As global warming intensifies, demands for human manipulation of the climate system are likely to grow. But carrying out geoengineering plans could prove daunting, as conflicts erupt over the unintended regional consequences of climate intervention and over who is entitled to deploy climate-altering technologies.

Last month, J. Craig Venter announced that his team had successfully developed the first self-replicating cell to be controlled entirely by synthetic DNA. Not artificial life exactly, but certainly something different: a synthetic cell in which humans had intervened deliberately with the express purpose of changing the genetic structure and characteristics of a natural organism.

Humans are lining up comparable purposeful interventions in the functioning of another physical system — not the microscopic system of a bacterium, but the macroscopic planetary system that fashions and delivers all our climates. The range of such potential climate intervention technologies — from altering how much of the sun’s energy strikes the Earth, to removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere — continues to expand against a backdrop of anxiety that humanity may inadvertently be pushing global climate toward a dangerous state.

These two new ventures — manipulating the biological functions of cells and manipulating the physical functioning of the climate system — may be seen as simply the latest steps in the enduring human project of seeking control over the physical world.

Such interventions would bring about, if not exactly artificial climates, then certainly synthetic ones.

Hominid mastery of fire in the Paleolithic brought about radical changes in the possibilities for human life, and the manufacture of antibiotic drugs in the 20th century opened up a wide range of new medical treatments that have reduced suffering and extended human life. Designing self-replicating cells and re-tuning global climate may therefore appear as inevitable developments in our ingenuity and our ability to manipulate the world around us.

But compared to the questions raised by Venter’s biotechnologies, two categorically different sets of questions arise about climate manipulation: How do we judge the risks of unintended consequences? And who is entitled to initiate the large-scale deployment of a climate intervention technology — and under what circumstances?

Proponents are suggesting two broad categories of technologies to roll back global warming. The first, solar radiation management (SRM), calls for altering the solar radiation budget of the planet, using such technologies as mirrors in space, aerosols in the stratosphere, and cloud whitening over the oceans. And then there are technologies, grouped under the category of carbon dioxide removal (CDR), that propose to accelerate the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by fertilizing the oceans with iron, extracting CO2 from the atmosphere, or sequestering CO2 by heating biomass in oxygen-free kilns and burying the charcoal underground.

Such interventions would bring about, if not exactly artificial climates, then certainly synthetic ones. The calls for significant investments in these technologies have grown in boldness and urgency over the last few years. Whether from government agencies or private investors such as Richard Branson or the company, Climos, resources are being directed into pursuing something akin to Venter’s vision of synthetically controlled cells, but the “cell” in question here is the planetary climate.

Both genres of climate intervention technologies raise serious ethical questions about the propriety of such manipulations, about their accordance with the collective will of people on Earth, and about the unforeseen side effects of such interventions. But the proposition of creating synthetic climates through solar radiation management (less so with carbon dioxide removal) introduces a range of additional concerns not shared with microscopic cellular manipulation.

Concerns arise from the brute fact that there is only one climate system with which to experiment.

These concerns arise from the brute fact that there is only one climate system with which to experiment, and it is the one we live with. If it is planetary-scale manipulation of climate that is desired — and it is — then experimentation has to be conducted on a planetary scale to prove the effectiveness — or not — of the technology.

The first concern is the risk of unintended consequences. Given that it is not possible to conduct large-scale planetary experiments in solar radiation management before going “live” with the technology, risk assessments have to fall back on using virtual climates generated by computer models. The Earth system models currently used to explore the possible future effects of rising atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are the same ones that have to be used to explore the simulated consequences of a variety of solar radiation interventions.

Using aerosols to offset the additional planetary heating caused by greenhouse gases is a relatively straightforward theoretical calculation; it is a case of simple planetary budgeting. Much harder is to know what this “re-balancing” of the global heat budget will do to atmospheric and ocean dynamics around the world. These are the dynamics that make weather happen at particular times and in particular places and which — through various combinations of rain, wind, temperature, and humidity — shape ecological processes and human social practices. The dangers and opportunities associated with climate occur through these local weather phenomena, not through an abstract index of global temperature.

