Working For Jobs

by Todd Woody.

Much of the green movement has been mounting a rearguard fight in Washington to fend off attempts to gut the U.S. EPA in the wake of the Republican sweep of the 2010 elections.

California, as usual, is heading down a different road. The enviro-business coalition that defeated Prop 23, Texas oil companies’ attempt to derail the state’s global-warming law, is stepping up effort to push lawmakers to expand California’s climate-change efforts.

First, the No on 23 campaign led by billionaire hedge-fund manager Tom Steyer resurfaced last month as Californians for Clean Energy and Jobs.

On Tuesday, a second group, the Silicon
Valley-based Clean Coalition, emerged to press a similar agenda in an effort it calls the Clean California Campaign. “The Campaign promotes policies to meet Gov. Jerry Brown’s call to install 12,000 megawatts of new renewable energy projects in California communities by 2020,” the group said in a statement. “The Campaign’s initiatives will maximize clean energy job creation, attract billions of private investment dollars, boost state and local government budgets, and reduce electric bills.”

In the Golden State, that’s like saying you love the beach, dolphins, and sunshine. So what is the Clean Coalition—whose members range from the Los Angeles Business Council to the California chapters of the U.S. Green Building Council to Westinghouse Solar—actually going to do?

One, push for the expansion of programs requiring utilities to pay premiums—aka feed-in tariffs—for distributed generation
of renewable energy, such as rooftop solar and small photovoltaic farms.

The Clean Coalition also plans to lobby to simplify and speed up the process of connecting renewable energy projects to the grid, currently a years-long, laborious process not designed for bringing on hundreds if not thousands of new power sources. Stephanie Wang, the Clean Coalition’s program director, told me the group would focus on legislation and regulatory reform to achieve its aims.

In a sign of the Clean Coalition’s pull, the organization trotted out
California’s green elite to endorse its campaign, from a former state
energy commissioner to Terry Tamminen, who served as secretary of the
California Environmental Protection Agency under Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger.

While the Clean Coalition and Steyer’s group are pursuing separate if complementary agendas, the result is likely to be a full-court press to get California Democrats, who control all top statewide offices from Gov. Jerry Brown on down as well as the legislature, to ramp up renewable
energy production.

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by Dan Watson.

Texas and the San Francisco Bay Area aren’t
just going head to head in the World Series this week—they’re also battling
it out over California’s contentious Prop 23. The ballot measure, which would
suspend California’s landmark climate law, has been heavily
funded by Texas oil companies.

As the Texas Rangers and the San
Francisco Giants geared up for the first game of the series last week, Rebecca
Tarbotton of the Rainforest Action Network wrote:

Get ready, California—today ain’t just about the Giants vs. the
Rangers. Texas is also challenging California to a major political showdown
that pits Big Oil against the clean energy revolution … [A]s I’m rooting for
the Giants to shut out the Rangers in the World Series, I’m also working to
shut out Texas at the polls.

As if the underscore the contrast
between the cleantech-loving Bay Area and oil-loving Texas, George W. Bush—every oilman’s favorite president—threw out the first pitch at last night’s
game.

Right now the Giants have a 3-1 lead.
Game 5 is tonight in Texas, and games 6 and 7 (if necessary) will be played in
San Francisco on Wednesday and Thursday.

Could the outcome of the series
actually affect the outcome of the election? If San Francisco wins tonight, might
the all-night party keep some hungover voters from making it to the polls on
Tuesday? Or if Texas wins game 5, might
Giants fans be all the more motivated to stick it to Texas (oil) in the voting
booth?

—-

More World Series/election fun: The Giants’ ace pitcher, Tim Lincecum, has become something of an icon for supporters of California’s Proposition 19, which would “legalize marijuana and allow it to be regulated and taxed.” He was charged with a misdemeanor for marijuana possession in 2009. T-shirts and signs around the stadium encourage Tuesday’s voters to “Let Timmy Smoke.” Others have lit one up outside the park in solidarity, as one Texan journalist reported.

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by Todd Woody.

Have the Texas oil companies backing Proposition 23
surrendered in the fundraising battle over the ballot measure that would
suspend California’s global warming law?

Since Thursday, the No on 23 forces have raised more than
$7.3 million as the Silicon Valley-Hollywood-environmental-industrial complex
revved up for the final push before Election Day on Nov. 2.

