U.S. News & World Report: Romm is one of the 8 most influential energy and environment policymakers

[bananas]

Joe's been doing a great job with Climate Progress:

U.S. News & World Report: Romm is one of the 8 “most influential energy and environmental policymakers in the Obama era”

In terms of his cachet in the blogosphere, Joe Romm is something like the climate change equivalent of economist (and New York Times columnist) Paul Krugman.

Okay, I am tooting my own horn here. But hey, this is a weblog — and I do bill this as “an insider’s view of climate science, politics and solutions,” so I think readers should know when a credible independent source validates my claim.

(Note: If anyone has come here from the U.S. News link, be sure to read “An Introduction to Climate Progress.”)

“Green Economy” is the focus of the April issue of U.S. News and World Report. Their website describes the piece I’m featured in as:

8 Top Washington Players
The most influential energy and environmental policymakers in the Obama era.

Inside, they list Lisa Jackson, Barbara Boxer, Lisa Murkowski, Steven Chu, Al Gore, Henry Waxman, Carol Browner, and me.

My profile (here) begins with the over-the-top Krugman comparison above, and continues with a pretty fair description, I think (with maybe one tiny asterisk):

<snip>

[Terry in Austin]

1. "What will replace it?"

A nice rhetorical flourish that conveniently skips the crucial middle part of the argument. That's the part that says "Coal must be replaced for X reason."

This ignores the possibility that maybe coal -- or the amount of energy our current level of coal use represents -- should NOT be replaced. There's a built in sense of entitlement: naturally, we must have that much energy -- that's a given, and everything else is a variable.

Europeans do quite nicely using about one-third the energy we do. Surely, we're capable of it as well.

Other than lapses like that, Joe Romm seems to be a capable spokesperson for mainstream green. When he's wrong, at least it's for the right reasons. The comparison to Krugman seems apt -- no, really, I like Krugman, mostly ;)

[kristopher]

2. From the link...

"...So what do we do in the near term to meet the projected 1% annual increase in demand over the next decade while simultaneously reducing carbon emissions?

The answer is we do energy efficiency (including cogeneration), wind power, concentrated solar power (CSP), and biomass cofiring."
http://climateprogress.org/2009/02/18/obama-replace-dirty-coal-nuclear-efficency-cogeneration-wind-solar-csp-biomass-cofiring/

Bold in original.

Where did the conclusion regarding Europeans using 1/3 of US come from?

[Terry in Austin]

3. Yes, we'll do those things

And the sooner the better.

The question is, How much? The "replacement" subtext implies that the number of joules of coal energy we use will be replaced by the same number of joules of alt.energy. I just don't agree with that.

Kristopher, you and I go around and around on this one. My opinion is that we use way more energy than we should, and we'd be a lot better off if we didn't. Your mileage may vary. I can respect that.

[kristopher]

4. I just want to know what the 1/3rd number represents.

There are a lot of ways that energy use is framed. For example, if you take national energy input and divide by the number of people, you get a totally different number than if you average the metered residential consumption.

As to the "replacement subtext" being a unit for unit replacement, I don't read it that way at all. I see a discussion of the functional role that coal plays as a 'baseload' form of energy and how we can revisit the structure of our grid to overcome the deletion of coal.

[Terry in Austin]

6. I'll give you more credit than that

I think you know where to get those numbers, if you've been working this patch as long as you have. Same here.

Let's do the exercise, though, just for grins:

EIA energy consumption tables. I'm going with per-capita data; YMMV:

Europe, 2006: 146.2 million btu
US, 2006: 334.6 million btu

It's not precisely 1/3, freely granted. It's more like 43%, if anyone cares to go there.

But I think you can also grant that the larger, qualitative point is of interest: European energy consumption is significantly lower than American. And with no apparent detriment to quality of life. We could learn from this. We should, IMO, and I think that we probably will at some point, whether we signed up for it or not.

Who knows, maybe all the renewables plus technology plus conservation will keep us at the same effective energy level coal did before its eventual deletion. Again, I don't think the probability is very high -- I think we'll be lucky to reach even 15 or 20 percent of it.

[kristopher]

7. I'm not sure that is the number you want to reference.

Which is why I asked. Energy intensity is also a very telling number and we are only about 30% above Europe in that one. Regardless of the exact percentage, as I understand your point it is that our consumption habits lead to excessive energy consumption, and that it would be better to change direction in the area of consumption habits rather than try to meet the present level of consumption. Is that right?

I agree. In fact, I found the extra amount of work required of me when I lived in Japan (similar to EU) to be a good thing; although if you'd asked me when riding the trains at crush hour I might have had a different opinion.

[Terry in Austin]

8. Consumption habits

better to change direction in the area of consumption habits rather than try to meet the present level of consumption. Is that right?

Right on the money!

Regarding energy intensity, I take it you mean economic energy intensity. Why don't you give us a quick run-down on that one?

Yeah, Japan is probably even in a stricter situation than Europe.

[kristopher]

9. The topic we've been on has three components

1) How much energy is used; 2) the lifestyle that people are accustomed to having, and 3) the relationship between 1 & 2 as efficiency and conservation measures are implemented.

Since lifestyle is closely related to not only habits but the ability of a nation's infrastructure to produce the goods and services that support a given lifestyle, the energy efficiency number can give a good idea (when looked at with care) of how much a country might actually be able to lower it's energy consumption while maintaining a certain lifestyle.

In this case, even though the geographic diversity of Europe and the US is similar, our level of energy intensity is 30% or so higher. That is an indication that we can make an improvement of that much without "suffering" in the lifestyle department.

[NNadir]

5. That's pretty predictable from our media, the same media that announced

we should start killing people because Colin Powell and Dick Cheney said the words "uranium" and "Saddam" in the same sentence, people who, predictably, had oil.

Romm is a real ass, and the fact that he, like the similar fool Amory Lovins, is declared "influential," shows precisely why the world concentration of dangerous fossil fuel waste is now approaching 400 ppm while a particular set of worship filled morons keep announcing that solar power (space based no less) will save us.

The space based sci-fi story ranks as a classic on this website by the way, sort of like the big wind-to-hydrogen sci-fi that circulated in this space about the Utsira project in Norway.

The Explorer "solar powered" satellite was launched in 1958, and I'll bet Joe Romm really, really, really, really promising for our ethereal space based solar future.