If the goal of climate engineering is simply to reset the global temperature dial at its 19th or late-20th century register, that might be possible to do. But in the process of doing so, significant perturbations to regional climate conditions, and inter-annual variability around those conditions, are likely to be introduced. Even if changes in the frequency and intensity of storms and precipitation were to be a zero-sum game globally, the distributional effects of such changes will create winners and losers. Such phenomena as El Niño, the Asian monsoon, and the Arctic Oscillation will not remain unaffected. And given the far-from-adequate ability of Earth system models to simulate the regional-scale dynamics of the hydrological system, no one should be confident that the full risks of solar radiation management interventions will be revealed and quantified.

Which brings us to the second question that sets apart the project to fashion a synthetic climate from the project to create synthetic self-replicating cells: Under what future scenario could one imagine full-scale deployment of solar radiation management taking place?

Some argue solar radiation management should be available in the event of a climate emergency.

Many commentators have drawn attention to the multi-layered issues of financing, ethics, governance, geopolitics, and public opinion that surround most of these solar radiation intervention technologies. These were very much to the fore at the recent Asilomar International Conference on Climate Intervention Technologies in California earlier this year.

And yet a number of senior and significant voices in the scientific academy and policy community continue to speak of the urgency with which solar radiation management research should be pursued. They offer these putative control technologies as another option in the portfolio of climate management strategies, with climate manipulation joining climate change mitigation and climate adaptation in a trinity of strategies available for policymakers. At the very least, it is argued, solar radiation management should be available as a backstop technology if the world finds itself in a climate emergency when a dangerous tipping point needs to be avoided.

But can we imagine a possible scenario under which the decision to proceed to full deployment of solar radiation management might be made? Let us assume the injection of aerosols into the stratosphere had been placed at the top of the list of climate intervention technologies. Let us also assume that the basic operational mechanics of getting aerosols into the optimal layers of the stratosphere for maximum solar shielding had been figured out. One possible scenario might look something like this:

It is January 2028 and the United Kingdom — one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council — puts forward a formal resolution to start the systematic injection of sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere. The UK’s argument is that with Arctic sea ice extent the previous summer having shrunk to just 25 percent of its late-20th century value, with monitors in Canadian permafrost identifying increased rates of methane release, and with the explosion at a nuclear reactor in China two years earlier leading to a moratorium on all new nuclear power plant construction, such direct climate remediation measures are called for.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) provides a report for the Security Council on the regional climatic risks of such intervention. Based on the best Earth system models, the IPCC offers probabilistic predictions of the 10-year mean changes in regional rainfall around the world that would result from sustained aerosol injection.

The 15 members of the Security Council argue over the evidence. In particular, they spend much time weighing the probabilities that the Asian monsoon might be weakened as a result. Security Council members also argue about how long the initial aerosol injection should continue — for 1 year, 3 years, or 5 years.

If the politics of Kyoto proved intractable, wait and see the geopolitics of engineering synthetic climates.

Against a background of vociferous, and at times violent, globally-coordinated public campaigns (both in favor and against such intervention), the Security Council votes 11-2 in favor, with 2 abstentions. The deployment will proceed for a one-year period, after which a full evaluation will be conducted.

Over the following months, protestors attempt to sabotage some of the planes being used to inject aerosols, and direct-action groups affiliated with HOME (Hands Off Mother Earth) send up their own aircraft in symbolic efforts to scrub the aerosols from the stratosphere. After one year the deployment is temporarily halted and climate data are evaluated.

Global temperature has indeed fallen from the previous 10-year mean of 15.23º C (the 1961-1990 average was 14º C) to just 14.57º C, the coolest year on the planet since 2014. But regional climate anomalies have been large and variable. Of most concern was a failure of the Asian monsoon, at the cost of $50 billion to the Indian economy, and the most intense cyclone season in the South China Sea for 20 years.

India — one of the rotating members of the Security Council — and China now trigger an emergency debate calling for a permanent ban on deployment of aerosol injection technologies. The IPCC argues that one year’s data prove nothing about the efficacy or impact of solar radiation management. But against a background of further global protests, led by the new popular civic movements in China and India, the Security Council now splits 5-5, with 5 abstentions. Turmoil ensues as two Canadian billionaires unilaterally continue aerosol injection.

Of course one could create a hundred other scenarios under which the story of solar radiation management may unfold. But I use this one to draw attention to the profound political obstacles and humanitarian risks that shadow attempts to engineer the climate through solar radiation management. The organization HOME already exists, seeking to mobilize people everywhere to tell climate engineers to proceed no further with climate manipulation.