The Yes campaign’s take since Thursday? $10,000.

The No on 23 campaign now has raised $25.8 million to the
Yes effort’s $9.1 million as money from the petrochemical industry
backing Prop 23 has all but dried up in recent weeks, according to California
Secretary of State records.

The tsunami of cash flooding into the No campaign indicates
the breadth of support from California’s establishment for the state’s global
warming law, known as AB 32, which requires greenhouse gas emissions be cut to
1990 levels by 2020.

Avatar director
James Cameron attracted the most attention with his $1 million donation on
Friday. But Gordon Moore, the legendary co-founder of chip giant
Intel, also dropped $1 million into the No coffers that day, and so did Pacific Gas & Electric ($250,000),
California’s largest utility and a leading proponent of climate change
legislation. Google co-founder Sergey Brin also donated $200,000 on Thursday, and an organization of Silicon Valley tech companies contributed $125,000.

On Tuesday, a group of some 66 investors controlling more than $400
billion in assets are scheduled to hold a press conference to announce their
opposition to Prop 23.

In the meantime, national environmental groups and non-profits continued to
pour cash into the No campaign last week. The National Wildlife Federation contributed $3
million on Friday. ClimateWorks Foundation, a San Francisco
non-profit, gave $900,000. New York’s Rockefeller Family Fund kicked in
$300,000 on Thursday and the Natural Resources Defense Council, a top No on 23
donor, added $300,000 more Friday.

Environmentalists are also starting to focus on
Proposition 26, a little-noticed California ballot measure that would
reclassify environmental impact fees as taxes and require a two-thirds vote of
the state legislature to impose them rather than a simple majority. Green
groups and AB 32 supporters fear Prop 26 could cripple efforts to levy fees to
implement the global warming law.

The oil, alcohol, and tobacco companies backing Prop 26 have
so far raised $13.6 million while opponents have managed to collect only $2.8
million, according to state campaign records.

Still, a spokesman for the No on 23 told
the Los Angeles Times that the No campaign would not redirect its cash to the
Prop 26 fight, saying the battle over the global warming law has yet to be won. 

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by RL Miller.

Proposition 23, known as the Dirty Energy Proposition for its financial backing from oil companies, has garnered national publicity for its effort to roll back California’s greenhouse gas law. Virtually all of its funding has come from outside California, beginning with Texas-based Valero, Texas-based Tesoro, and the Kansas-based Koch brothers. Californians who care about our state, and who remember Texas-based Enron and the Utah-based Mormon Church, resent the intrusion of out-of-state interests meddling in our politics.

But what of in-state oil companies and businesses who might normally put their money into Proposition 23? Chevron and the California Chamber of Commerce are staying neutral. That’s good, right?

I investigated. Short answer: No, that’s not good.

Proposition 23 is easy to understand—FAQs here. Propositions 25 and 26, by comparison, are MEGO (My Eyes Glaze Over) propositions dealing with the state budget. Proposition 25 will end budget gridlock by requiring a simple majority, rather than a two-thirds vote, to pass a state budget; both the California Democratic Party and the Los Angeles Times recommend a “Yes” vote. Proposition 26 would amend the state constitution to require a two-thirds majority on certain business fees by declaring them “taxes”; both the California Democratic Party and Los
Angeles Times recommend “No” votes.  

While officially remaining neutral on Proposition 23, California-based oil companies Chevron and Occidental, and the California Chamber of Commerce, have been quietly funnelling their cash into a No on 25/Yes on 26 political action committee (PAC). I’ve reviewed donations made through the end of September 2010. All of the following data is from California secretary of state’s office.

First, the basic size of the No on 25/Yes on 26 PAC:

REPORTING PERIOD: 07/01/2010 – 09/30/2010
CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THIS PERIOD: $3,868,216.65
TOTAL
CONTRIBUTIONS 1/1/2010 – 09/30/2010: $6,051,060.29
EXPENDITURES FROM
THIS PERIOD: $6,208,269.55
TOTAL EXPENDITURES 1/1/2010 – 09/30/2010:
$9,459,904.08
ENDING CASH: $819,351.21

By
contrast, here’s the same data for the dirty energy Yes on 23 PAC:

REPORTING PERIOD: 07/01/2010 – 09/30/2010
CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THIS PERIOD: $5,231,934.05
TOTAL
CONTRIBUTIONS 1/1/2010 – 09/30/2010: $8,362,235.39
EXPENDITURES FROM
THIS PERIOD: $1,774,375.49
TOTAL EXPENDITURES 1/1/2010 – 09/30/2010:
$5,317,593.35
ENDING CASH: $3,122,966.01

In other words, both groups have taken in about the same amount of money; Yes on 23 has more cash in reserve and No on 25/Yes on 26 has spent more.

