Hill Heat

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.

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 Environmental Protection Agency has announced that it will hold a two-day public hearing next week in Arlington, Va. on its “proposal for the first comprehensive national system for reporting emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases produced by major sources in the United States.”

The hearing will take place Monday and Tuesday, April 6 and 7 from 9:00 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the EPA Potomac Yard South Conference Center, 2777 Crystal Drive, Room S-1204, Arlington, VA 22202. Daily parking is available in the building and photo ID is required.

From the Wonk Room.

In Bonn, White House climate negotiator Jonathan Pershing said Obama’s plan to lower greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by 2020 is in the overlap of pragmatism and science.

Calling on developed nations to cut greenhouse emissions by “at least 45 percent below 1990 levels by 2020,” small island states say current targets are “going to destroy their countries.”

On Wednesday, 15 Democrats joined every Republican senator to preserve the filibuster against green economy legislation, even if “the Senate finds that public health, the economy and national security of the United States are jeopardized by inaction on global warming.”

Please come to the inaugural Hill Heat Happy Hour at the Reef in Adams Morgan Monday afternoon at 6:30, to drink Manhattans and discuss Copenhagen, and mix beers with biochar. Our special guest speaker will be Jerome Guillet, a top wind energy financier and sustainable energy blogger. In a brief presentation, Making Finance Sustainable, Jerome will discuss how to avoid another global financial meltdown and what barriers exist to the financing of the renewable energy sector. Raise your spirits while you raise your glass, and share ideas while you share a pitcher.

Jerome Guillet is a French investment banker based in Paris, specializing in the energy sector, and more specifically on wind power. He blogs as “Jerome a Paris” on DailyKos and other sites and is editor of the European Tribune (www.eurotrib.com), a website and European politics and international affairs, and contributing editor to The Oil Drum (www.theoildrum.com), a website focused on energy. He’s also a member of the “Energize America” Netroots effort to draft a sane energy policy.

RSVP here.

From the Department of Energy, Energy Secretary Steven Chu today offered a $535 million loan guarantee for Solyndra, Inc. to support the company’s construction of a commercial-scale manufacturing plant for its proprietary cylindrical solar photovoltaic panels. The loan guarantee is conditional on Solyndra satisfying equity commitments. Announcing his first loan guarantee, Chu said:

This investment is part of President Obama’s aggressive strategy to put Americans back to work and reduce our dependence on foreign oil by developing clean, renewable sources of energy. We can create millions of new, good paying jobs that can’t be outsourced. Instead of relying on imports from other countries to meet our energy needs, we’ll rely on America’s innovation, America’s resources, and America’s workers.

Based in Fremont, CA, Solyndra is currently ramping up production in its initial manufacturing facilities. Once finalized, the DOE loan guarantee will enable the company to build and operate its manufacturing processes at full commercial scale.

Solyndra estimates that:

• The construction of this complex will employ approximately 3,000 people.
• The operation of the facility will create over 1,000 jobs in the United States.
• The installation of these panels will create hundreds of additional jobs in the United States.
• The commercialization of this technology is expected to then be duplicated in multiple other manufacturing facilities.

Secretary Chu initially set a target to have the first conditional commitments out by May.

From the Wonk Room.

Green for All founder and Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Van Jones is joining the White House as the adviser for green jobs, enterprise and innovation.

Van Jones is well known for expressing an inclusive vision for a green economy. He has challenged progressives to stop “getting rolled by the Happy Meal politics” of conservatives, who sell unhealthy policies under feel-good slogans. In response to the $700 billion Wall Street bailout last October, he called for a “green bailout” to “retrofit and repower America using clean, green energy — and create millions of new jobs, in the process.”

From the Wonk Room.

