2009: The Year of the Carbon Market

By Rob Day

Happy new year, everyone!

A big thank you to the few thousand of you who regularly read this column, and thanks for the kind words many of you have sent my way over the past few years. I hope these rambling writings continue to be useful for you…

Everyone probably already has a lot of resolutions already in mind for the new year, but allow me to suggest a few additional ones (these are mostly easy, so you can quickly increase your “success rate” if you add them to your list):

• Spend 2 minutes reading this very good article on how 2009 is going to mean big things for carbon markets.

• Spend 3 minutes filling out the Cleantech Investing readers’ prediction questionnaire.

• 2009 will also be The Year for Cleantech Networking ™… Spend 1 minute signing up for the Cleantech Investing group on Facebook, to connect with your fellow C.I. readers.

• Spend 1 minute signing up for the Renewable Energy Business Network (REBN) group on LinkedIn, to connect with fellow entrepreneurs, researchers, and businesspeople in cleantech. Also, look for REBN events in your city in 2009, where you can network in that most antiquated of modes: Face-to-face.

• Spend 10 minutes adding your thoughts to the ongoing conversation around “What’s wrong with cleantech VC”… Read the presentation here and add your thoughts in the comments section, or email me your thoughts. Thanks to all of you who continue to contribute to the dialogue…

• If you haven’t already, spend 3 minutes adding the following sites to your RSS reader or other reading list: Clean Break… Cleantech Blog… Two Steps Forward… EcoGeek.org… Switchboard… and of course, Green Light. (You can also find links to this column’s RSS feed, or to sign up for email delivery, in the sidebar to the right under “Admin”)

• Spend 5 minutes at the EERE’s Alternative Fueling Station Locator… And ponder why, with the billions upon billions spent on producing biofuels, it’s so tough to find a convenient retail option near you where you can actually purchase the stuff for your vehicle — and even when you do find such fuels, how can you know how sustainably (or not) they were produced?

• Spend 5 minutes flipping through the early release ppt of the DOE’s 2009 Annual Energy Outlook… And ponder how we’re going to possibly address our looming climate change and energy supply challenges if fossil fuels are really going to remain 79% of the U.S.’s energy supply mix by 2030. Major systematic changes are clearly needed…

That’s it! Just 30 minutes’ worth of to-dos over the holiday weekend, and you can cross 8 new year’s resolutions off of your list. Best wishes for a safe and peaceful and prosperous 2009 all around…

Comments

[Greg Pinelli:]

There's NO doubt the Obama Administration is set up to give Coal a very hard time. Carol Browner hates the stuff..I don't think this means an end to coal by any means but its's going to mean a cap and trade system that's VERY restrictive..and new coal fired electricity plants are NOT going to be approved...
Look to nucleat (DNN..URPTF...CCJ)..I'... staying away big time from KOL and BTU...and nat gas..What else is ready to go and will buy time for alternative infrastructure to develop??

2008 Dec 31 10:44 PM

[Ferdinand E...:]

Hmm, Newsweek a few weeks ago said that the new US government want a cap-and-trade (Carbon Trading) arrangement like that which has worked so well in Europe.

Way to go fellas and gals. The European scheme is a distinguished failure, and I am preparing a long article dealing with some of its shortcomings. As a matter of fact one of my New Year's resolutions is to give carbon trading the attention that I gave electric deregulation, which obtained my good self a wonderful visiting professorship in Hong Kong. Of course, my attitude, body language and terminology meant that a return ticket was out of the question, but at least I said what was necessary. The same will be true here. Carbon trading is both a scam and goofy.

Jan 01 08:51 AM

[DiggerUK:]

Mr. Banks, I do hope your 2009 article will show how the renewables industry would fold without the bailout packages.
Bailout packages that foresaw the failure before it happened, and helped a pig to buy lots of lipstick.

Jan 01 10:16 AM

[Erich J Knight:]

We can certainly learn from the EU experience, and avoid their pit falls & wind falls.
Cap & Trade is working, with minimal pain, for NOX & SOX in the US.

Biochar, the modern version of an ancient Amazonian agricultural practice called Terra Preta (black earth), is gaining widespread credibility as a way to address world hunger, climate change, rural poverty, deforestation, and energy shortages… SIMULTANEOUSLY!

a Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Tool;

POZNAN, Poland, December 10, 2008 - The International Biochar Initiative (IBI) announces that the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) has submitted a proposal to include biochar as a mitigation and adaptation technology to be considered in the post-2012-Copenhagen agenda of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). A copy of the proposal is posted on the IBI website at
The International Biochar Initiative (IBI).

Senator / Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar has done the most to nurse this biofuels system in his Biochar provisions in the 07 & 08 farm bill,
www.biochar-internatio...

NASA's Dr. James Hansen Global warming solutions paper and letter to the G-8 conference, placing Biochar / Land management the central technology for carbon negative energy systems.
arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/pa...

Modern Pyrolysis of biomass is a process for Carbon Negative Bio fuels, massive Carbon sequestration,10X Lower Methane & N2O soil emissions, and 3X Fertility Too.
Every 1 ton of Biomass yields 1/3 ton Charcoal for soil Sequestration, Bio-Gas & Bio-oil fuels, so is a totally virtuous, carbon negative energy cycle.

Ultimately we must leave the combustion age behind. Charcoal to the soil is a bridging first step as other energy conversion technologies bloom from Nano and bio reasearch. Thankfully we can do soil sequestration now.

Oil interest must come to see the overwhelming value of their fossil carbon as the feedstock for the manufacture ( via carbon nanotubes, fullerines, DNA programed nano self assembly, etc.) of virtually all things in the near future.

This convergence of different technologies will end the Combustion age.

