Conscious Choice: Forward Thinking

June 2001 | News of the Earth

Forward Thinking

by Dave Aftandilian

How can the Midwest diversify its energy sources, reduce pollution from power plants, increase energy efficiency, and improve the reliability of its power supply, while also creating new jobs and investment opportunities? How can we develop a sustainable, economically sound energy future for the Midwest?

If you want to learn some innovative answers to questions like these, check out the new report entitled "Repowering the Midwest: The Clean Energy Development Plan for the Heartland" (www.repower midwest.org) from the Environmental Law and Policy Center (ELPC) and a coalition of other Midwestern environmental groups. The report focuses on ten Midwestern states, including Illinois, and uses computer models to compare the Midwest’s energy future through 2020 using "business as usual" practices versus implementing the Clean Energy Development Plan.

Unlike George W. Bush and Dick Cheney’s so-called energy policy, which relies almost entirely on seeking new sources of fossil fuels, and nuclear energy, the Clean Energy Development Plan advocates a three-pronged approach to energy sustainability. First, implementation of both tried and true methods combined with the latest advances in energy efficiency technology reduces demand for electricity, and therefore the need to build more generating capacity. Second, power generation from renewable resources (such as wind, biomass, and solar photovoltaics) and efficient natural gas-powered technologies (such as fuel cells, combined heat and power, and district energy systems) increases. And third, generation from older, less efficient, and highly polluting coal plants is reduced. Finally, significant public policy support is provided at the state and federal levels for the development and implementation of energy efficiency measures and renewable energy technologies.

How would we benefit from the Clean Energy Development Plan? By 2020, pollution from power plants would be reduced significantly from emissions under the "business as usual" scenario — sulfur dioxide, a key ingredient in acid rain, would decrease by 56 percent; nitrogen oxides, key ingredients in smog, would decrease by 71 percent; and carbon dioxide, one of the gases causing much of human-induced global warming, would decrease by 51 percent. Energy efficiency improvements would save 17 percent of electricity use by 2010 and 28 percent by 2020. Renewable energy development would provide 8 percent of the region’s electricity by 2010 and 22 percent by 2020. Power generation would become more reliable as the region shifts from its traditional reliance on coal and nuclear plants (which currently provide more than 90 percent of the Midwest’s electricity) to a more diversified energy portfolio.

Economic development and job growth would be provided as farmers lease some of their land for wind turbine sites and sell excess crops, or grow special crops like switchgrass, for biomass energy production. Increased business opportunities would become available for manufacturers of energy efficient products (such as Osram Sylvania in Lake Zurich, which manufactures energy-efficient lighting equipment, or Maytag’s plant in Galesburg, which manufactures energy-efficient refrigerators) and for manufacturers of renewable energy equipment (such as Spire Solar, which manufactures solar photovoltaic panels at an old brownfield site in Chicago, or NEG Micon, which assembles wind turbines in Champaign). New skilled jobs would also be created in installation and maintenance of this equipment throughout the Midwest. And all these good things — in addition to public health benefits from the reduced power plant pollution — would come with only slightly increased electricity costs: just 1.5 percent more in 2010, and 3.4 percent more by 2020.

The Clean Energy Development Plan isn’t just pie-in-the-sky theorizing, either. The technologies are here — they just need to be implemented. In terms of energy efficiency, more efficient lighting and water heating could save a huge amount of energy in homes. Compact fluorescent bulbs, for instance, produce the same amount of light as standard incandescent bulbs, but use only one-quarter as much electricity and last twelve times longer. Replacing one incandescent bulb in a high-use area with a compact fluorescent would save the average residential consumer $50 in electricity costs over the life of the bulb — so even though compact fluorescents cost more up front, they save you big time in the long run. Similar energy efficiency opportunities exist in the commercial and industrial sectors.

Wind power has come a long way in the last twenty years. Although wind-produced power used to cost $0.20 to $0.30 per kilowatt hour, it’s now down to $0.03 to $0.06 — almost competitive with oil, and cheaper than nuclear-produced power. And it’s getting cheaper all the time. Although solar power is still expensive relative to power from other sources, it works well for sites that are too far away from the power grid to make extending transmission lines to them feasible. And because the times of peak energy demand — the heat of the summer — also tend to be times when solar energy is most plentiful, solar power can help alleviate the summer power crunches.

So the question isn’t whether we have the technological know-how, but whether we have the political will to implement it. As "Repowering the Midwest" states, "substantial changes in public policies and business planning are necessary to achieve the benefits of implementing the largely untapped energy efficiency and renewable energy technology opportunities" for the Midwest. In Illinois, we’re already somewhat ahead of the game, thanks to an agreement to create the Illinois Energy Efficiency Investment Fund and the Illinois Renewable Energy Investment Fund (which ELPC played a large part in wringing out of ComEd during the electricity deregulation debate). The report suggests increasing investment in each of these funds, to 0.3 cents per kilowatt hour for the efficiency investment fund, and 0.1 cents per kilowatt hour for the renewables fund. Another way to give a big boost to renewable energy development without breaking the bank would be for state and federal governments to require that retail electricity suppliers provide 8 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2010, and 20 percent by 2020. Tightening and enforcing efficiency standards and building codes would give efficiency measures a similar step up. And, of course, we need to stop subsidizing coal and nuclear power plants, and ensure that transmission pricing policies, power pooling practices, and other local and regional power policies give renewables a fair shake.

