Copyright 2001 eMediaMillWorks, Inc.
(f/k/a Federal
Document Clearing House, Inc.)
Federal Document Clearing House
Congressional Testimony
July 10, 2001, Tuesday
SECTION: CAPITOL HILL HEARING TESTIMONY
LENGTH: 4868 words
COMMITTEE:
SENATE COMMERCE, SCIENCE AND TRANSPORTATION
HEADLINE: CLIMATE CHANGE TECHNOLOGY
TESTIMONY-BY: DAVID HAWKINS, DIRECTOR
AFFILIATION: NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL
BODY: July 10, 2001
Statement David Hawkins
Director, NRDC Climate Center Natural Resources Defense Council
before
the
U.S. SENATE COMMITTEE ON Commerce, Science, and Transportation
My name is David Hawkins, and I am the Director of the Climate Center at
the Natural Resources Defense Council. I appreciate the opportunity to appear
before you today on the issues of policies to combat the threat posed by climate
change or global warming. The Natural Resources Defense Council is a national,
non-profit organization of scientists, lawyers, and environmental specialists,
dedicated to protecting public health and the environment. Founded in 1970, NRDC
serves more than 500,000 members from offices in New York, Washington, Los
Angeles, and San Francisco. My message today is a simple one: the United States
should no longer delay the adoption of effective policies to limit emissions of
carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas pollution. Nearly a decade ago, the U.S.
and more than 100 other countries ratified a global climate change treaty that
should have spurred adoption of serious policies to combat global warming.
Instead, we have had a decade of delay, during which U.S. greenhouse emissions
have increased by about 14%. Rather than adopt meaningful policies that would
have sent an effective signal to the private sector that constraining carbon
emissions was a sound course for business planning, we have relied on voluntary
pledge programs that have been effective only in communicating to business
leaders that the government is not yet serious about limiting global warming
pollution.
Mr. Chairman, the first rule for getting out of a hole is to
stop digging. Every year that we delay adoption of real global warming policies,
we dig ourselves deeper and make our ultimate response programs more costly,
disruptive, and risky. The United States is better positioned than any other
country in the world to lead the way in showing that economic progress can go
hand in hand with controlling global warming pollution. The time for us to
exercise that leadership is now.
Global warming is a problem that
becomes more difficult to manage the longer we wait to start. Let's review some
basic information. Starting about 300 million years ago, for a period spanning
about 75 million years, our planet transferred, through geologic processes, vast
amounts of carbon from the atmosphere and living organisms to immense
underground reserves, producing what we call fossil fuels. Estimates are that
some 5 trillion tonnes of carbon were stored in this way. Imagine a 75 million
year video documenting the removal of 5 trillion tonnes of material from our
global living room and its storage in a remote subterranean repository. Now,
imagine running this video in reverse and at hyper speed. That is what we have
been doing for the past 150 years.
Since the Industrial Revolution, we
have been putting these immense underground carbon stores back into the
atmosphere by burning these fuels and we are doing so at ever increasing speed.
At current consumption rates, we put back in the air each year about 100,000
years of stored carbon. In the last 150 years we have put about 290 billion
tonnes (gigatonnes or Gt) into the air. Amidst the claimed uncertainties about
the climate change phenomenon, there is no dispute that these emissions have
caused significant increases in atmospheric concentrations of CO2.
Today's CO2 levels are about 370 parts per million (ppm), about 30%
higher than the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm.
Nor is there any
dispute that continued emissions of CO2 from fossil burning will cause
concentrations to go still higher. The latest forecasts for global carbon
emissions in the 21 st century are sobering. The IPCC's most recent report
estimates emissions of between 1000 and 2100 Gt of carbon in the next 100
years--or about 3 to 7 times more than we released in the last 150 years. With
cumulative emissions in these ranges, atmospheric CO2 would build up to between
540 and 970 ppm by the year 2100 and continue to increase unless emissions were
cut. Several of the plausible emission scenarios would lead to doubled CO2
concentrations before a child born today would be eligible for social security.
