Obama going to Copenhagen

President Obama will attend the international climate negotiations in Copenhagen next month, according to a senior administration official, a sign of the president’s increasing confidence that the talks will yield a meaningful agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The White House will also announce today that the United States will commit, in the talks, to reduce its emissions of the heat-trapping gases scientists blame for global warming “in the range of” 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, the official said. That’s the target set out in the climate bill the House passed in June.

The president will address negotiators on Dec. 9, just after the opening of the two-week summit, on his way to pick up the Nobel Peace Prize in nearby Sweden. His speech will come ahead of planned visits by prominent heads of state from Europe and around the world, and before the talks are expected to reach their most frenzied pitch.

White House officials said the decision to attend came after productive climate discussions between Obama and the heads of China and India, two developing nations whose participation is seen as critical to any successful effort to avert catastrophic climate change.

Those discussions left the president optimistic that his presence in Copenhagen could seal a meaningful – though not legally binding – climate deal, meeting the standard that Obama previously set for his attendance at the summit, the officials said.

SoCal wins $125 million for smart grid and energy storage

Two Southern California utilities were awarded more than $125 million in stimulus funds from the Department of Energy today to demonstrate “smart” electric grid systems and test energy storage projects.

Los Angeles Department of Water and Power received $60,280,000 and Southern California Edison Co. received $40,134,700 to test out and collect data on smart grid programs.

SoCal Edison was also given $24,978,264 for its Tehachapi Wind Energy Storage Project, using an 8-megawatt lithium ion battery technology.

In a statement, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger hailed the grants, saying they would "help modernize the state’s electricity infrastructure to make delivery methods more efficient," as well as save energy costs for consumers and create jobs.

Several Northern California projects in Alameda, Berkeley, Fremont and San Francisco also picked up energy storage grants, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu said in a statement today.

In all, California systems were awarded nearly $175 million, part of the $620 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act given to 32 projects across the country dealing with large-scale energy storage, smart meters, electricity distribution issues and a range of technologies.

California pushes cap-and-trade plan

California today issued the nation’s first blueprint for a broad-based cap-and-trade program to control global warming emissions.

The pioneering effort would cap greenhouse gases emitted by more than 600 power plants, refineries, cement plants and other big factories at 15% below today’s levels by 2020. And it would allow companies to buy and sell emissions allowances among themselves as a way to meet the overall goal less expensively.

The preliminary rule is a “milestone ... to address our state’s contributions to climate change, as the eighth largest economy in the world,” said Air Resources Board Chairman Mary D. Nichols. She pointedly contrasted it with the upcoming meeting of 192 nations in Copenhagen next month “for another conference at which no international treaty will be signed.”

Green jobs: women and minorities left out?

Green jobs don’t have to leave out women and minorities, according to a case study released by the Applied Research Center today.

The report, by senior research associate Yvonne Yen Liu, profiled the work of the community organization Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education and the Los Angeles chapter of the Apollo Alliance in helping to pass a green retrofit ordinance for municipal buildings.

The Applied Research Center, a racial justice think tank based in New York, said in “Greening Los Angeles” that women and minorities are often left out of the green economy. Of the people employed in green industries and occupations, blacks and Latinos make up less than 30%. Black women fill just 1.5% of energy sector jobs, while Latinas occupy 1% and Asian women take up 0.7%.

For more information about green jobs – where they are, how to prepare for them and how to land them – read this story from Sunday’s Business section.

The federal government gave out around $5.5 million in grants Wednesday to encourage green jobs training.

-- Tiffany Hsu

Photo: Jesus Rosales, a member of La Causa, works to replace a leaking window in a home that his group has renovated using green technology. Credit: Al Seib / Los Angeles Times.

California regulators outlaw power-hungry TVs

The California Energy Commission, after two years of study, voted unanimously to ban the sale of large-format televisions that use too much electricity. It approved standards that would set maximum power consumption for TVs of up to 58 inches beginning Jan. 1, 2011.

Those standards would be tightened two years later to require a 50% reduction in the number of watts. Buyers of new TVs would save approximately $30 a year over the 10-year life of a set, the commission estimates, and statewide savings over a decade would be $8.1 billion. Additionally, the state would be relieved of the need to build a large power plant, saving approximately $600 million more.

"It looks like a very good deal for society," said Commissioner Arthur H. Rosenfeld, an energy efficiency pioneer who helped California put its first efficiency standards in place on refrigerators in the 1970s.