Here are some contributions to No on 25/Yes on 26:

California Business Political Action Committee, Sponsored by the California Chamber of Commerce:
$215,000.00  4/23/2010
$325,000.00  4/30/2010
$100,000.00  5/7/2010
$120,000.00  5/17/2010
$75,000.00  4/1/2010
$235,000.00  8/20/2010
$2,322.65  7/1/2010 (non-monetary contribution)
$100,000.00  3/4/2010
$50,000.00  3/5/2010
$125,000.00  3/10/2010
$75,000.00  3/18/2010

[Subtotal: $1,422.322.65]

Chevron Corporation [based in San Ramon, Calif.]:
$250,000.00  4/15/2010
$250,000.00  9/13/2010
$750,000.00  9/24/2010

Occidental Petroleum [based in Los Angeles, Calif.]:
$250,000.00  9/24/2010

[Subtotal from California-based oil companies: $1,500,000]

Chevron has donated $1,250,000 to pass Proposition 26, compared to the $1,000,000 donated by the Koch brothers to pass Proposition 23. But why does Chevron care about an obscure budgetary proposition? Proposition 26’s backers portray the initiative as necessary to stop “hidden taxes.” Jean Ross of the California Budget Project explains otherwise:

The fees at issue are primarily those that regulate, mitigate and otherwise respond to environmental, health, and other social impacts of products and services. In other words, businesses seeking to avoid financial responsibility for the “externalities” of the products that they sell …

If the state can’t impose the fees on “pollution-causing industries” to recoup the cost of environmental monitoring and remediation, those costs will be shifted to taxpayers as a whole. Or, in an era where budget crises have become the status quo, programs that enforce environmental, food safety and other laws will be scaled back, if not eliminated. Which may be the true goal of the backers of Proposition 26.

Proposition 26 is a Polluters Protection Act. Its goal is simple: Whatever Proposition 23 can’t undo openly, Proposition 26 will undermine sneakily. AB 32 will seek to impose fees on polluting businesses; Proposition 26 would require a two-thirds approval (which is virtually impossible in gridlocked California). Californians are enthusiastically mobilizing against Proposition 23, but they need to be equally energized against Proposition 26 and for Proposition 25.

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by Todd Woody.

A company controlled by the billionaire Koch brothers, who have bankrolled numerous right-wing causes, has donated $1 million to the campaign to pass Proposition 23, the California ballot initiative that would suspend the state’s global-warming law.

The contribution was made Thursday and came from Flint Hills Resources, a Kansas petrochemical company that is a subsidiary of Koch Industries. The Koch brothers were the subject of a recent profile in The New Yorker.

The Koch donation came a day after Tesoro, a Texas oil company that has been bankrolling the pro-Prop 23 campaign, put $1 million into the campaign coffers.

According to the No campaign, 97 percent of the $8.2 million raised by the Yes forces has been given by oil-related interests and 89 percent of that money has come from out of state. Three companies, Koch Industries, Tesoro, and Valero—another Texas-based oil company—have provided 80 percent of those funds.

“There are three companies from out of state that have a very specific economic interest in rolling back our clean energy economy and jobs,” Thomas Steyer, a San Francisco hedge-fund manger who is co-chair of the No on 23 campaign, said during a conference call Friday.

“I am a businessman,” he added. “I believe in the free enterprise system. I believe in profit. But companies have to accept the rules that are placed on them.”

Steyer, founder of Farallon Capital Management, has pledged $5 million of his own money to the No campaign.

As the traditional Labor Day kickoff to the fall campaign season approaches, the No campaign has also been collecting some large donations, albeit from individuals rather than corporations.

A Southern California businesswoman, Claire Perry, contributed $250,000 on Monday. Last Friday, Julie Packard, a daughter of Hewlett-Packard founder David Packard, gave $101,895.