A final undisputed fact is that once a certain atmospheric concentration
is reached, it cannot be significantly reduced for hundreds of years, no matter
how drastic a "response program" policymakers decide to put in place.
Unfortunately, carbon dioxide's lifetime in the atmosphere is a long one: of
each 1000 tons we emit today, 400 of those tons will still be in the air 100
years from now and 150 tons will remain 1000 years from now. So the bed we are
making is a procrustean one that we and generations to come must lie on.
As a result of fossil fuel combustion, we already have increased
atmospheric CO2 to levels greater than "at any time during the past 400,000
years,"notes the recent National Academy of Sciences report to President Bush.
And we are on a path to dramatically higher concentrations in the coming
decades. The policy questions this Committee and this Congress must address are
whether and when to act to reduce the buildup of CO2 concentrations in the
atmosphere.
In NRDC's view the answers are, yes we must act and we
should start now. Yet for more than a decade, fossil-fuel dependent industries
have vehemently opposed policies to limit global warming pollution and
governments, including the U.S. government, have declined to adopt such
policies. One can explain the position of the industrial opponents as driven by
the narrow interests of their current business plans but what explains the
compliant position of governments, which should show at least some signs of
support for the broader public interest.
One explanation is the
influence of money on politics and enactment of the McCain-Feingold legislation
would be a salutary development. A second explanation is that legislators and
executive branch officials believe that we can wait until the emergence of
greater consensus on the detailed nature of the threats we face from global
warming and that acting later will reduce the costs of a response program
compared to acting now. NRDC believes this basic assumption--that later is
cheaper--is simply wrong.
The basic fact is that further delay in
adopting effective policies forecloses options for us and for our children.
Further delay will increase the costs of achieving stable atmospheric
concentrations at levels less than double or even triple the concentrations
under which human societies have evolved. How important is it for us to preserve
the option to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations at these lower levels? The
policy dilemma is that we may not know the answers in a manner convincing to all
for decades to come. Yet if we delay policy action until we have amassed a more
comprehensive and detailed body of evidence of the full range of damages that a
changed climate will bring, the planet's growing emissions will have made
stabilizing concentrations at levels anywhere near today's levels very much more
expensive, if not impossible.
Each year of delay in developing an
effective global response program brings us closer to the point of no-return
when we lose the ability to limit the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations
to lower levels. By failing to act, we are passing these points of no-return
without even understanding what we are giving up for ourselves and our
descendants. As I mentioned, pre- industrialization levels of CO2 did not exceed
280 ppm and we are now at 370 ppm, the highest level in 400,000 years. Because
the way CO2 builds up in the atmosphere is well understood, we can determine the
cumulative emissions during the next century that allow us to stabilize the
atmosphere at various levels, such as 350, 450, 550, 650, or even 750 ppm and
experts have done these calculations. The most recent IPCC report summarizes
these 21 st century emission budgets as follows:
Stabilization target
(ppm) 350 450 550 650 750
Cumulative emissions in 21 st century (GtC)
280 630 960 1150 1300
The same report forecasts cumulative global
emissions during this period, in the absence of effective global warming
policies, to range from 1000 to 2100 Gt of carbon. While many members of
Congress don't fancy themselves expert in global warming, most have a good
understanding of budget fundamentals. In budget terms we are spending at a rate
that far exceeds what we can afford if we learn we need to stabilize CO2
concentrations in the 350 to 550 ppm range. At first glance, these numbers may
suggest we still have lots of time to study this issue but consider that to keep
the next hundred years' emissions under 300 Gt we would need to cut today's
global emissions immediately by more than 60% and keep them there while the
world grows in population and affluence. Or we might pursue the cut more
gradually but then we must achieve even deeper cuts later to stay within the
same budget. While this example is for the 350 ppm option, the same dynamic
exists for each of the higher stabilization targets: the longer we delay
adoption of policies that limit business as usual growth in emissions, the
deeper the cuts the planet must achieve to hit any stabilization target. And if
we delay too long, each successive stabilization target becomes impossible to
achieve.