Some television manufacturers, notably market leader Vizio Inc. of Irvine, say they will have no trouble complying with the new standards. But, the Consumer Electronics Assn., an industry trade group, has complained that the California rules would stifle technological innovation and are arbitrary.

Read more on California's new standards for TVs.

-- Marc Lifsher

Green jobs grants for California

The U.S. Department of Labor doled out nearly $5.5 million in grants for green-jobs training today, with more than a dozen awards scattered throughout California.

The funds through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 will support job-training and labor-market information programs to help workers find jobs in green industries and related occupations, said Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis.

The Recovery Act has $500 million planned for green-jobs training grants.

Today’s grants, to be administered by the Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration, were given out in two categories -- $48.8 million for state labor-market information improvement and $5.8 million in green capacity building.

The information-improvement grants will go toward collecting and distributing information and squeezing out more space within the infrastructure for clean-energy careers while connecting job seekers with green job banks and post-training employment.

Thirty grants, ranging from $763,000 to $4 million, were given to state workforce agencies. The California Employment Development Department was awarded $1.25 million.

The green-capacity building grants will boost the ability of 62 current Labor Department grant recipients to train targeted communities, including American Indians, women, at-risk youth and farm workers.

Seven California groups, including Los Angeles-based Women in Non-Traditional Employment Roles and Coalition for Responsible Community Development, received $100,000 grants. Five others were given from $70,000 to $98,122.

-- Tiffany Hsu

Global warming: California pushes ahead

While Congress dithers over federal climate change legislation, and nations squabble over a global treaty, the nation's most populous state is doggedly pushing ahead with its own regulations to control the greenhouse gas emissions that are heating up the Earth's atmosphere.

In a milestone for the state's landmark plan to slash emissions by 15% over the next 11 years from today's levels, the Air Resources Board announced today that more than 97% of the state's 605 largest factories, cement plants, refineries and power plants have reported how much carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases they emit.

At the same time, California became the first state in the nation to accredit third-party professionals to make sure the polluters accurately report their emissions.The first 101 individual verifiers and 17 businesses completed a 40-hour course and final examination, the ARB announced.

Verification of all reported emissions will be required beginning next year, providing a key database for the state's proposed cap-and-trade regulations. A cap-and-trade system, which would take effect in 2012, would allow polluters to trade emissions credits among themselves so that facilities which can cut emissions for less money may sell their reductions to facilities which would have to pay more to install controls.

-- Margot Roosevelt

Nuclear power: less effective than energy efficiency and renewable energy?

If the U.S. wants to help stop global warming, nuclear power is not the way to go, according to a new report released today.

The Environment California Research & Policy Center concluded that launching a nuclear power industry nearly from the ground up is too slow and expensive a process. Energy efficiency standards and renewable energy options are better solutions, researchers said.

Currently, no new nuclear reactors are under construction in the country, and no U.S. power company has ordered a nuclear plant since 1978. All orders for nuclear facilities after fall 1973 were eventually canceled, according to the report.

Meanwhile, building a reactor would probably take around a decade – 2016 at the earliest, the study suggested. Without an existing infrastructure, manufacturing reactor parts with the dearth of trained personnel would be difficult.

But even if the nuclear industry managed to build 100 reactors by 2030, the total power produced would reduce total U.S. emissions only 12% over the next 20 years, which Environment California deemed “far too little, too late.”

The $600-billion upfront investment necessary for the 100 reactors would slice out twice as much carbon pollution in that period if invested in clean energy, according to the report. And given the costs of running a power plant, clean energy could deliver five times as much progress per dollar in lowering pollution.

Peter Bradford, a former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission member, made this comparison in a statement: “Counting on new nuclear reactors as a climate change solution is no more sensible than counting on an un-built dam to create a lake to fight a nearby forest fire.”

-- Tiffany Hsu

Supervisor opposes massive solar project in San Bernardino County [Updated]

A solar energy project proposed for development on public land in the Mojave Desert would create jobs mostly for Las Vegas and electricity for San Francisco at the expense of the relatively pristine area of east San Bernardino County where it would be built, San Bernardino County Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt said Friday.

In an interview, Mitzelfelt, whose district includes the Ivanpah Valley project site about 20 miles south of Las Vegas, said BrightSource’s proposed 440-megawatt, 4,000-acre Solar Electric Generating System, “should not go forward.” [Update: An earlier version of this post listed the project as having 100 megawatts.]

The system is among 130 renewable energy applications to build wind and solar projects on more than a million acres of public land under review by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and California Energy Commission. Companies hope to begin construction on about a dozen of those projects by late next year.

