Climate news this week: EPA on coal, technological solutions, collapsing auto industry--12/22

Last month we were excited about the EPA’s decision to say no to dirty coal plants.  Sadly, this week we saw this position reversed.

Officials weighing federal applications by utilities to build new coal-fired power plants cannot consider their greenhouse gas output, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency ruled late Thursday. Some environmentalists fear the decision will clear the way for the approval of several such plants in the last days of the Bush administration.

The ruling, by Stephen L. Johnson, the administrator, responds to a decision made last month by the Environmental Appeals Board, a panel within the E.P.A., that had blocked the construction of a small new plant on the site of an existing power plant, Bonanza, on Ute tribal land in eastern Utah.

The Supreme Court ruled last year that the agency could regulate carbon dioxide, the most prevalent global warming gas, under existing law. The agency already requires some power plants to track how much carbon dioxide they emit.

But a memorandum issued by Mr. Johnson late Thursday puts the agency on record saying that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant to be regulated when approving power plants. He cited “sound policy considerations.”

His said in the memorandum that each year, about 275 new sources of pollution, from power plants to apartment buildings, must obtain permits saying that they will not significantly decrease air quality. Mr. Johnson wrote that the decision he overruled had confused the federal and state agencies that issue these permits.

This past week the European Parliament approved the climate deal that European Union leaders made at Brussels.  The deal faces mixed reviews from different European stakeholders.

The so-called "20-20-20" climate package, which Europe hopes will serve as a model to other nations, will oblige EU nations to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels, make 20 percent energy savings and bring the use of renewable energy sources up to 20 percent of the total.

The parliamentary approval came five days after EU heads of state and government worked out a compromise deal on the package at a summit in Brussels.

Within the overall EU targets, each EU nation and industry sector has its own obligations under the package, and last-minute dispensations were given, particularly to Warsaw and Berlin which were concerned at the effects on industry.

German conservatives also complained that the package was too tough on industry and evoked the spectre of "carbon leakage" whereby jobs would move out of a highly regulated region with no benefit to the European economy or the global environment.

However, environmental groups complain that the package was so watered-down in the attempts to reach a deal that the measures adopted will no longer deliver on the promised climate change targets.

"The parliament has marginalised itself by lacking the courage to make even small changes to the compromises negotiated by the EU summit last Friday," said Greenpeace EU climate and energy policy director Joris den Blanken.

Closer to home, a Maryland inventor has come up with a technological fix that he says will help stop global warming.

Backed by a computer model, the little-known inventor is making public a U.S. patent petition for what he calls the most "practical, nontoxic, affordable, rapidly achievable" and beneficial way to curb global warming and a resulting catastrophic ocean rise.

Spray gigatons of seawater into the air, mainly in the Northern Hemisphere, and let Mother Nature do the rest, he says.

The evaporating water, Ace said, would cool the Earth in multiple ways: First, the sprayed droplets would transform to water vapor, a change that absorbs thermal energy near ground level; then the rising vapor would condense into sunlight-reflecting clouds and cooling rain, releasing much of the stored energy into space in the form of infrared radiation.

McClatchy Newspapers has followed Ace's work for three years and obtained a copy of his 2007 patent petition for what he calls "a colossal refrigeration system with a 100,000-fold performance multiplier."

"The Earth has a giant air-conditioning problem," he said. "I'm proposing to put a thermostat on the planet."

Although it might sound preposterous, a computer model run by an internationally known global warming scientist suggests that Ace's giant humidifier might just work.

The American automobile industry has been in the news a lot lately because of their economic woes.  Unfortunately, this week we saw that it isn’t just the American industry – and it isn’t just gas-guzzling cars – that are in trouble.

Toyota Motor apparently doesn't expect demand for cars to rebound until well past 2010--the automaker has pushed back plans to produce some models from that date.

After turning from pickup trucks to sports utility vehicles to hybrid cars, Toyota (nyse: TM -news- people) finally decided it had no choice but to let its newly built plant in Mississippi sit empty until the ailing auto market recovers. The plant in Blue Springs was slated to begin making the Prius in 2010, marking the first time the gas-electric car was to be produced outside of Japan and China.

The plant's facility was 90.0% built but the automaker had not yet moved in the machinery and equipment. Some 100 employees assigned to the site will be moved to other work, the company said Tuesday. It had plowed $300 million into the plant so far.

"With the U.S. auto market having collapsed, at this point it doesn't make sense to have the plant at all. Not even hybrids are selling well," said Tokyo-based analyst Christopher Richter for CLSA. "It's taken a few steps for Toyota to come to this. I don't think they like canceling plans." The cost of this constant mind-changing may be limited as Toyota never moved in the heavy equipment, he added.

It would take at least a year to equip the plant, so Toyota would be able to put the Mississippi site online in 2011 at the earliest, but it may be "a couple years before they would start thinking about it," said KBC analyst Andrew Phillips. There is no longer a need to free up factory capacity in Japan, from which Toyota currently exports the Prius, by localizing production in the U.S., currently the top market for the Prius, he added.

To end on a more optimistic note, we learned this week that the West Coast, ever the national champion on climate change, is joining forces with the East Coast to continue the fight.

California's governor and New York's mayor have agreed to collaborate on efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emission, saying they can no longer wait for Washington to act on global warming.

Appearing with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger at a fuel cell company in Silicon Valley, Michael Bloomberg on Thursday detailed a five-point plan to incorporate sustainable energy into long-term planning in his city.

Bloomberg said New York officials have begun the largest study ever conducted to catalog greenhouse gas emissions, creating a base for the city to set goals and measure its progress on reducing emissions. He also announced the appointment of a special adviser for climate change and plans to cut city agencies' gas and energy consumption.

"It would be nice if we could get Washington to do a lot of things for us but we can't say blame them and walk away from it," Bloomberg said. "We are the ones that are held accountable."

“We don’t wait for the federal government to take the leadership position ... we take the lead,” Schwarzenegger echoed.

That’s it for this week’s news roundup.  Feel free to post other stories in the share comments section, and if you haven’t be sure to send around the 1Sky Holiday E-card.   Happy holidays!