We need more innovative yet sensible solutions like the Clean Energy Development Plan to address the region’s energy needs in a sustainable manner. If you agree, you might want to suggest that your elected officials take a look at this plan, and start implementing the policies needed to make it a reality. As Howard Learner, executive director of ELPC, put it, "What is happening in California is a wake-up call to the rest of the country. As the twenty-first century begins, the Midwest can lead the way to a clean energy future.‘Repowering the Midwest’ is a blueprint for sustainable energy development that will produce economically robust and environmentally sound electricity throughout the heartland. The lesson of California is to plan ahead now by investing in clean energy efficiency. Let’s not wait until we have to struggle with crisis management."

Taxing Our Way Down the Food Chain

Starting in 1992, the Global Integrity Project brought together a diverse group of scientists, philosophers, public policy experts, and economists to try to solve the interrelated problems of unequal and threatened human well-being, degradation of the ecosphere, and unsustainable economies. When asked to answer the question "How can progress be decoupled from planetary destruction?" these thinkers responded, "Conserve ecological integrity and live sustainably." Their detailed analyses of the current sad state of affairs, and prescriptions for how to make things better, are presented in the new book, Ecological Integrity: Integrating Environment, Conservation, and Health, edited by David Pimentel, Laura Westra, and Reed F. Noss (Island Press).

One of the more interesting proposals for positive change in the book came in an article entitled "Environmental Sustainability and Integrity in the Agriculture Sector" by Robert Goodland, environmental adviser to the World Bank, and David Pimentel, professor of ecology and agricultural science at Cornell University. Simply put, the idea is this: tax foods on a sliding scale such that the prices people pay for them reflect the true costs incurred to the environment in raising them.

As the human population of the world increases, we will have to find ways to obtain more and more agricultural produce from less and less land (unless, of course, we opt instead to voluntarily reduce population growth — a sensible but politically unfeasible course at the moment). Not only will we have more mouths to feed, but the increasing population will drive sprawl still deeper into rural areas, gobbling up farmland and turning it into suburbs. Intensifying agriculture in an unsustainable fashion makes the problem worse by increasing erosion, salinization, and waterlogging of irrigated soils.

Acre for acre, and pound for pound, raising animals for slaughter — especially cattle and hogs — is the most inefficient way to utilize our increasingly precious farmland to feed the world. For instance, according to Goodland and Pimentel, it takes 1,481 kilograms of agricultural products (including feed and grains) to feed each American each year, while it takes less than half as much, 614 kilograms per person per year, to feed the average global citizen. The difference is that most people around the world eat a largely vegetarian diet, while Americans tend to eat a lot of meat. Fresh water, too, is becoming a scarce commodity around the world; some theorists predict that there will be wars over rights to fresh water in the near future. Here, too, say Goodland and Pimentel, meat is not a good deal — it takes 100,000 liters of water to produce one kilogram of beef, but only 900 for a kilogram of wheat, and 500 for a kilogram of potatoes.

And that’s not counting the miles and miles of waterways fouled by spills of animal wastes from factory farms in the United States. For instance, in late February of this year, the industrial-sized Inwood Dairy in Elmwood pumped two million gallons of cattle wastewater from a holding lagoon directly into a ravine nearby, whence it made its way into a branch of Kickapoo Creek, which flows into the Illinois River, from which Peoria draws most of its drinking water. (For more on this disaster, and other challenges facing farming in Illinois, visit the Families Against Rural Messes home page at www.farmweb.org.)

So do we all need to become vegetarians to save the world? Not exactly. As Goodland and Pimentel write, "people should always be allowed to choose the diet that they want, but the full costs of their choices should be reflected in the price that they pay for their diet." Because meat production takes a heavy toll on the Earth, those who choose to eat meat should pay more for it than those who eat less environment-impacting foods such as vegetables, grains, and legumes (beans etc.); this is analogous to the "polluter pays" principle.

To internalize the full costs of raising meat for slaughter, Goodland and Pimentel suggest that we should apply a progressive tax to the food chain. Those who eat at the top of the food chain — consuming factory-farmed hogs and cattle — would pay the highest taxes on those agricultural products. In descending order, taxes would also be applied to sheep and cattle grazing on natural grassland, free-range poultry, and rodents and lagomorphs (e.g., rabbits). No taxes would be paid on grains, starches (potatoes and cassava), vegetables, or legumes, and modest subsidies would be provided to help even the poorest afford at least coarse grains (millet, pearl millet, sorghum). Taxes could be applied at a number of points along the meat production chain — at meatpackers or feedlots, for example, or on the livestock itself. This tax structure would provide a financial incentive for people to eat lower on the food chain, while still allowing those who chose to do so the option of eating whatever they wished.

Resources

Environmental Law and Policy Center

Families Against Rural Messes

Island Press

Repowering the Midwest

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