The technical body supporting the work of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity has recently proposed a draft text along the following lines: “No climate-related geo-engineering activities [should] take place until there is an adequate scientific basis on which to justify such activities and appropriate consideration of the associated risks for the environment and biodiversity and associated social, economic and cultural impacts.” (Emphasis added.)

Words such as “adequate” and “appropriate” offer new grounds for contention in an already argumentative world. If the politics of climate mitigation policy under the guise of the Kyoto Protocol have proved intractable, just wait until we see the geopolitics surrounding the negotiation of the first protocol on engineering synthetic climates. In the name of saving the planet from inadvertent greenhouse-gas exacerbated climate change, climate engineers may simply be offering us one Promethean fire to offset the effects of another.

Article by Mike Hulme appearing courtesy Yale Environment 360.

photo: jurvetson

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Twelve years ago in Kyoto, the world was poised to act on a climate treaty but looked for a clear signal from the United States. Now, with the Copenhagen talks set to begin, the outcome once again hinges on what the U.S. is prepared to do.

President Obama took much of the drama out of the Copenhagen talks earlier this month when he and other world leaders announced that there’d be no treaty at the end — in essence, they said, we’ll wait for the U.S. Senate. Still, you can’t call off the party entirely, and so the planet’s climate scientists, bureaucrats, activists, skeptics and journalists will still descend on the Danish capital in a few days for a fortnight of meeting, marching, propounding, denying, and most of all spinning.

Almost all of what happens will be murky (and not just because Copenhagen in December averages 45 minutes of sunlight daily). Without the focus provided by the need to draw up a real document, much of the tension may go out of the proceedings — minus a deadline it’s hard to push to resolution on anything. And yet it’s the fate of the world being discussed: as British negotiator Ed Miliband put it, “Bretton Woods plus Yalta multiplied by Reykjavik.” We’ll see some kind of paper signed, but it won’t commit anyone to much of anything — the talks will lurch forward into next year. Most of what occurs in Denmark will be shadow boxing, feeling each other out.

And so here are a few of the places that bear watching, to see if some kind of consensus develops over the course of the proceedings:

• What’s the science really saying? For almost five years, the consensus position of those who cared about producing a treaty has been that we’re struggling to avoid a temperature rise greater than two degrees, and that to do that we’ll need to limit atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide to less than 450 parts per million. These sound like the kind of eye-glazing numbers that journalists try to avoid — but the vast and slow-moving bureaucracy of the climate negotiations process has adopted them as the goal, and most of the proposals on the table are geared to reaching (or plausibly approaching) those targets.
• The problem is, that’s not good science any more. After the rapid melt of Arctic sea ice in the summer of 2007, researchers recalibrated. A NASA team said that the right figure is 350 — that anything more is not compatible with “the planet on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted.” That assertion has been backed up by no less than Rajendra Pachauri, the UN’s chief scientist, who has gotten grief for saying — most recently in an interview with Yale Environment 360 — that 350 is where we need to go. Ninety-two of the poorest nations on Earth have officially signed on to that target, and at the moment it’s still in the negotiating text, albeit in a preamble about a “shared vision” for the future.

  The problem, of course, is that meeting a 350 target goes far beyond anything the Obama administration, much less the Senate, or the Chinese, or many of the other big players, are currently contemplating. We now know that Obama will arrive on Dec. 9 en route to Oslo, and that he will offer roughly a 17 percent cut in 2005 emissions levels by 2020. That would be about a zero percent cut from 1990 levels; in other words, not very ambitious — the absolute minimum for saving face, but not enough to save the world.

  Poor nations are starting to realize how badly they’re going to be hit by climate change.

  Going further would be fundamentally disruptive — it would mean not incremental change but a wartime footing. So the question of which science you embrace is really a proxy for how much you’re willing to do. And in this case “political realists” are the opposite of “scientific realists.” If you’re figuring the odds, there will more politicians than scientists on hand in Copenhagen.

• How tough will the developing countries be? Since Obama’s announcement that he will go to Copenhagen robbed journalists of their first cliffhanger, the next is likely to be whether the most vulnerable nations walk out on the proceedings. Here’s Mohammed Nasheed, president of the Maldives, whose country sets aside money in its budget each year in case it needs to buy a new homeland when its current one sinks beneath the waves, talking about what a 2 degree Celsius temperature increase would mean: “At two degrees we would lose the coral reefs. At 2 degrees we would melt Greenland. At 2 degrees my country would not survive.” He called the proposals from the big players a “suicide pact” and pledged to try and stop them. “As a president I cannot accept this. As a person I cannot accept this. I refuse to believe that it is too late, and that we cannot do anything about it.”