Dr. James E. Edmonds of the Department of Energy's Pacific
Northwest National Laboratory and colleagues have estimated least- abatement
cost schedules for reducing emissions to meet these stabilization targets. He
points out that these schedules require global emissions to drop below business
as usual paths in the very near future. Here is a summary of this information as
he presented it to the Senate Energy Committee on June 28, 2001:
As can
be seen, for the lower targets, the dates for achieving significant global
emission reductions are upon us now and the dates for preserving even the higher
targets are very close. To appreciate that these dates do not allow time for
further delay in adopting policies, consider the sequence of events that must
occur to actually succeed in reducing global emissions. Clear public policies
must be debated and adopted, not just in the U.S. but in other countries too.
The private sector must develop strategies for response to those
policies. The strategies must be translated into specific investment decisions
needed to carry out the strategies, most likely involving additional development
work for certain technologies. The investment decisions must be followed with
detailed engineering and planning work. And this work must be followed by
deployment of lower-carbon technologies in the field on a sufficient scale to
actually reduce global emissions below current forecasted increases. Thus, to
reduce global emissions by dates like 2007-2020, we must start today with
adoption of effective policies.
Stated another way, further delay in
adopting policies to limit global warming pollution means we are discarding the
options of stabilizing concentrations at levels closer to the lower end of the
range of targets. I cannot prove today that stabilizing CO2 at 350 ppm is
essential for our well-being.
But I think it is self-evident that it is
not responsible to eliminate this option without any assurance that we can live
well with the resulting future. As the National Academy of Sciences panel noted
in its report to President Bush, "risk increases with increases in both the rate
and the magnitude of climate change."By committing ourselves to ever-higher CO2
concentrations, we are committing to higher rates and magnitudes of climate
change for our descendants and ourselves.
Fortunately, there are no
technical or economic impediments to adopting policies today that will restore
U.S. leadership on fighting global warming and send important signals to the
private sector and to other countries that the time for effective action has
arrived. Congress has before it a number of major legislative initiatives that
will address the principal sources of global warming pollution in the U.S. in a
way that will stimulate the new technology that is essential to meeting the
challenges of limiting these emissions during the remainder of this century.
Near-term domestic policies to address global warming
A.
Comprehensive power plant clean-up legislation
NRDC supports
comprehensive legislation to reduce all four major pollutants from electric
generation--sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, mercury and carbon dioxide. Electric
generation is responsible for 40% of total U.S. CO2 emissions. We have the
technology to make significant reductions in CO2 from this sector though a
combination of efficiency measures on the supply and the demand side, and
through increased reliance on cleaner fuels. Enactment of a cap and trade
program for CO2 from the electric sector would produce the needed market signal
to all the players in the electric production and consumption sectors that there
is value in reducing carbon emissions. The bipartisan bill, S. 556, the "Clean
Power Act,"sponsored by Senators Kerry, Lieberman, Collins, Jeffords and Snowe
would accomplish this objective and NRDC strongly supports it.
Complementary policies to reduce emissions from electric generation
include renewable portfolio standards proposed in the last Congress in S. 1369,
to facilitate the deployment of renewable energy resources, a public benefits
fund as proposed in last year's S. 1369 and this year's S. 597, to promote
continued investments in demand side management programs and net metering
provisions (as found in both bills), to promote clean and efficient distributed
generation.
B. Policies to Reduce Petroleum Dependence and Protect the
Environment and Public Health 1. Close the Light Truck Loophole and Raise
Fuel Economy Standards to 40 Miles per Gallon
Incentives for advanced technology vehicles will be most effective if
enacted in combination with updated
fuel economy standards.
This can be accomplished in two steps. First, congress should quickly eliminate
the light truck loophole in the current
fuel economy standards.
