Clean Energy Opportunity Should Trump Ideology

Trump victory won’t halt the U.S. clean energy boom 

DAN WOYNILLOWICZ AND MERRAN SMITH

Special to The Globe and Mail

Published Monday, Nov. 14, 2016 5:00AM EST

Last updated Sunday, Nov. 13, 2016 5:02PM EST

Dan Woynillowicz is policy director and Merran Smith is executive director of Clean Energy Canada, a national climate and energy think tank based at Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Dialogue.

If you work in clean energy, chances are your inbox and Twitter feed have been overwhelmed with stories about the implications of a Donald Trump presidency for the renewable energy sector. If you were watching markets, no doubt you took note of falling stock prices for clean-energy companies.

The prospects seem grim. And that won’t affect just U.S. companies. Canadian energy companies, from Enbridge to Alterra Power, have been growing through investments in renewable power south of the border. This investment creates jobs at headquarters here in Canada, not to mention value for their Canadian shareholders.

There’s no doubt that Mr. Trump and opponent Hillary Clinton had differing views on climate change and the opportunity clean energy offers. A lot of people lump the two together: If you want to reduce carbon pollution, build more clean energy. Since Mr. Trump thinks climate change is a hoax, that pretty much eliminates the case for clean energy – right?

Not so fast.

The reality is that clean energy has been booming in the United States for a whole bunch of reasons that don’t have much to do with climate change. Things such as health, security and innovation, which lead to high levels of support amongst Republicans – yes, Republicans – for harnessing the power of American water, wind and sun.

Those federal tax credits for wind and solar? They were passed last December by a Republican Congress with bipartisan support. Revoking them would require a legislative effort that may not be looked upon kindly by the many Republican lawmakers who have renewable energy manufacturing and development in their states. Lawmakers like Senator Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, who said this summer: “If he wants to do away with it, he’ll have to get a bill through Congress, and he’ll do it over my dead body.” He won’t be the only one: looking across the country – and the electoral map – the top-10 wind-energy producing congressional districts are represented by Republicans.

Besides, much of the renewable energy boom has been driven by state policy. You might recall that back when he was governor of Texas, George W. Bush passed legislation requiring utilities to buy renewable energy.

It led to a building boom that has made the state the largest producer of wind power in the United States. Iowa, South Dakota, Kansas, Oklahoma and North Dakota lead the United States in the proportion of electricity generated by wind, and all are led by Republican governors. Ditto North Carolina, which trails only California in the development of new solar projects.

Up in New Hampshire, which also went for Mr. Trump, the newly elected Republican governor won on a platform that included support for the Northern Pass transmission line, which would move clean hydroelectricity from Quebec into New Hampshire and the New England power grid.

Not only is this good news for Hydro-Québec, but it’s also good news for New England states, as it will provide base-load power that can enable more development of in-state wind and solar.

Down in Florida, as Floridians delivered their support to Trump, they also voted to maintain unlimited oppostate-level policies in red states and blue states that aren’t going to disappear, and they are driving significant investment in clean energy.

Just last year, the United States saw $56-billion (U.S.) in clean-energy investment, second only to China. That kind of investment creates a lot of jobs: Almost 210,000 Americans are now employed in the solar industry, double the 2010 figures. This represents more people than those employed in oil and gas extraction. The U.S. Bureau of Labor notes that wind turbine technician is the fastest-growing occupation in the country. Would Mr. Trump put these good jobs in jeopardy? Doubtful.

Looking at dollars and cents – and customers’ wallets – it’s also worth highlighting that the unsubsidized cost of wind and solar just keeps falling, down 61 per cent and 82 per cent respectively, between 2009 and 2015.

And these trends will continue, making clean energy the competitive choice. It’s one of the big reasons that so many major U.S. companies are committing to renewable energy and signing big contracts for wind and solar.

If we learned anything from Mr. Trump’s campaign, it was that we should expect the unexpected.

Most people, and the stock markets, seem to think Mr. Trump will be bad for clean energy’s prospects in the United States. They may very well be right.

Or, it might just turn out that clean energy will continue to rise. For clean energy, opportunity should trump ideology.

Link to The Globe and Mail

New Report: Oil and Gas Industry Pressures and Intimidates Scientists Critical of Fracking

BUFFALO, NY – A new report from the Public Accountability Initiative (PAI), a nonprofit watchdog group, finds that the oil and gas industry has been pressuring and intimidating scientists conducting research critical of fracking. 

The report, titled “Freedom Fracked?”, reviews cases where university researchers have been pressured by  – or even fired from – their institutions due to their criticism, either actual or perceived, of the drilling industry. It is the latest in a series of PAI reports bringing transparency to the industry’s role in shaping academic research on fracking.

The issue has recently made headlines in Oklahoma, where Harold Hamm, CEO of Continental Resources, obtained meetings with and apparently sought firings at the Oklahoma Geological Survey as it came closer to acknowledging a link between the disposal of fracking wastewater and the rash of earthquakes that has struck the state in recent years. David Boren, president of the University of Oklahoma (which houses the Oklahoma Geological Survey), sits on the board of directors of Hamm’s company.

PAI’s report raises questions about the Energy Information Administration’s decision to make Hamm a keynote speaker, alongside Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, at its energy conference next week.

The report notes that the Oklahoma story, while particularly egregious, is far from the only case in which academic researchers have come under extreme pressure from industry, in some cases losing their jobs as a result.

“This is a clear trend of oil and gas interests exerting their influence to quiet scientists with whom they disagree.” said Kevin Connor, director of the Public Accountability Initiative.

The Oklahoma scandal parallels that of Geoffrey Thyne, a geologist who lost jobs at both the Colorado School of Mines and the University of Wyoming, due to “pushback from alumni and trustees” at the industry-connected schools. As in Oklahoma, Bill Scoggins – the president of the Colorado School of Mines when Thyne was let go – was a paid board member of several oil and gas firms. Scoggins was also a director of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association at the time, a lobbying group that Thyne said pressured his bosses into terminating his research.

A third researcher, Dan Volz, resigned from his position at the University of Pittsburgh after the school discouraged him from speaking on public health issues – and after his work came under attack by industry.

“The industry’s efforts to stifle academic criticism of fracking while promoting its own biased research shows that it is more concerned with optics than developing a sound scientific record,” said Connor. “They will resort to smears and attacks if a researcher’s work does not fit their narrative that the science is settled in favor of fracking.”

The issue of industry pressure on scientific research on fracking is timely given the release last week of the Environmental Protection Agency’s assessment of the impacts of hydraulic fracturing operations on drinking water, and reports that the industry had refused to cooperate with the investigation.

PAI is a non-profit, non-partisan watchdog group focused on corporate and government accountability issues. In addition to publishing research on critical public accountability issues, PAI maintains LittleSis.org, an involuntary facebook of powerful people and tool for power research that was used to compile data for the report.

The report is available here: http://public-accountability.org/2015/06/freedom-fracked/