  Nasheed rallied a dozen of the most vulnerable nations earlier this month at a summit in his capital of Male. And virtually every poor nation is starting to realize how badly they’re going to be hit by climate change: The vulnerability of Andean glaciers, Asian monsoons, African rainfall patterns become clearer with each passing year. But the pressure from the rich nations — and indeed from some of the big environmental groups — not to be a skunk at the garden party will be intense. And it will come with sums of money attached — the kind of money that traditionally has been enough to buy off the anger of the poor world.

  The idea of the U.S. meeting anything like its moral obligation seems small.

• Which leads to the next obvious question — just how much money will be on the table? The sums required are staggering. The World Bank recently estimated that keeping temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius would mean spending $140 to $675 billion a year in the developing countries — which, after all, will only be developing if they keep figuring out how to acquire more energy. And adaptation — dealing with the effects of the climate change we can’t prevent — would run another $75 billion a year (an estimate that other research paints as extremely optimistic).

  Sums like that are not on offer. The Europeans have talked about a deal in the range of $100 billion a year, but that depends on the Americans ponying up, and so far the U.S. has been as coy about its willingness to pay as about its willingness to rein in emissions. Everyone outside the U.S. knows that this is — overwhelmingly — a problem we’ve caused; since the carbon molecule has a residence time of over a century in the atmosphere, it will be the decades before the Chinese, despite their vastly larger numbers, are as responsible for climate change as Americans. But if Obama puts a realistic number on the table, Senator James Inhofe (R-Armageddon) will be on hand to take it off. (Inhofe originally announced he was going to Denmark as a “one-man truth squad,” but then added John Barasso (R-WY) and “a secret person” to his delegation). In our poisonous politics, the idea of the U.S. meeting anything like its moral obligation seems small — and without that, the politics gets harder for everyone else in the world.

And then there are the plumbing questions. How do you monitor and then enforce any agreement? How do you draw something up that doesn’t require treaty approval by the U.S. Senate (no one thinks there are 67 votes for a real climate policy)? How do you give credit for actions already taken? How do you keep carbon trading from turning into one more Wall Street boondoggle?

One thing will surely be tested: whether civil society is capable of really pushing the process. Activists will be descending from all directions, but the deck is stacked against them: The conference center, where the media will be mostly cooped up, is miles from town. And the environmentalists themselves are deeply split. There are groups that, for all intents and purposes, are part of the negotiations — whose experts have spent careers working on one part of the treaty or another, and are deeply invested in its success. There are less formal groups — many of them veterans of the anti-globalization movement — determined to shut down the whole process. They won’t succeed, but it’s completely conceivable that tear gas will drift across the Radhuspladsen before the month is out. And there are thousands of young people, about to be disillusioned by their first exposure to big time power politics.

Having been to Kyoto (which at least took place in the daylight) there’s a sense of overwhelming déjà vu as I head toward Denmark. There, too, most of the world was lined up to do something, but waiting on a signal from the U.S., whose negotiators had been doing its best to weaken the treaty in hopes it might pass Senate muster. There was the same will-he-come anxiety, then centered on Al Gore, who flew in at the last minute to offer some small concessions and let the conference proceed. In those days China hadn’t yet emerged as a huge carbon source. In those days the Arctic hadn’t yet melted. But in those days, as in this one, everyone was waiting on the U.S.

Author Bill McKibben is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College. His The End of Nature, published in 1989, is regarded as the first book for a general audience on global warming. He is a founder of 350.org, a campaign to spread the goal of reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide to 350 parts per million worldwide. His most recent book is American Earth, an anthology of American environmental writing.

Article appearing courtesy of Yale Environment 360

[photo: indrasensi]

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Earlier this year, everyone in the environmental punditocracy had an opinion on what domestic policy moves the leading economies and emerging nations might make to position themselves in advance of December’s climate change conference in Copenhagen.

The US? President Obama would arrive wearing a badge of victory: the world’s first-ever all-auction cap-and-trade system. China and India? The world’s fastest growing economies would put domestic Potemkin policies in place to demonstrate good faith. Western Europe? With a carbon cap in place and a bona fide legacy of environmental leadership, the Old West would continue to carry the mantle by pushing for significant advancement beyond Kyoto standards.