The share of new vehicles that are classified as light trucks (SUVs, minivans,
and pickups) has increased dramatically from 20 percent of sales when the CAFE
law was first enacted in 1975 to nearly 50 percent of the market today. Yet the
vast majority of vehicles currently regulated as light trucks are in fact used
in exactly the same way as passenger cars. EPA recognized the need to eliminate
the light truck loophole in its Tier II tailpipe standards beginning in 2004.
Congress should follow this lead and eliminate the light truck loophole in fuel
economy regulations in the same time frame. Congress should raise the overall
fuel economy standard for the entire light vehicle fleet over a
longer time period. A recent report by the Union of Concerned Scientists shows
that the fleet average efficiency could be increased to 40 miles per gallon
(mpg) by 2012 and 55 miles per gallon by 2020. The 40 mpg standard could be
achieved through incremental improvements to vehicles with conventional drive
trains, although hybrid and fuel cell vehicles would likely contribute to
achieving this efficiency level. The 55 mpg standard could be most easily
achieved by applying hybrid technology throughout the vehicle fleet.
Congress should also set standards for replacement tires. It is a little
known fact that auto manufacturers use highly-efficient tires to comply with
current CAFE requirements, but comparable tires are not available to the
consumers as replacements. Congress should require replacement tires to meet the
same specifications as those sold on new cars. This measure alone would save
over 70% more oil than is likely to be found if drilling were permitted in the
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
2. Pass the CLEAR Act: Tax Incentives
for Advanced Technology Vehicles and Alternative Fuels
The CLEAR Act (S.
760) provides a comprehensive set of performance-based tax incentives to
accelerate the commercialization of advanced technology vehicles and alternative
fuels. This bill is a major advance over previous vehicle tax credit proposals
because it is the first proposal to link publicly-funded incentives directly to
the public benefits provided by the vehicles that get the incentive, in this
case the amount of petroleum and carbon dioxide displaced. This is accomplished
by linking the amount of the tax credit it offers in part to the actual fuel
economy of the qualifying vehicles. The bill also includes important provisions
to ensure that public support only goes to truly advanced vehicles that reduce
local air pollution as well as global warming pollution and petroleum
consumption.
The policy advances incorporated into CLEAR reflect the
collective advice of a unique coalition of environmental advocates and
automakers. Public interest organizations that have joined NRDC in endorsing the
CLEAR Act include the Union of Concerned Scientists, Environmental Defense, the
American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, the Ecology Center of Ann
Arbor, Michigan and the Michigan Environmental Council.
3. Establish
Incentives to Promote Smart Growth Development Patterns Gasoline use also can be
reduced by directing real estate development away from urban sprawl and toward
"smart growth."Smart-growth suburbs reduce the need to drive by 30 percent or
more, cutting household expenditures on transportation.2 An important incentive
for smart growth is to establish mortgage qualification rules that recognize the
increased affordability of homes that have low transportation costs because they
are located in areas with good access to public transportation.
4.
Modify the Ethanol Tax Credit to Make it Performance-Based The largest incentive
currently going to alternative fuels is the excise tax credit provided for
ethanol. Unfortunately, the environmental benefits generated by this tax credit
are limited because it does not currently incorporate performance criteria. Most
ethanol is currently produced from corn and requires high levels of chemical and
fossil fuel inputs that are almost as great as those for conventional gasoline
over the full fuel cycle of production and use. The existing tax incentive for
ethanol could be made much more effective by linking the amount of the credit to
the net reduction in global warming pollution or fossil fuel consumption
achieved by the ethanol producer. This would encourage ethanol producers to
shift to less energy intensive feedstocks, such as agricultural wastes and
perennial crops, and to improve the efficiency of their conversion processes.