State and federal regulators said the BrightSource project is furthest along in the process and could break ground late next year. Conservationists, however, are concerned about its impacts on several rare bat, bird, plant and reptile species including the threatened California desert tortoise.

The development of solar power facilities in the desert has been a top priority of the Obama administration as it seeks to ease the nation’s dependency on fossil fuels and address climate change.

“Obviously, there is a lot of political pressure to get this project expedited and under construction,” Mitzelfelt said. “But its impacts in San Bernardino County and sensitive and scenic Mojave Desert environment are not worth the benefits.”

“I would do everything I could to advance a project that would provide jobs, induce economic investment and increase the tax base in our county,” he said. “This is not that project.”

BrightSource spokesman Keely Wachs disagreed.

"Considering the project has been going through a state and federal environmental review process for more than two years, and will generate 1,000 jobs, $250 million in wages and more than $400 million in local and state tax revenue, we're surprised to see the supervisor's press release," Wachs said in a statement.

"We look forward to meeting with Supervisor Mitzelfelt and his staff," Wachs added, "to clarify any misunderstandings they might have about the Ivanpah project."

-- Louis Sahagun

Give the kids a sketch pad and send them outside

Young Californians have two more weeks to grab a paint brush, camera or pen, spend time with some of their wild neighbors and create a potential winner in the Robert Bateman Get to Know Contest.

The Canadian program was imported to California this year under the sponsorship of the U.S. Forest Service, National Wildlife Federation, California State Parks and more than two dozen other organizations that want children to have some face time with nature.

Students can submit works of art, writing or photography to the contest, which is open to   California youngsters no older than 18.

The program was launched in 2000 by Canadian artist and naturalist Robert Bateman, known for his wildlife paintings.

Winners will be awarded prizes and their entries will be published in the 2011 contest calendar and on the Get to Know website.

For entry details, go to http://gettoknow.ca/us/contest/enter.php 


-- Bettina Boxall

Photo: A contestant at work. Credit: The Wyland Foundation.

Millions in subsidies approved for Carlsbad seawater desalination project

Southern California’s first major seawater desalination project moved forward today when regional water managers approved a subsidy for the operation that could ultimately grow to $350 million.

The privately owned plant, which would be built next to the Encina power station in Carlsbad, would annually produce enough water for roughly 100,000 households in San Diego County.

Poseidon Resources officials said the subsidy approved by the board of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California was key to obtaining financing for the project, which they are about to start building.

Energy Star homes reach 1 million, EPA says

One million energy-efficient homes qualifying for the Energy Star rating have been built in the U.S. since the program was launched in 1995, the Environmental Protection Agency said.

This year, Energy Star households will save $270 million -- or an average of $200 to $400 each -- on utility bills. The homes, which tend to be at least 15% more energy efficient than standard homes, will also avoid more than 4 billion pounds of greenhouse gas emissions.

Nearly 17% of all single-family homes built in 2008 qualified for Energy Star, compared with 12% the year before.  Across the country, more than 6,500 are building to the program’s standards.

The EPA also released a list of the top 20 cities for Energy Star homes, lead by the Houston area, with 144,420 total homes built. Following were Dallas, Las Vegas and Phoenix regions, with the Los Angeles sprawl rounding out the top five with 53,673 homes.

1.Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, Texas: 144,420
2.Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, Texas: 102,872
3.Las Vegas-Paradise, Nev.: 79,929
4.Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, Ariz.: 73,021
5.Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana; Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario: 53,673
6.New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, N.Y.: 25,168
7.Tucson: 18,970
8.San Antonio: 18,847
9.Sacramento-Arden-Arcade-Roseville, Calif.: 18,208
10.San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos: 17,515
11.Columbus, Ohio: 17,396
12.Des Moines-West Des Moines, Iowa: 16,400
13.Indianapolis-Carmel, Ind.: 13,675
14.Austin-Round Rock, Texas: 13,232
15.Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, Pa.: 12,454
16.San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont: 10,523
17.Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, Mass., and N.H.: 10,192
18.Denver-Aurora, Colo.: 7,809
19.Orlando-Kissimmee, Fla.: 7,619
20.Oklahoma City, Okl.: 7,498

Energy Star is run jointly by the EPA and the U.S. Department of Energy.

--Tiffany Hsu

Governor signs part of water package

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today went to a scruffy field in the San Fernando Valley to sign two pieces of water legislation passed earlier this week.

The setting was the Tujunga well field of the San Fernando Valley aquifer, part of Los Angeles' water supply.

