GLOBAL CLIMATE DEBATE

{***TYLER***}
Steven Chu defends the DOE budget proposal, as Republicans rail about unfair treatment for fossil fuels.
A new study says the renewables industry can create a quarter of a million jobs, but only with an electricity mandate put into place.
And the clean energy industry shows off their latest technology for lawmakers in Washington at RETECH 2010 here in DC.

Good afternoon, I'm Tyler Suiters, in for Susan McGinnis...
Thanks for joining us for this Thursday afternoon edition of The Energy Report.

This a day of defense for Steven Chu...
The Energy Secretary appeared before the Senate Energy Committee, defending and explaining the latest White House budget proposal for DOE.
The Obama Administration wants a 7% increase over last year's funding for the Department.
Also there's a major boost to the loan guarantee authority for the nuclear energy sector...
A move that would triple the existing authority.
Also, the budget calls for $4.7-billion in clean energy technology investments...
Funding President Obama said would build on the largest clean energy investment ever, that is the recovery act.
During today's hearing Republican lawmakers pounced on the budget proposal, calling it unfair to the Oil, Natural Gas, and Coal sectors.
Another complaint, the proposal gives DOE a budget increase even though the department has yet to spend all its allotted stimulus funding.
Ranking Member Lisa Murkowski said there's "a disconnect" between what the President promised in the State of the Union...
and what showed up in his budget request.

{***LISA MURKOWSKI***}
Last week at the President's State of the Union he remarked on energy and my take on it was it appeared to present a more centrist, kind of an all-of-the-above approach to the energy policy. For example, he called for increasing support for additional nuclear energy as well as for oil and gas production. This was certainly a welcome change from my perspective, expanded beyond the renewable only mantra we've been hearing from the agencies. But with the budget request we received on Monday, I already see a disconnect between last week's speech and some agencies' budget priorities.

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Clean Skies' Dee Bhambhani was at today's hearing and spoke with Secretary Chu...
You can find her entire report is here on CleanSkies.com.
One of the chief complaints among critics of climate legislation is the potential job losses this bill would create.
But now, one renewable energy group says a clean energy mandate could end up creating hundreds of thousands of American jobs.
Today the RES Alliance for Jobs announced its plan to boost clean energy employment by more than 250,000 jobs over the next 15-years.
And the group says its study shows policy can create those jobs without establishing a cap-and-trade system.

{***DONALD FURMAN***}
A renewable energy standard will revitalize a lot of particularly the Rust Belt states. If you think about the automotive industry and about how much that industry is hurting, those are exactly the kills and the capabilities that we need in order to grow our industry. So the impact is going to be very strong in parts of the country that already have strong skills, foundries and the abilities to manufacture sophisticated parts and sophisticated machines.

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That study we're talking about here was completed by Navigant Consulting, on behalf of the RES Alliance.
The report shows that a 25% renewable energy standard would create 274,000 jobs...
many of those jobs in states that have unemployment well over the national average.
That job creation projection and also the RES percentage, that 25%, are both higher than what's in the either the House or Senate clean energy bills.

Today, the Ethanol Industry is generally applauding the EPA finalization of the Renewable Fuels Standard.
Of specific interest, yesterday Administrator Lisa Jackson stressed that improvement in the calculation methods of indirect land use, and other impacts...
mean corn can meet legal requirements for GHG reductions and continue to be an advanced biofuels feedstock.
With that in mind, today I talked with Tom Buis of Growth Energy about the significance of that land use re-calculation.

{***TOM BUIS***}
There's been this debate about indirect land use for the past couple of years, what the impact is, and how you really measure it. There is no scientific consensus out there that A.) it's happening and B.) to what extent and who do you blame for it? Land use changes occur in other countries for a variety of reasons, for domestic consumption, for export, and we have long felt that making an indirect land use change penalty only attributable to ethanol and biodiesel, doesn't support it.

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My entire conversation with Tom Buis is now here on CleanSkies.com
He's a former policy aside to Tom Daschle, and you can see his comments on the politics of ethanol issues and again, that's all here on our web site.

Following the announcement of her decision on the RFS yesterday, Lisa Jackson discussed some of the data analysis EPA used.
And the Administrator strongly rejected a suggestion that EPA had "changed the science" in this case to fit the politics.
So I discussed that issue earlier today with a former EPA Administrator, Christine Todd Whitman.

{***CHRISTINE TODD WHITMAN***}
It always does. The thing about science is that science isn't always exact. You are always going to be able to find a range within any kind of scientific analysis. Scientists, believe me, I wish they would have told me at various times if you set your standard, 11% per billion, everybody lives forever, that would have made rule-making very easy but they don't, they give you a range. And so within that range there are several policy determinants, and that's the kind of thing EPA faces all the time.

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Governor Whitman and I also talked about the latest White House budget proposal for EPA, and the additional funding requested for GHG regulation in FY 2011...
Our entire interview and it is pretty candid on her part, is here on CleanSkies.com.

Retech 2010 kicks off today here in the Nation's Capital.
It's an industry gathering for clean energy technologies. The conference run by the American Council on Renewable Energy... Also known as ACORE. Organizers say with more than 300 exhibitors, it's the largest grouping of clean energy professionals under one roof. Everyone involved clearly wants to show Washington lawmakers what can be accomplished with Clean Energy Technology, but they say public policy has to lead the way.

{***JOHN GEESMAN***}
I think that in order for us to succeed we need to have a renewable energy standard and I think that in order to run the economy properly, we need to put a proce on carbon. You can't hide the ball in terms of an actual externality that isn't reflected in the price of the energy that causes that externality.

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Retech runs through Friday in Washington... If you want to see more on this story, our very own Lee Patrick Sullivan attended the conference and has a story here on our website.

A mixed bag for energy commodity prices today.
Oil took a bit of a nosedive behind a discouraging US employment report...
But Natural Gas is up despite the latest EIA inventory report showing a lower than expected draw last week.
Natural gas closing at $5.44, up 2-cents on the day...
Oil settled at $73.14, down almost $4 in today's trading.

The UK's electricity regulator is warning the country faces power shortages by 2020 unless the government intervenes.
Britain privatized its national power system in the 1980s, selling all its generating stations.
The regulator, called Ofgem, warns those stations are crumbling and private companies aren't investing in needed new generation.
It also warned that plans to invest more than $300 billion in green energy could hike electric and gas bills 60%, or more.
Ofgem proposed the government set a minimum carbon price and create a central buyer to guarantee a market for power from costly new plants.

That's the Thursday edition of the Energy Report - we will see you back tomorrow morning with the latest energy news..
If you have any suggestions or comments regarding our programming here on clean skies news here in Washington, DC at contact@cleanskies.com.
Also, you can follow us on twitter and Facebook as well.
From all of us here in the energy news center, we're glad you're with us. I'm Tyler Suiters and you're watching Clean Skies News.