Hill Heat

On April 21, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) will release the results of a two-year study that found that the United States can significantly reduce carbon emissions and lower energy bills by implementing an emissions cap in conjunction with a suite of energy and transportation policies. UCS’s recommended approach is similar to the one proposed recently by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.) in a draft discussion climate bill.

The UCS analysis, “Climate 2030: A National Blueprint for a Clean Energy Economy,” uses a modified version of the Department of Energy’s National Energy Modeling System (NEMS) and projects how UCS recommendations would reduce emissions and lower energy costs over the next 20 years. The analysis also provides projections of net business savings on energy and net consumer savings by household and region.

• Kevin Knobloch, UCS president
• Rachel Cleetus, UCS climate economist
• Steve Clemmer, UCS Clean Energy Program research director
• David Friedman, UCS Clean Vehicles Program research director

For the visual portion of UCS’s “webinar,” go to: cc.readytalk.com/r/i6a7q64a5vtw (please log in early to avoid any bottlenecks)

For the audio portion, call: 866-740-1260, access code: 3018025

From the Wonk Room.

Electric utility executives in coal-heavy Indiana and North Dakota attacked cap-and-trade legislation as a “tax” on electricity, calling energy policy reform “too complicated to do swiftly.”

“If Greenland melts,” Secretary of Energy Chu told reporters at the fifth Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago, “we are looking at a 7-meter sea level rise around the world. Some island states will disappear.”

Appearing on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) confusedly attacked the science of climate change: “George, the idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. Every cow in the world, you know, when they do what they do, you’ve got more carbon dioxide.”

From the Wonk Room.

Yesterday, the Energy Department proposed lighting standards for fluorescent and incandescent lamps that could “save consumers and businesses almost $40 billion between 2012 and 2042 and eliminate the need for as much as 3,850 megawatts of power generating capacity by that date.”

Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), speaking at an MIT conference on a clean-energy economy yesterday: “We have to set aside a certain amount of carbon credits to ensure that the steel and the paper and other trade-sensitive, energy-intensive industries are not exploited in the near term by the Chinese and others.”

The National Marine Fisheries Service announced it “will protect habitat for belugas in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, despite a lawsuit from Gov. Sarah Palin (R) seeking to wrest the whales from federal management.”

Speaker: Steven J. Milloy

Host: Becky Norton Dunlop, Vice President, External Relations, The Heritage Foundation

Behind the smiley-face rhetoric of “sustainability” and “conservation” – that warm and fuzzy public image that the environmental movement has cultivated for itself – resides a dark agenda. In Green Hell, Steve Milloy examines how the Greens aim to regulate your behavior, downsize your lifestyle, and invade the most intimate aspects of your personal life. He reflects on the authoritarian impulse underlying the Green crusade. Whether they’re demanding that you turn down your thermostat, stop driving your car, or engage in some other senseless act of self-denial, he argues that the Greens are envisioning a grim future for you marked by endless privation.

With apocalyptic predictions of environmental doom, the Green movement has gained influence throughout American society – from schools and local planning boards to the biggest corporations in the country. And their plans are much more ambitious than you think, says Milloy. What the Greens really seek, with increasing success, is to dictate the very parameters of your daily life – where you can live, what transportation you can use, what you can eat, and even how many children you can have.

Steven J. Milloy is Founder and Publisher of JunkScience.com, a columnist for FoxNews.com, the Co-Founder of the Free Enterprise Action Fund, an Adjunct Scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and Co-Director of the Free Enterprise Project at the National Center for Public Policy Research. An outspoken defender of the free market against the junk science and false claims disseminated by the Greens, his columns and op-ed pieces have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Financial Times, and Los Angeles Times.

Location: The Heritage Foundation’s Lehrman Auditorium

Chairman Edward J. Markey will host President Obama’s top climate, energy and science advisers along with other energy experts at a forum at MIT on Monday, April 13 to discuss the future of clean energy in national policy and in the Massachusetts economy. They will discuss clean energy solutions for creating jobs, improving our national security and protecting our planet from global warming. Last week, Rep. Markey released draft legislation that will be the main congressional vehicle to push clean energy technologies and create millions of new jobs.

• Chairman Edward J. Markey (D-Malden), Chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming and Energy and Environment Subcommittee
• Carol Browner, Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change
• John Holdren, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology
• Ernest J. Moniz, Professor of Physics and Cecil and Ida Green Distinguished Professor, MIT
• Dr. Susan Hockfield, President, MIT
• Daniel Yergin, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates
• Massachusetts clean energy CEOs and others

Wong Auditorium, Tang Center, Building E51, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Live webcast.

From the Wonk Room.

“Wind turbines accounted for 42 percent of all new generating capacity in the U.S.,” growing into “a key part of the energy infrastructure in Minnesota and Iowa,” which can now generate more wind power than California.

On Tuesday, Maine lawmakers “will take up one of the most far-reaching anti-global-warming bills to go before any state Legislature in the country” “to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and cut carbon dioxide emissions” but “Maine’s business community wants the Legislature to kill the proposal.”

U.S. Department of Energy officials and top commercial real estate executives kicked off the Commercial Real Estate Energy Alliance, a public-private partnership aiming to produce widespread net-zero-energy commercial buildings by the year 2025.

More than two dozen organizations, including well-respected groups from the research, advocacy, faith-based, labor and civil rights communities, have come together to ensure that emerging climate legislation protects and provides opportunity for society’s most vulnerable individuals and families. The Climate Equity Alliance unites around shared concerns about the effects of climate change and climate change legislation on low- and moderate-income households. Alliance members believe climate legislation should both help to build an inclusive green economy — providing pathways to prosperity and expanding opportunity for America’s workers and communities — and ensure that low- and moderate-income people receive relief from the higher energy costs that will result, so that they are not pushed into poverty or made poorer.

This conference call for reporters will unveil the Climate Equity Alliance and present the principles drawing these groups together, with particular attention to how policymakers should move forward following the draft legislation introduced by Representatives Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Edward Markey (D-MA).

• Robert Greenstein, Executive Director, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
• Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, CEO, Green For All
• Gerry Hudson, Executive Vice President, SEIU
• Other speakers TBA

Click here to register for this conference call.

• Green for All
• Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
• Center for American Progress
• Service Employees International Union
• NAACP
• National Hispanic Environmental Council
• Oxfam America
• First Focus
• Economic Policy Institute
• Redefining Progress
• US Action
• Coalition on Human Needs
• The Workforce Alliance
• Center for Law and Social Policy
• The Washington Office of Public Policy, Women’s Division, United Methodist Church
• Union for Reform Judaism
• National Low Income Housing Coalition
• ACORN
• Policy Link
• Citizens for Tax Justice
• Enterprise Community Partners

The 2009 EIA conference is being held April 7-8 at the Washington Convention Center.

Please register onsite at the Walter E Washington Convention Center starting at 7:30am on Tuesday, April 7th.

From the Wonk Room.

“Windmills off the East Coast could generate enough electricity to replace most, if not all, the coal-fired power plants in the United States,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Monday. “It is not technology that is pie-in-the sky; it is here and now.”

In a letter to Science not available to the public, prominent climate scientists argue “it is imperative we improve the exchange of information between scientists and public stakeholders.”

As Antarctic ice shelves crumble at the end of the southern summer, the northern summer begins with the Arctic “on thinner ice than ever before,” with 90 percent of sea ice less than three years old.

The 2009 EIA conference is being held April 7-8 at the Washington Convention Center.

Please register onsite at the Walter E Washington Convention Center starting at 7:30am on Tuesday, April 7th.