The Energy Information Administration says power bills could also fluctuate based on whether we develop cheap low-carbon coal technology. (Photo source: Frank C. Muller at Wikimedia Commons)
The price we pay for power in the
future will depend on the kind of
power plants we invest in. That’s
according to a report that examines
proposed climate change regulations.
Shawn Allee has more:
Transcript
The price we pay for power in the
future will depend on the kind of
power plants we invest in. That’s
according to a report that examines
proposed climate change regulations.
Shawn Allee has more:
The Energy Information Administration is the federal government’s crystal ball when it comes to energy policy.
The EIA looked at the House version of a big climate change bill. The Senate takes it up next month.
Forecast director John Conti says new regulations could cost each household between $12 and $227 more each year within a decade.
Conti says there’s a range because it’s not exactly clear how much it’ll cost to switch to low-carbon power sources, like nuclear.
“For most technologies, you have a good idea of how much they’re going to cost. Of course, we haven’t built a nuclear plant in twenty or so years and, as a result, there’re varying cost estimates and people can debate, I think, for a large extent, until that first plant is indeed built.”
Conti says power bills could also fluctuate based on whether we develop cheap low-carbon coal technology.
Ellen Ruppel Shell writes that we spend about 80% more in a discount environment. (Source: Urban at Wikimedia Commons)
In this recession, we are looking at money
differently. A bargain – getting things cheap –
has been the all-consuming goal. Ellen Ruppel Shell has written a new book entitled
‘Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture.’ The
Environment Report’s Lester Graham talked with
her:
Transcript
[Please note: the following transcript is for a shorter version of the interview. If you would like a complete transcript, please contact us.]
In this recession, we are looking at money
differently. A bargain – getting things cheap –
has been the all-consuming goal. Ellen Ruppel Shell has written a new book entitled
‘Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture.’ The
Environment Report’s Lester Graham talked with
her:
Lester Graham: Your book tells the story of how we came to value cheap, but, you know, my dad used to say, ‘cheap things aren’t good and good things aren’t cheap.’
Ellen Ruppel Shell: I think that retailers and multinationals have gone really far to make us not think like that. Your father insisted on value. You know, there’s an old Russian saying, ‘I’m too poor to be cheap.’ You know, this is something that people used to take for granted – we used to know that we got what we paid for. Now, how did this common wisdom get forgotten?
Graham: Most of the products we get, we throw away – because they are so cheap.
We don’t have to worry about the cost of repairing them, because we can simply replace them with something brand-new.
Shell: Absolutely, and, of course, that disposability has been marketed to us as a big advantage. And I’ve also gotten that comment from folks, ‘Well, you know, who cares? I’ll just throw it away. I don’t want something that lasts a long time. I want something new all the time.’ Our relationship with objects has really become distorted – I mean, the very idea that you would buy shoes knowing, almost as you leave the store, that they’re not going to last. And, studies show, that if you believe that, you don’t take care of them. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. You assume they’re going to fall apart.
Graham: Your book makes it sound as though we’re in a spiral, downward, in pursuit of cheap goods. Why do you make that argument?
Shell: Well, I think it’s a spiral we might, now, have the opportunity to pull ourselves out of. But, yes, I do think it’s a spiral – the idea that prices have to go lower and lower. And the reason for this, of course, is that since the 1970s, incomes in the United States have been essentially flat, controlling for inflation. And even going down somewhat, for most Americans. At the same time, three-quarters of our income goes to pay for fixed costs – those things we can’t live without – healthcare, education. So, what have these low priced goods done for us? Well, I argue, not a lot. It’s made tee-shirts, and shorts, and other things, maybe cheaper than ever before, but we have sacrificed – in terms of our wages, our job security, and our stability as an economy – as a consequence of these increasingly low prices, this incredible – what we used to call ‘predatory’ – pricing.
Graham: Many of us feel we can only afford ‘cheap.’ What are you suggesting we do?
Shell: My goal in writing this book was to get consumers to re-think why they shop in the first place. We spend about 80% more in a discount environment. And, then, we’re getting what we think are these amazing deals. And this triggers in our brain this kind of game-playing behavior – we want to make all these, you know, we want to win. Do we go to buy things that are going enhance our life and add value to our life? Or, is it a game-playing exercise? And I think most of us would say, rationally, well you know, look, ‘I go to purchase things that are going to enhance my life.’ And, if that’s the case, I think that you will actually spend less money, you will buy fewer things, and you’ll think harder about why you’re buying those things, and you’ll get precisely what you want at the price that’s going to work for you.
Graham: Ellen Ruppel Shell is the author of the book ‘Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture.’ Thanks very much for your time.