C. Benefits of a Comprehensive Policies to Promote Advanced Technology
Vehicles and Alternative Fuels The economic and environmental benefits of
enacting the comprehensive set of policies described here would be profound. EPA
estimates that the average light truck on the road today produces 164 pounds of
smog- forming pollution (hydrocarbons plus nitrogen oxides) and 8.0 tons of
global warming pollution in traveling 14,000 miles each year. This does not
include upstream emissions associated with producing the fuel, which would add
about 11 pounds of smog- forming pollution and 2 tons of global warming
pollution, bring the totals to 175 pounds of smog-forming pollution and 10 tons
of global warming pollution. Conventional new vehicles are substantially cleaner
than this average with respect to smog- forming pollution, but have roughly the
same fuel economy and therefore the same global warming pollution emissions as
the vehicle existing vehicle it is likely to replace. For example, a vehicle
meeting the National Low Emission Vehicle standard would emit only 12 pounds of
smog-forming pollution from its tailpipe, but upstream emissions would still add
11 pounds, bringing its total impact to 23 pounds of smog-forming pollution and
10 tons of global warming pollution. In contrast, a hybrid vehicle qualifying
for a $3000 tax credit under the CLEAR Act would emit less than 1 pound of
smog-forming pollution from its tailpipe and would use only half as much fuel.
As a result, its total impact would be only 6 pounds of smog-forming pollution
and 5 tons of global warming pollution.
Aggregating from the vehicle
level to the fleet level, the Union of Concerned Scientist (UCS) estimates that
the combination of tax incentives and higher
fuel economy
standards advocated here would save 540 million barrels of oil in the
year 2010, reduce upstream smog-forming pollution by 320 million pounds, and
reduce global warming pollution by 273 million tons. By 2020 the savings would
be even more dramatic: 1.8 billion barrels of oil, 1000 pounds of smog-forming
pollution, and 890 million tons of global warming pollution. All of these
benefits would be achieved while saving consumers billions of dollars: nearly
$10 billion in 2010 and $28 billion in 2020 according to UCS.
D.Legislation to Provide Energy-Efficiency Incentives for the Buildings
Sector
The performance based approach adopted in the CLEAR Act should
also be applied to the design of tax incentives to promote efficiency in other
energy using sectors of our economy. For example, "The Energy-efficient
Buildings Incentives Act"(S. 207), introduced by Sens. Robert Smith (R-N.H.) and
Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.), would provide tax breaks for building
energy-efficient commercial buildings, schools, rental housing and new homes,
cutting their energy needs by 30 percent to 50 percent. It also would provide
tax incentives for the purchase of energy-efficient air conditioners, heating
and cooling systems, and solar water heating and photovoltaic systems.
S. 207 provides tax incentives for energy efficiency in buildings.
Buildings are an often-overlooked source of energy waste. They consume over a
third of U.S. energy use and account for about a third of total air pollution in
the United States. Energy use in buildings can be cut in half or better using
cost- effective technologies that are available to those consumers that are
willing to search them out.
But in practice most of those technologies
simply are not options for energy users, whether consumers or businesses,
because they are too hard to find. Economic incentives can cause the entire
chain of production and consumption, from the manufacturer to the contractor or
vendor to the consumer, to accept new technologies rapidly. In the few cases
where utility programs have been consistent enough across the country and
long-lasting enough, new products have been introduced that have become or will
become the most common product in the marketplace, with reductions in energy use
of 30%-60%. Examples include:
-Refrigerators, where, new products that
are available this year consume less than a quarter of the energy of their
smaller and less feature-laden counterparts 30 years ago.
The last step
forward, saving 30%, resulted from a coordinated incentive program, the Super
Efficient Refrigerator Program (SERP), which was sponsored by utilities with the
advice of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
-Clothes washers,
where some 10% of the market now provides cleaner clothes at a reduction in
energy use of 60% or more. This gain in efficiency resulted from a program
organized by the Consortium for Energy Efficiency (CEE) and supported by Energy
Star. New standards adopted by the Department of Energy - and supported by the
manufacturers - will bring all of the market to this level by 2007.
-Fluorescent lighting systems, where new technologies that also will be
required by manufacturer-supported federal standards will reduce lighting energy
consumption by 30% compared to mid-70's practice while improving the performance
of the lighting system.
The policies embodied in S. 207 are built on
success stories like these.