EPA administrator “Lisa Jackson has ordered the Great Lakes office of EPA to stop negotiations with the Dow Chemical company – begun in the last days of the Bush administration – over controversial dioxin cleanup in the Saginaw Bay watershed.” The Wonk Room reported in May 2008 how regional EPA administrator Mary Gade, in a scandal reminiscent of Alberto Gonzales’s firing of U.S. Attorneys, was pushed out by Bush appointees for her efforts to make Dow Chemical clean up its century-old toxic waste. As a Center for American Progress fellow, Clinton EPA official Robert Sussman called her firing “highly irregular”:

If her only sin was zeal in protecting the public, firing her was wrong and will send a troubling message to EPA employees all across the country who are trying to do their jobs. Clearly, it’s up to Steve Johnson to explain why he fired Mary and up to Congress to investigate the circumstances.

Despite Congressional inquiries, Administrator Johnson never explained the firing, and only left his post when Bush left office. Now, however, Sussman – who supervised Obama’s EPA transition team – is the EPA’s senior policy counsel. According to the Michigan Messenger’s Eartha Jane Melzer, “Jackson also stated that newly appointed advisor, Robert Sussman, would provide oversight on the matter.”

From the Wonk Room.

A top aide for Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) will be leaving his Senate post after a Wonk Room investigation revealed how he coordinates conservative climate change messaging. Marc Morano, Inhofe’s environmental communications director, joined the Senate in 2006 to promote Sen. Inhofe’s denial of manmade global warming via the Drudge Report and other right-wing outlets. E&E News reports that Morano will return to the conservative media network as a blogger for Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT):

Marc Morano, the spokesman for Senate Environment and Public Works Committee ranking member James Inhofe (R-Okla.), will leave the committee later this month to become executive director and chief correspondent for a fledgling Web site that will serve as a “clearinghouse and one-stop shopping” for climate and environmental news.

Morano joined the Senate, with a $134,000 a year salary, from the rightwing website Cybercast News Service (CNS), where he launched the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) in 2004 and attacked the war record of Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) in 2006. Morano was Rush Limbaugh’s “Man in Washington” in the 1990s.

Both CNS – a subsidiary of Brent Bozell’s Media Research Center – and CFACT are part of the Scaife network of conservative front groups, supported by the Richard Mellon Scaife family fortune and corporations like Exxon Mobil. CFACT and the Media Research Center are co-sponsors of the Heartland Institute’s International Conference on Climate Change, a global warming denier conference that begins Sunday, March 8.

From the Wonk Room.

The top public relations group for the coal industry is looking to shape public attitudes online, with a $20 million media budget for Internet-based advertising alone. The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) is on the search for a “Vice President, Paid and Digital Media” to increase the public’s “appreciation for the use of coal”:

The Vice President, Paid and Digital Media is responsible for implementing proactive digital media and traditional media placement strategies as a component of an integrated national communication program designed to 1) support coal-based electricity advocacy initiatives and 2) increase the public’s awareness of and appreciation for the use of coal to generate electricity.

This position, according to recruiting firm Korn/Ferry International, will oversee the public relations and media placement firms under contract and manage an annual media budget in excess of $20 million: more than $3 million for “digital media programs” (like the “Clean Coal Carolers” and a “Blogger Brigade“) and greater than $17 million for “media placement.”

ACCCE’s planned digital efforts are part of a comprehensive, national public relations campaign. In 2008, ACCCE spent over $45 million on its messaging, including $10.5 million to lobby Congress. The PR firm Hawthorn Group has promoted its “grassroots campaign” for ACCCE involving “sending ‘clean coal’ branded teams to hundreds of presidential candidate events” and “giving away free t-shirts and hats emblazoned with our branding: Clean Coal.”

The Wonk Room received the job description when Korn/Ferry approached Center for American Progress Action Fund’s Associate Director for Online Advocacy, Alan Rosenblatt, about the job. “While some may work just for money,” Rosenblatt said, “progressives work for values. Which might explain why this headhunter was naive enough to recruit me despite the fact I work for an organization that opposes her client.”

Download the Korn/Ferry job description for ACCCE’s Vice President of Paid Digital Media here.