“If the Yes on 23 folks win, we’re going to change the framework for investment here,” said Steyer. “We’re going to change our ability to create new industries. Those industries are going to go elsewhere, probably not in the United States. Probably specifically our biggest competition in this is China.”

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by Joseph Romm.

Poor Carly Fiorina. To make conservative ideologues happy, she has
to abandon science and her previous positions on the key issues of
global warming and clean energy.

But to win election statewide, she has to appeal to the majority of
California voters, who understand that clean energy is the key to the
state’s long-term economic and job growth—and that unrestricted
emissions of greenhouse gases will devastate
California more than most states.

And so in her first debate with climate and clean energy champion
Sen. Barbara Boxer, she simply couldn’t give a straightforward answer to the
simple question of whether she supported the Big Oil funded Prop 23
effort to gut California’s landmark climate and clean energy law, Assembly Bill 32 (AB 32).

Let’s go to the videotape (watch to the end):

Ouch.

You know that you have screwed up as a conservative politician when
the center-right Politico
says so:

Fiorina’s major stumble came on the issue of Proposition
23, which would suspend AB 32.  She said the focus should be on federal
climate legislation and that she had not yet taken a position on the
proposition.

“If you can’t take a stand on Prop 23, I don’t know what you will
take a stand on,” Boxer responded.

Talking to reporters after the debate, Fiorina sidestepped the issue,
  saying she would “probably” take a position on Prop 23 before
November, though it’s not her main priority. She insisted the real
referendum on energy legislation “is on the ballot—and her name is
Sen. Barbara Boxer.”

You’ll note that Fiorina immediately jumps to the old right-wing
talking point created by Frank Luntz for conservatives who want to sound
like they care about global warming and clean energy without actually
having to do anything: We need to fund energy R&D.

As for her claim that AB 32 is a job-killer, not only do 118
economists disagree, but so did Fiorina and rational Republicans just two years ago:

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by Todd Woody.

At an event
at Google this week, green tech investor Vinod Khosla noted that solar
companies are building factories in California even though it would be cheaper
to manufacture photovoltaic panels in China.

“The markets are here, the innovators are here, the
ecosystem is here,” he said, noting that the state’s global warming law, known
as Assembly Bill 32, or AB 32, had created a predictable regulatory climate,
spurring investment in California.

Adding another data point to Khosla’s argument, AQT Solar, a Sunnyvale, Calif., startup,
announced Thursday that it had officially flipped the switch on its first factory
- in the heart of Silicon Valley.

The company’s trajectory is classic Silicon Valley and
illustrates Khosla’s thesis of why California has become an epicenter of green
technology innovation.

AQT was founded in 2007 by veterans of the Valley’s old-line
tech industry who saw a way to repurpose existing technology to make cheaper
and more efficient thin-film solar cells at a time when photovoltaic module
prices were plummeting and competitors with high capital costs were being
squeezed. (Thin-film solar cells are made by depositing semiconducting materials
on glass or flexible materials, a process which allows them to be essentially printed on
long rolls of metal.)

The startup managed to get to the production phase on $15
million raised from investors—a pittance for a solar cell manufacturer—and
on Thursday the company also announced its first customer, the developer Sol Pacifico,
which will install AQT solar cells at a luxury resort to be built in Baja
Mexico.

The factory will initially be able to produce 15 megawatts’
worth of solar cells a year.

AQT has been able to recycle Silicon Valley’s old computer
chip company infrastructure as well as tap its intellectual and financial
capital.

“We found a building that was an old semiconductor plant
that fit our needs perfectly,” says Michael Bartholomeusz, AQT’s chief
executive. “In next six months, we’ll be expanding our Sunnyvale facility and
hiring 40 more people. We’ll have a second manufacturing site next year.”

That’s not a huge number of jobs, of course, but inevitably
some of those employees will capitalize on their experience at AQT and start
their own companies, continuing Silicon Valley’s endless cycle of innovation.

Khosla’s point was that that feedback loop could be
short-circuited if voters in November pass Proposition 23, a California ballot
initiative that would suspend the state’s global warming law and with it the certainty
businesses that rely on to make investment decisions.

“More of the startups in Silicon Valley are setting up
factories here rather than in China, and that’s because there’s a
market here,” he said. “That will change” if Proposition 23 passes. 

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