The global economic meltdown has rendered impossible any determination of how accurate those predictions might have been. Although things are looking up economically, there is no telling what history will be written in Denmark this winter.  The signs are not promising.

Instead of his campaign-promised 100% auction-based carbon cap, the Yanks will pull into Scandinavia bearing whatever shell of Waxman-Markey can make it through the Senate…if one can. The US may be left to tout the very flawed and not very original Cash For Clunkers program as its most progressive recent climate change legislation.

Things are not much better Down Under, where a Senate climate change vote last week not only saw the defeat of cap-and-trade, but may result in a call for early elections by the country’s center-left Labor Party. Labor had better be careful, with public opinion going the way it is on the economy-environment trade-off, their attempts to ouster the coalition opposing climate action could result in their own numbers dwindling.

At least someone has stayed true-to-form. Even as India continues its comfortable flight pattern — right down below the radar — the country announced plans to take steps that would allow them to eventually take steps to protect their natural resources and regulate climate changing activity. Their plans are very preliminary and include the creation of a US-modeled environmental protection agency that would begin to create and enforce environmental standards on development. For a global population leader and burgeoning economic giant, the Indians draw far less attention than China; and, they seem to draw little of the scrutiny to which other nuclear powers are subject. This policy announcement fits neatly into what seems a rather comfortable coyness.

The capstone? The WSJ interviewed the godparents of cap-and-trade, two US economists, and both felt that carbon trading would not be up to the task of managing today’s global carbon problem, especially without a credible international enforcement mechanism.

Diplomacy is unpredictable, and maybe something progressive and surprising will emerge from Copenhagen. Economists, scientists and observers all seem to agree that what the world really needs now is a hard carbon cap or carbon taxing regime. If the developed world can offer the Indians, Chinese, Southeast Asians and Africans enough of a delay in implementation or a sufficiently discounted carbon rate, maybe a cap is feasible. In a global diplomatic setting, US and other leaders may be isolated enough from domestic political pressure to do something aggressive.

Then again, when they close up shop in Denmark and head home for the holidays, whatever agreements have been made will become subject to ratification by the same domestic legislatures that have been reluctant to act or inept at doing so. And, if they wouldn’t approve Kyoto…well, perish the thought.

The outcome seems as irresistible as the analogy, chances are that the dawn of 2010 sees the world standing over a Danish grave, their once jovial hopes turning to dust: “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him…”

[photo credit: Flickr]

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“No Drama” Obama somehow managed to step in it again last week, plunging himself into the Skip Gates arrest and racial politics when he was meant to be drumming up support for health care reform.

If the measure of how badly the White House narrative veered off course is to observe that many of the Sunday shows spent more time on ObamaGates (I might have to trademark that one) than they did on health care, it is worth noting that Waxman-Markey is barely in the rear view mirror anymore. It does not appear to be on the Senate’s radar either.

Any hope of climate change legislation is rapidly fading and Waxman-Markey is poised to become another smudge on the road, steam rolled by the political process in much the same way the BTU Tax, Kyoto ratification, and previous energy-environment bills were.

What went wrong? I’m interested in your thoughts on whether cap-and-trade ever had a chance? Or, is strategy to blame for squandering the best chance at climate change legislation that we have had in a generation? If so, who dropped the ball? The White House? The House Dems? Senate leadership?

I’ll post my “three strikes” below, but what do you think killed cap-and-trade?

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A partisan divide, climate change doubters ridiculed by by environmental advocates, concerns about the global competitive impact of being a carbon control leader, and uncertainties surrounding market function, pricing and cost to consumers… Sound familiar?

Now imagine it all in Paul Hogan’s accent instead of in the halls of the Capitol, and you have the Australian debate over cap-and-trade legislation.

NYT runs a story that gives evidence of one of the major obstacles to getting real global energy reform, the “you first” problem.

The story notes, “Conservatives say [the country] should not commit itself to any target before the world’s biggest emitters — China and the United States — lay their cards on the table, and a successor to the Kyoto agreement, which expires in 2012, is reached.”

In other words, the Aussies are waiting for us. We’re waiting for the Chinese and Indians, they aren’t sure they want to play the game anyway. And, everyone is waiting to see what happens in Copenhagen in December, but its unlikely that anything substantial can be achieved without national action in the interim.

And there have been few profiles in courage on climate change and cap-and-trade. Leadership has been lacking on this geopolitical scale, where no one but the Europeans has taken a carbon cap-and-trade leap. And, on the national political stage, the progressives have compromised on the bill to a faretheewell at the urging of brown state Dems who are trying to protect their local industries, and the GOP has taken the head in the sand approach by hiding behind scare tactics.

