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Setting Big Goals, Hillary Clinton Joins the Climate Battle
Hillary Rodham Clinton has promised a series of initiatives to address the challenge of climate change. The first installment, unveiled this week in Iowa, calls for an aggressive expansion of wind, solar and other carbon-free energy sources so that they provide one-third of America’s electricity by 2027 — enough, she says, to power every home in the country.
Mrs. Clinton at least is willing to confront global warming, which her prospective Republican opponents have been doing their best to avoid, belittle and deny. But as solutions go, setting goals isn’t much. Getting there is the tough part. And even then, renewables can be only part of a comprehensive energy strategy.
The plan’s centerpiece is a huge, sevenfold bump in solar-generated power, which, despite the sharp drop in the price of solar panels, now provides only a tiny fraction of the nation’s energy. Renewable energy sources overall furnish just 13 percent of America’s electricity (natural gas, coal and nuclear power account for nearly all the rest), with hydropower at 6 percent, wind power at 4.4 percent and the remainder coming from geothermal, biomass and solar (less than 1 percent).
So there’s obviously room for growth in renewables. As if to make that point, on the day after Mrs. Clinton unveiled her plan, federal and state officials gathered off Rhode Island to celebrate the beginning of construction of the country’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farm, a modest five-turbine project that is expected to begin providing electricity to East Coast customers next year.
....
Mrs. Clinton seeks to change all this, albeit with familiar strategies. She would enlarge and make permanent existing tax incentives for wind and solar power that are now perilously dependent on periodic congressional renewal. She would open more federal land to wind and solar installations. She would streamline the permitting process so it doesn’t take years to get another offshore wind farm up and running, and help build a transmission system capable of carrying wind and solar energy from remote locations. She pledges full support for President Obama’s forthcoming plan to shut down old coal-fired power plants, which would almost certainly force states to turn to cleaner sources of energy.
There is no mention, however, of the one mechanism that would guarantee a shift in the way the country produces and consumes energy, namely putting a price on carbon emissions, presumably with a tax. Mrs. Clinton has already been through the carbon pricing wars in Congress (including an ill-fated cap and trade bill she supported in 2008) and apparently sees it as a lost cause in the current political environment.
....
NYTimes First Draft
Mrs. Clinton at least is willing to confront global warming, which her prospective Republican opponents have been doing their best to avoid, belittle and deny. But as solutions go, setting goals isn’t much. Getting there is the tough part. And even then, renewables can be only part of a comprehensive energy strategy.
The plan’s centerpiece is a huge, sevenfold bump in solar-generated power, which, despite the sharp drop in the price of solar panels, now provides only a tiny fraction of the nation’s energy. Renewable energy sources overall furnish just 13 percent of America’s electricity (natural gas, coal and nuclear power account for nearly all the rest), with hydropower at 6 percent, wind power at 4.4 percent and the remainder coming from geothermal, biomass and solar (less than 1 percent).
So there’s obviously room for growth in renewables. As if to make that point, on the day after Mrs. Clinton unveiled her plan, federal and state officials gathered off Rhode Island to celebrate the beginning of construction of the country’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farm, a modest five-turbine project that is expected to begin providing electricity to East Coast customers next year.
....
Mrs. Clinton seeks to change all this, albeit with familiar strategies. She would enlarge and make permanent existing tax incentives for wind and solar power that are now perilously dependent on periodic congressional renewal. She would open more federal land to wind and solar installations. She would streamline the permitting process so it doesn’t take years to get another offshore wind farm up and running, and help build a transmission system capable of carrying wind and solar energy from remote locations. She pledges full support for President Obama’s forthcoming plan to shut down old coal-fired power plants, which would almost certainly force states to turn to cleaner sources of energy.
There is no mention, however, of the one mechanism that would guarantee a shift in the way the country produces and consumes energy, namely putting a price on carbon emissions, presumably with a tax. Mrs. Clinton has already been through the carbon pricing wars in Congress (including an ill-fated cap and trade bill she supported in 2008) and apparently sees it as a lost cause in the current political environment.
....
NYTimes First Draft
