increase the amount of CO2 emitted, throwing a wrench in the state's plan and casting some doubt over the utility of using biomass on national scale and the inclusion of biomass titles in the energy bills now being negotiated in Congress. The study from the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences finds that the replacing coal power generation with that from biomass would result in 3 percent greater emissions by 2050."

George Bush is behaving like a furious defaulter whose home is about to be repossessed. Smashing the porcelain, ripping the doors off their hinges, he is determined that there will be nothing worth owning by the time the bastards kick him out. His midnight regulations, opening the United States's wilderness to logging and mining, trashing pollution controls, tearing up conservation laws, will do almost as much damage in the last 60 days of his presidency as he achieved in the foregoing 3 000.

Here is a list of energy news items that the WattzOn team found most interesting in 2008: * CO2 is officially a pollutant (maybe) - In a ruling by the Environmental Appeals Board (a panel within the EPA), it was decided that the EPA has no valid reason to not limit CO2 emissions from coal plants. Confusingly, the EPA has recently overruled itself by stating that officials cannot consider greenhouse gas outputs in judging applications to build new coal-fired power plants. So, it's back up in the "air." * We need to be at 350 PPM of CO2 - James Hansen of Columbia University, and NASA's head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, published a landmark paper: "Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?" in which he argues for an atmospheric CO2 concentration of 350 parts per million (PPM) for humanity to be safe on this planet. As some background, pre-industrial Earth had a CO2 concentration of around 275 PPM, and for years policy makers have set a target regulatory goal of 550 PM - twice that number. More recently, 450 PPM has been proposed as a better goal by the EU and a few others. Unfortunately, recent evidence has shown that the Arctic sea is melting at an alarming rate and a giant ice sheet in Greenland is starting to slide into the ocean. This is the reality with the world today at 383 PPM. Hansen points out that this means we set overly lax targets and proposes the 350 PPM goal with tons of paleo-climatic data to back him up. We need to bring the CO2 in our atmosphere back down to this concentration. * Energy scientists primed to enter government - US President-Elect Obama has nominated Steven Chu to be the Secretary of Energy, and named John Holdren as the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology / Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy / Co-Chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. As the President-Elect puts it, "Today, more than

"San Diego doesn't need to import sunshine from the desert," said Weiner, conservation coordinator for the San Diego-based Desert Protective Council. Environmentalists have won some rounds. SDG&E had been pushing to build Sunrise through the heart of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, a recreational jewel beloved by hikers and campers. That 150-mile route appears doomed after recent decisions by an administrative law judge and a utilities commission member. * Map Map Judge Jean Veith wants the commission to reject the Sunrise Powerlink because she has concluded it's too costly, too harmful to the environment and not needed for SDG&E to meet clean-energy mandates.

Vote to pass a bill that extends energy efficiency tax credits, as well as various individual and business tax credits. Official Title of Legislation: HR 7060: To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide incentives for energy production and conservation, to extend certain expiring provisions, to provide individual income tax relief, and for other purposes. Highlights: - Extends tax credits for wind facilities until January 1, 2010, and credits for qualified biomass, geothermal or solar, small irrigation power, landfill gas, trash combustion, hydropower, and marine and hydrokinetic renewable energy facilities until October 1, 2011 (Sec. 101, 102). - Extends residential energy efficient property credits for solar electric, solar water heating, and fuel cell property expenditures until December 31, 2016 (Sec. 104). - Extends the residential energy efficient property credit allowable against the alternative minimum tax to the taxable year starting in 2007 (Sec. 104). - Reduces the maximum income tax deduction allowed for domestic production of oil and gas (Sec. 401). - Extends the business research credit through December 31, 2009 (Sec. 221). - Extends tax deductions for college tuition payments through the taxable year ending December 31, 2009 (Sec. 202). - Allows a base credit of $3,000 for plug-in electric motor vehicles, with up to an additional $2,000 for vehicles drawing propulsion energy from a battery of 5 or more kilowatt hours of capacity (Sec. 124). - Encourages bicycle commuting by allowing tax-free reimbursements to cover expenses such as the purchase of a bicycle and maintenance if the bicycle is regularly used to travel between the employee's residence and place of employment (Sec. 126). - Extends the Federal Unemployment Tax Act surtax that employers pay with respect to individuals they employ through 2010 (Sec. 404). - Extends tax credits for solar energy property until January 1, 2017 and credits for fuel cell and microturbine pr