One of the bills establishes a statewide program to measure groundwater elevations. The other adds 25 state enforcement officers to track down illegal water diversions.

Unlike other Western states, California has not monitored or regulated groundwater pumping, which has caused major subsidence in some regions.

In its early forms, the enforcement bill was much stronger. It called for increased penalties for illegal water diversions and gave the state water board more clout to stop them. But those provisions proved politically explosive and were dropped.

Schwarzenegger is expected to sign the remaining parts of the water package in coming days, including a $11.1-billion bond that will go before voters a year from now.

Surrounded by state lawmakers and local officials, the governor informally launched the bond campaign. "We want to invest in the future of California, and this is the best investment we can make. It's very important to vote yes," he said.

-- Bettina Boxall

Photo: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signs water bills as Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, left, and other legislators look on. Credit: Peter Grigsby / Office of the Governor   

 

Shell Oil paying millions for tank violations

Shell Oil Co. will pay $19.5 million in civil penalties and fees to settle a state complaint involving hundreds of environmental violations at its California gas stations.

A state investigation found problems with leak detection and monitoring of underground storage tanks, as well as hazardous waste handling at Shell gas stations across the state, according to the attorney general's office. One of the gas stations was next door to the office of the Contra Costa County hazardous materials program.

An Alameda County Superior Court order released today also requires the company to improve its spill and alarm monitoring.

Leaking underground tanks can be a significant source of pollution, contaminating groundwater supplies.

--Bettina Boxall  

Photo: A Shell station in Northern California. Credit: Los Angeles Times / Bob Chamberlin  

   

Flat-tailed horned lizard gets boost from Arizona judge [Updated]

In the latest chapter in a 16-year legal battle to keep the flat-tailed horned lizard safe from urban encroachment, a federal court judge in Arizona has reinstated a 1993 proposal to list the creature as a threatened species.

U.S. District Judge Neil V. Wake’s ruling follows a recent U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals order that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reconsider its earlier decision to deny the lizard protection under the Endangered Species Act. That decision rejected a Bush administration policy that environmentalists complained favored development at the expense of the lizard and many plants and animals across the nation.

Since 1993, the agency has withdrawn three proposals to list the lizard on the grounds it was hard to find and, therefore, difficult to classify as threatened. Each withdrawal was successfully challenged in court by conservation groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, the Sierra Club and the Horned Lizard Conservation Society.

Religious group pushes to protect San Gabriel Mountains

An activist religious group has joined the effort to designate the San Gabriel Mountains as a national recreational area eligible for additional federal resources including law enforcement personnel, interpretive signs and hiking trails.

The group, Progressive Christians Uniting, is touting the proposal to congregants of dozens of San Gabriel Valley churches near the 650,000-acre range that constitutes about 70% of Los Angeles County's open space.

"We are helping to bring the moral compassion of people of faith to bear on an urgent public issue," said Rev. Peter Laarman, executive director of the Los Angeles-based group. "This is an ambitious effort. It involves public health, an important natural resource and millions of people who live near it. We want to be on board."

The designation would be made by the National Park Service, which is conducting an ongoing "special resource study" of the San Gabriels and the San Gabriel Watershed. The study includes three draft alternatives for new collaborative approaches to managing the range currently run by the U.S. Forest Service for purposes other than recreation.

A final recommendation could come in 2011. In the meantime, a coalition led by conservation groups and community organizations plans to present its "San Gabriel Mountains Forever" campaign to as many churches as possible.

"Religion and stewardship connect gracefully," said Sierra Club spokesman John Monsen.

Pastor Arthur Cribbs of San Marino Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, said his congregation recently forwarded a letter of support for the proposal to U.S. Rep. David Dreier (R-San Dimas), whose district includes a large portion of the San Gabriels.

"We are blessed to have such a natural resource," Cribbs said. "It is a place where we can step out of our everyday business in the metropolis of greater Los Angeles and find quietude and stillness, strength and magic."

-- Louis Sahagun

Washing machines: the new water savers?

Washing machines account for 20% of an average household’s water use in California, but that may change now that the California Energy Commission has prevailed in a years-long lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Energy, which had prevented the commission from adopting a more water- and energy-efficient standard for clothes washers.

Currently, there is no standard for how much water a washing machine uses. It’s estimated that the average washing machine uses 39.2 gallons of water per wash, or 15,366 gallons a year for a normal household.

If California’s proposed standard goes into effect, an average machine would use just 6 gallons of water per cubic foot of washing machine capacity; the average washing machine would use just 21.1 gallons per wash, or 8,271 gallons per year.