Terra Preta starts as a soil nano technology with increased CEC, than a micro tech with our wee- beasties / fungus, and macro with bugs and worms.

Biotic Carbon, the carbon transformed by life, should never be combusted, oxidized and destroyed. It deserves more respect, reverence even, and understanding to use it back to the soil where 2/3 of excess atmospheric carbon originally came from.

We all know we are carbon-centered life, we seldom think about the complex web of recycled bio-carbon which is the true center of life. A cradle to cradle, mutually co-evolved biosphere reaching into every crack and crevice on Earth.

It's hard for most to revere microbes and fungus, but from our toes to our gums (onward), their balanced ecology is our health. The greater earth and soils are just as dependent, at much longer time scales. Our farming for over 10,000 years has been responsible for 2/3rds of our excess greenhouse gases. This soil carbon, converted to carbon dioxide, Methane & Nitrous oxide began a slow stable warming that now accelerates with burning of fossil fuel.

Wise Land management; Organic farming and afforestation can build back our soil carbon,
Biochar allows the soil food web to exponentially build much more recalcitrant organic carbon, ( living soil biomass & Glomalins) in addition to the carbon in the biochar.

The recent EU permits granted 3RAgroCarbon 3ragrocarbon.com , after 4 years of testing show Biochar's massive increase in yields of more than 100%
"Doses: 400 kg / ha – 1000 kg / ha at different horticultural cultivars
Plant height Increase 141 % versus control
Picking yield Increase 630 % versus control
Picking fruit Increase 650 % versus control
Total yield Increase 202 % versus control
Total piece of fruit Increase 171 % versus control
Fruit weight Increase 118 % versus control"

Biochar data base;
terrapreta.bioenergyli...

Carbon to the Soil, the only ubiquitous and economic place to put it.

In a recent National Public Radio interview, Michael Pollan ( Food author) talks about how he was approached by a Democratic party staffer about his New York Times article, The "Farmer & Chief" an open letter to the next president concerning U.S. agriculture/energy policy. The staffer wanted Pollan to summarize the article into a page or two to get it into the hands of Barack Obama. Pollan declined, saying that if he could have said everything that needed to be said in two pages, he wouldn't have written 8000 words.

Michael Pollan is well briefed about Biochar technology, but did not include it in his "Farmer & Chief" article to President Obama, (Which he did read & cited in a speech) but I'm sure Biochar will be his 8001th word to him.

Cheers,
Erich J. Knight
540 289 9750

Jan 01 11:20 AM

[secmaven:]

Computer models of global warming do not cut it. Actual temperature measurements 2000 to date in this century indicate that the world is cooling! And is it any wonder given the millions of tons of sun reflecting particulates being pumped into the atmosphere by fossil fuel combustion? A carbon tax may be a good thing but for a far different reason that non existent global warming.

Jan 01 12:26 PM

[tin1:]

The sun is the main driving force behind the earths climate. The earth has actually been cooling for the last 5 years. That is Why the government insiders working for the Private central banks which collect the carbon tax have changed their talking points. Its no longer global warming, its now Climate Change lol. Explain why in the same period the earth was warming up slightly that the same thing was happening in the rest of the solar system. The ice caps on Mars which are comprised of frozen methane , were retreating at several miles a year. Two of Jupiter's moons which were previously frozen balls of ice turned into liquid seas. The common denominator is the sun, not people driving around in suv's. Why do governments have to buy carbon credits from the private central banks who's shareholders are un elected? The same people who run the ponzi scheme of loaning the same governments money with interest, called fractional reserve banking . The carbon tax is way these globalists to impose a tax to control our day to day living and send all industries over to asia where there are no restrictions. People need to do their homework before deciding the government is doing this because they love us.

Jan 01 11:42 PM

[Ferdinand E...:]

Carbon trading, cap-and-trade, emissions trading, or whatever else it is called is a scam and goofy. It is also a tax, as can be easily shown. As a result, where this issue is concerned I prefer a straight-out carbon tax - known in economic theory as a Pigou tax, after the Cambridge (UK) economist Arthur Pigou.

Is there really global or climate warming? Personally, I don't know, but both presidential candidates in the US thought that there was, and so there is no point in hopping up on a soapbox and proclaiming that it is nonsense. Instead, for theoretical reasons, I prefer to inform anyone who is interested that the carbon tax is best because it might be possible to eventually get a large part of it back to the people who pay it.

Jan 02 07:48 AM

[Freedoms Truth:]

" I prefer to inform anyone who is interested that the carbon tax is best because it might be possible to eventually get a large part of it back to the people who pay it."

Yes, I too have come to that realization as well. Let us not discount the corruption malfeasance that can flow from cap-and-trade. Politicians, ie people like Gov Blagovich, just found selling a US Senate seat, will be in charge of writing the legislation and decide who gets the cap-and-trade 'credits'. the picking of winners and losers is a trillion-dollar corruption oppty. Ex-Enron traders and the recently bailed-out wall st crowd will be in charge of trading these credits. There are so many ways for the 'little guy' to get the short end of the stick, its a surprise we dont have any of them saying "Hey, I can take the extra 1 degree warming thank you, just leave my electric bill alone."

As for:
"Personally, I don't know, but both presidential candidates in the US thought that there was, and so there is no point in hopping up on a soapbox and proclaiming that it is nonsense."

The point would be to stop letting false fearmongering drive policy. The "global warming is a crisis" claim is baloney.

Personally, many didn't care whether or not the emperor was stark naked or not, they were so enamored with the conventional wisdom they just went with the flow and decided if all the smart people said he was wearing fine clothes, they MUST be right. It took a little girl to point out the truth, because the grownups were too busy worrying about perception instead of reality.

Jan 03 03:18 PM