Manufacturers have pointed out that in order
to introduce new technologies that cost more and that are perceived to be risky,
they need the assurance that the same product can be sold throughout the country
and that the financial incentives will be available for enough time to make it
worth investing in production. S. 207 does this by providing nationally uniform
performance targets for buildings and equipment that will be eligible for tax
incentives for 6 full years. It's worth mentioning that S. 207 and other
policies improving efficiency of electricity and natural gas use have immediate
benefits for consumers and the economy. Let's start with the problem of electric
reliability. Not only in California and the West, but in other parts of the
country, we are facing the risk of electrical blackouts and/or excessively high
electricity prices this summer and next. Regions that are confronting these
problems are trying to move forward aggressively both on energy efficiency
programs and on power plant construction. But the lead times for most actions on
the supply side are far too long to provide a solution. And demand-side
approaches attempted on a state-by- state level are much less effective than
coordinated national activities.
Here, S. 207 could be a critical piece
of a national solution. Air conditioners, for example, represent about 30% of
summertime peak electric loads. Air conditioners that use a third less power can
be purchased today, but they are not produced in large enough quantities to make
a difference to peak load. If incentives are made available, manufacturers could
begin to mass-produce these products in a matter of months, not years. Mass
production and increased competition for tax incentives will drive prices
sharply lower, so the incentives will be self-sustaining in the long-term. And
with 5 million air conditioners being sold every year, a sudden increase in
energy efficiency could have a significant effect in balancing electricity
supply and demand even after less than a year.
Another peak power
efficiency measure with a very short lead time is installing energy-efficient
lighting systems - either new or retrofit - in commercial buildings. Some 15% of
electrical peak power results from lighting in commercial buildings. Efficient
installations, such as those NRDC designed and installed in our own four
offices, can cut peak power demand by over two-thirds while improving lighting
quality. Lighting systems are designed and installed with a lead time of months,
so incentives for efficient lightings as provided in S. 207 could begin to
mitigate electric reliability problems as soon as next summer.
The
second major new problem is the skyrocketing cost of natural gas, which caused
heating bills throughout the country to increase last winter. Improved energy
efficiency can cut gas use for the major uses - heating and water heating - by
30%-50%. Much of this potential could be achieved in the short term, because
water heaters need replacement about every ten years, and are the second largest
user of natural gas in a typical household (and largest gas user in households
living in efficient homes or in warm areas).
These types of quick-acting
incentives help consumers in two different ways: first, they provide new choices
that are not now available in practice for families and businesses that want to
cut their own energy costs while obtaining tax relief. But they also help the
non-participants, because reduced demand cuts prices for everyone.
E.
Benefits of Integrated Policies to Promote Efficiency, Renewable Energy and
Limit Carbon Emissions The beneficial impacts of policies like those described
above are magnified when assembled into an integrated program that combines
incentives for energy efficiency and renewable energy and explicit measures to
limit carbon emissions. An example of such an integrated program can be found in
the November 2000, Department of Energy Report, "Scenarios for a Clean Energy
Future."The policies described in the Clean Energy Future report include greatly
expanded research and development funding for energy efficiency and renewable
energy breakthroughs, a renewable energy portfolio standard, incentives for
renewable energy production and suites of performance standards and incentives
for the vehicles, buildings, and industrial sectors. DOE's report forecasts that
together, these policies would avoid the need for construction of over 60
percent of the nation's base-case predicted need for new electric power plants
over the next 20 years. The policies also would lower Americans' electric bills
by over $120 billion per year, cut CO2 pollution by one-third, and slash
emissions of other pollutants in half. These policies are not the imaginings of
wild- eyed dreamers. In many cases they amount to expanding programs that have
proven to work well already: cap and trade emissions programs; tax incentives;
appliance standards; targeted research and development programs; and
well-structured voluntary performance commitment programs. Adoption of such
programs now is feasible and we urge members of the Committee to lend their
support to early enactment of each of these measures.
LOAD-DATE: July 11, 2001