On Wednesday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ordered the U.S. energy department to reconsider California’s request to set its own washing machine standard. While the U.S. energy department has not agreed to the state’s request, it could be granted next year, with the new standard going in to effect some time in 2013.

Jonathan Blees, assistant chief counsel for the California Energy Commission, said the standard does not require consumers to upgrade their machines; it merely requires manufacturers to apply the standard to all California washing machines that are made after the standard goes in to effect.

Blees said many washing-machine models, most of them front-loading, currently meet the 6-gallon standard.

Blees estimates that within the first year of the new standard, the state would save 4.76 billion gallons of water. Within 12 to 15 years, a time frame during which most Californians will have switched their existing machines to the more efficient standard, the state could save as much as 66.7 billion gallons of water – enough water to supply a city the size of San Diego every year. The new standard would also save the state 500 gigawatt hours of electricity and 50 million therms of natural gas -- energy that is used to pump water in to the home for washing machines and treat the water after it's been used.

-- Susan Carpenter

Photo: Whirlpool

Wolf hunt suspended in southern Montana

Wolf hunting in southern Montana is closing just after sunset today, only a day after the general season opened Sunday, after the 12-wolf quota for the region was quickly exceeded by one.

The Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks had suspended an early back-county hunt in a small, remote part of the region north of Yellowstone National Park after nine wolves were shot -- before  the general wolf hunting season, Montana's first in modern times, even opened on Sunday. That hunt raised controversy because four wolves from Yellowstone's Cottonwood pack who had ventured outside the park, including the pack's alpha male and female, were killed.

The brief opening saw an additional four wolves in the southern Montana region quickly shot, prompting Montana officials to close down all of Wolf Management Unit 3. Hunting remains open through Nov. 29 in northern and western Montana, where an additional 10 wolves out of the state's overall quota of 75 have been shot so far. Wildlife officials have held out the option of extending the hunt through Dec. 31 if the quota isn't met in November.

State officials said two of the four wolves shot in WMU-3 on Sunday were in Gallatin County, again not far from the border of Yellowstone National Park. The other two were shot in Sweetgrass County.

Conservationists have sued to stop the removal of Northern Rockies wolves from the Endangered Species list, arguing that wolf numbers could drop precipitously, especially since there are no assurances that wolves in discrete regions of Yellowstone, northwestern Montana and Idaho will be able to connect and share genes.

But Montana wildlife management officials have calculated that wolf numbers are likely to increase, despite the hunt. While there are about 500 wolves in Montana now, even if 75 are hunted this year, there are expected to be 590 wolves in established packs across the state, and 655 wolves overall (counting wolves that go out on their own) next year.

-- Kim Murphy

Map: Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks

Solar Power International kicks off Tuesday in Anaheim

One of the largest alternative energy conventions opens Tuesday in Orange County.

Solar Power International, co-presented by Solar Electric Power Assn. and Solar Energy Industries Assn., is expected to draw about 25,000 attendees from 90 countries to the Anaheim Convention Center.

From Oct. 27-29, more than 900 exhibitors will converge on the convention floor as more than 200 speakers in about 60 sessions discuss the latest industry developments in policy, finance, markets and technology.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental lawyer, will deliver the keynote at 8 a.m. on Oct. 28. That night, from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., doors open to members of the general public who want to learn more about solar power options.

Back in 2004, the convention was launched with only a few hundred attendees. Since then, the size has grown rapidly, doubling in the last year. This year’s exhibitors will take up 203,900 net square feet of floor space, compared to the 422 companies who reserved just 88,000 net square feet in 2008.

The conference has been held in Southern California for five of the past six years.

-- Tiffany Hsu

Yellowstone wolves fall in rifle sights

She was a tough, wary wolf. A genius at tactics. Cruel when she had to be, and when you're a wolf, that's pretty often. Wolf 527, a huge, black female, was the alpha female of Yellowstone National Park's Cottonwood pack, until she died earlier this month in Montana's first modern wolf hunt.

Yellowstone's wolves are familiar to viewers of National Geographic and BBC documentaries, so there was more than a little mourning for the four Cottonwood wolves who died.

Yet in the gorgeous valleys around Yellowstone, there were few tears shed. Many residents there believe the 60% drop in the northern Yellowstone elk herd can be attributed to the reintroduced predators.

Read the full story here.

-- Kim Murphy

Photo: Wolf 527, killed on Buffalo Plateau on Oct. 3. Credit: Dan Stahler / National Parks Service