Some bicycle enthusiasts view the economic downturn as a good way to turn people on to the benefits of bike riding. Wallet Pop has a good example with this piece on low cost bike transport - Bike like it's 1929 with end-of-the-economy bicycle gear tips. Now that it's official, and all, that we're in a recession, it's even smarter to sell all your earthly gas-guzzling possessions and buy bikes. Many proponents of Peak Oil, and even generally conservative folks who are becoming decidedly alarmist, are predicting enormous increases in gas prices sometime in the next decade. Bike folk hope it will happen sooner.

There's a long tradition of using Fridays to release reports you'd rather not see attract attention, and the Department of Energy has used the last Friday of the Bush Administration to release a big one. Its Electricity Advisory Committee, composed primarily of power industry executives, has released a series of reports on the future of the US electric grid. These include focused looks at the potential for power storage and the smart grid, but it's the overall evaluation that's badly off the administration's message: the government needs to make a significant intervention in the power market, it's completely failed to do so for the past eight years (and longer), and conservation needs to be part of anything we do.

Next month's edition of National Geographic has an article on the tar sands of Canada - The Canadian Oil Boom. How long the boom lasts if the current downturn continues is questionable of course. In the same issue is an article on Energy Conservation. In Boucher's memory, though, the change begins that day in 1963, on the long trail his grandfather used to set his traps, near a place called Mildred Lake. Generations of his ancestors had worked that trapline. "These trails had been here thousands of years," Boucher said one day last summer, sitting in his spacious and tasteful corner office in Fort McKay. His golf putter stood in one corner; Mozart played softly on the stereo. "And that day, all of a sudden, we came upon this clearing. A huge clearing. There had been no notice. In the 1970s they went in and tore down my grandfather's cabin-with no notice or discussion." That was Boucher's first encounter with the oil sands industry. It's an industry that has utterly transformed this part of northeastern Alberta in just the past few years, with astonishing speed. Boucher is surrounded by it now and immersed in it himself.

The $825 billion economic stimulus package unveiled by Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday contains billions of dollars in tax breaks for renewable energy and spending for energy efficiency and transmission. The legislation, aimed at boosting the recessionary U.S. economy, would provide $20 billion in tax cuts for alternative energy including a multi-year extension of the production tax credit for wind, geothermal, hydro power and bioenergy. The bill also contains tax credits for research and development on energy conservation and efficiency.

Tens of thousands have gathered in Sydney's CBD to urge the Federal Government to adopt a swifter response to the climate crisis. Despite grey skies, a colourful crowd showed up in Martin Place today to support the Nature Conservation Council of NSW's fourth Walk Against Warming march. Some were dressed as polar bears. Others wore windmills on their backs. Others carried placards of penguins with messages that read: "Don't build your home on my home", and "Some like it hot, penguins not".

A subsidy represents a transfer of Federal Government resources to the buyer or seller of a good or service that has the effect of reducing the price paid, increasing the price received, or reducing the cost of production of the good or service. Put simply, the Federal Government promotes targeted energy outcomes, such as production of a specific fuel or promotion of conservation and energy efficiency by energy consumers through incentives such as tax credits, grants, and low interest loans.

Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger have an oped in today's LA Times that posits the theory that environmentalists got complacent and read too many "of their own press clippings," allowing conservatives/Republicans to coopt the entire energy agenda. By focusing like a laser beam on price and supply issues, the right made energy a pocketbook, rather than an environmental issue, and-- so say Nordhaus and Shellenberger-- that has dealt the green energy agenda a serious body blow.

The world is heading for an "ecological credit crunch" far worse than the current financial crisis because humans are over-using the natural resources of the planet, an international study warns today. The Living Planet report calculates that humans are using 30% more resources than the Earth can replenish each year, which is leading to deforestation, degraded soils, polluted air and water, and dramatic declines in numbers of fish and other species. As a result, we are running up an ecological debt of $4tr (£2.5tr) to $4.5tr every year - double the estimated losses made by the world's financial institutions as a result of the credit crisis - say the report's authors, led by the conservation group WWF, formerly the World Wildlife Fund.