Now that science seems to agree that the world needs to act together to make real progress on reversing climate change, political institutions will have to adapt from the “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours” Kabuki dance.

The UN has done admirably in advocating for climate change policy and breaking the issue down into self-interest slices that can appeal to the developed and developing world. But, it doesn’t have the horses to get consensus or force action. What’s needed is a coalition that leverages soft power, economic incentive and mutual interest. All the more reason for the US to take the lead. But, even if Waxman-Markey can make it through this summer, the legislation is not likely to generate a Jerry Maguire “slow clap” (see video below) when Obama walks the lobby in Copenhagen this winter.

[photo credit: Chang Huang]

Watch the video “Jerry Maguire: The Things We Think and Do Not Say” on YouTube

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With less than a year left before the international community reconvenes to tackle climate change in Copenhagen this December, many unanswered questions remain.  Chief among them is whether the US can begin to patch together a flurry of legislation targeting reduced greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions in time to signal a renewed commitment to leading the international community on environmental issues.  Doing so will focus the spotlight on China, which together with the US, accounts for 40% of the world’s GHG emissions.

If the US had ratified Kyoto it would have joined 37 industrialized countries and the EU in an effort to reduce GHG emissions between 2008-2012.  With the US sitting on the sideline, the rest of the world has forged ahead with an assortment of policy and incentive experiments with varying degrees of success.  Meanwhile, between 1992 and 2007, the US has experienced a 20% increase in GHG emissions.

While the effect of the US pullout of Kyoto was to leave many climate issues unresolved, the global financial crisis may result in a dampened enthusiasm for aggressive climate action within the world community and a reluctance to strike an enduring deal in December.

It appears, however, that with Obama’s signing of The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (“ARRA”) into law on Tuesday, the US is intent on putting climate change back on the table, and the CleanTech sector stands to benefit.

More than just an economic recovery bill, the ARRA injects roughly $60 billion worth of green initiatives into the economy and carves out $20 billion in green tax incentives.  Targeted projects include energy efficiency, renewables, smart grid transformation, transmission upgrades, advanced vehicles, battery storage, and others.

Some clear winners include green retrofitting (75% of federal buildings are slated for energy efficiency upgrades under the bill), smart grid companies (which include demand response products and advanced metering producers), renewables (not just solar and wind, but also biomass), and battery technologies.

Who will ultimately see this money?  It is difficult to tell, but it might be worth considering the following:

To date, most states have led the way on climate change policy and green initiatives in the US by setting aggressive Renewable Portfolio Standards, establishing regional cap-and-trade programs, and capitalizing on energy efficiency gains (the low hanging fruit).  Many states are also incorporating programs and incentive structures that have already enjoyed some success abroad (see Feed-in Tariffs: The Good, the Bad, and What Utilities Need to Know).  One can assume that the diffused stimulus dollars will chase the programs and technologies that have a proven track record of success thus far.  Finally, as ARRA is an economic stimulus package, look for projects that will create jobs.

The following is a sampling of CleanTech-related dollars in the ARRA that signal a commitment to take on climate change in the US:

Appropriation Highlights

Direct Spending:

• $16.8 billion in direct spending for renewable energy and energy efficiency
• $4.5 billion to develop a smarter grid
• $4.5 billion to make 75% of federal buildings more energy efficient
• $2.5 billion for research and development, and demonstration projects
• $2 billion for advanced battery grants
• $5 to weatherize homes
• $8 billion for high speed rail projects
• $19 billion for water infrastructure and clean up

Tax Incentive Highlights

• Includes a major CleanTech-related provision that establishes a 30% investment tax credit aimed at jumpstarting the struggling domestic renewable energy industry and designed to make the US a more attractive place to manufacture solar, wind, and other green technologies
• Renewable energy production tax credits are extended for energy produced from wind, geothermal, hydropower and landfill gas
• Tax credits for purchases of energy-efficient furnaces, windows and doors, or insulation
• Tax credit for families that purchase plug-in hybrid vehicles

As Jeff noted in his post, the Stimulus Watch, is a useful website to monitor how the stimulus dollars are rolled out; check out the links page for some more resources, let us know if we should add some.  In the meantime, check back to CleanTechies for more analysis on the specific provisions.

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