Dealers across the country are running out of new cars to sell that qualify for the program. (Photo source: IFCAR at Wikimedia Commons)
Two billion dollars is being added to
the very popular Cash for Clunkers
program. The original one billion dollars
is almost gone. But, Lester Graham
reports, there’s a shortage of new cars
that qualify for the program:
Transcript
Two billion dollars is being added to
the very popular Cash for Clunkers
program. The original one billion dollars
is almost gone. But, Lester Graham
reports, there’s a shortage of new cars
that qualify for the program:
The National Automobile Dealers Association says they’ve been hearing from dealers across the country who’ve been running out of new cars that qualify for the program.
Steve Demers is the General Manager of Cueter Chrysler Jeep Dodge in Ypsilanti, Michigan, a state where Cash for clunkers has been especially popular.
“There’s virtually no vehicles available, so there are other areas in the country that may not be as – the program has not been as popular – so we’re able to pluck some of that inventory out of their states, but it’s a nation-wide problem. I mean, we’re out many, many states away, thousands of miles before we can find a vehicle that can be brought in for one of our custormers.”
Factories are shipping more cars to the dealers but can’t keep up with demand.
185,000 gas-guzzling clunkers have been turned in to be scrapped in exchange for the government incentives.
Car buyers get up to 4,500 dollars toward buying a new fuel-efficient model.
Airlines say that there needs to be more regulation on oil speculators. (Photo courtesy of NASA)
Recent swings in the price of
crude oil are leading to more
trouble for the US airline
industry. Rebecca Williams
reports:
Transcript
Recent swings in the price of
crude oil are leading to more
trouble for the US airline
industry. Rebecca Williams
reports:
Even though oil futures are trading for half of what they were last summer, the airlines are not happy.
David Castelveter is with the Air Transport Association. He says wild price swings for oil make it tough for the industry to plan ahead.
“They hedge their fuel purchases when the price is high at a lower rate and if the price of fuel goes low then they’re hedged in at higher rates and it costs them money.”
Airlines would like to raise ticket prices, but, with the recession, they’re worried no one will buy them.
So instead, they’re trying to cut back on how much fuel they use. Airlines are retrofitting planes with winglets that cut fuel consumption.
But that takes money and time. So in the meantime, they’re also cutting jobs and routes.
The industry’s putting pressure on Congress to force more transparency in the oil futures trading market.
They’re hoping more regulation on oil speculators would mean fewer price swings.
A climate change bill will mean more expensive energy until the nation can transition from fossil fuels like coal and oil to renewable energy such as biofuels, wind, and solar. (Source: Atmoneytota at Wikimedia Commons)
Eventually a climate change bill will work its way through Congress and President Obama has indicated he’ll sign it. But a civil rights group says a climate change bill will hurt the working poor. Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
Eventually a climate change bill will work its way through Congress and President Obama has indicated he’ll sign it. But a civil rights group says a climate change bill will hurt the working poor. Lester Graham reports:
A climate change bill will mean more expensive energy until the nation can switch from fossil fuels like coal and oil to renewable energy such as biofuels, wind and solar.
Roy Innis is the Chairman of the civil rights group Congress of Racial Equality. He says higher energy costs will hit the working poor hardest.
Democrats say they’ll get tax rebates to offset the higher costs. Innis doesn’t like the idea.
“We don’t want energy welfare. This is our new civil rights battle: how to have abundant and available, reliable energy at a reasonable cost.”
And Innis says we have that now with fossil fuels.
The Obama Administration says climate change legislation will eventually lead to cheaper energy for everyone and reduce the cause of global warming —which, in the end, could cost people a lot more.
Eric Lindstrom, Vice President of Cannon Design, stands next to the building's 140 new solar panels (Photo by Joyce Kryszak)
Joan Bozer at the American Solar Energy Society Conference, next to pictures of her home's solar system (Photo by Joyce Kryszak)
Neal Lurie, with the Solar Society, says tax incentives are creating demand and that's driving down the cost of solar systems (Photo by Joyce Kryszak)
Buying a solar system for your home still is not as simple or inexpensive as say picking up a new water heater. But solar energy advocates argue that the systems are affordable and obtainable for just about everyone – right now. Joyce Kryszak checked out that claim:
Transcript
Buying a solar system for your home still is not as simple or inexpensive as say picking up a new water heater. But solar energy advocates argue that the systems are affordable and obtainable for just about everyone – right now. Joyce Kryszak checked out that claim:
You might say that sunlight is a trade mark for Cannon Design. The Western New York based firm designs some of the most solar friendly buildings in the world. But only now is Cannon using the sun for its own building.
Eric Lindstrom is Vice President of the company. He says it’s what their environmentally savvy clients expect.
“You know there’s a huge P.R. factor here that we can bring our clients in and say, you know, this is what we’re recommending to you, but we’ve done it ourselves and it works. That we didn’t just read it in a magazine somewhere and say this is what you should be doing.”
Lindstrom takes us up on the roof of the company’s building to have a look at the new system.
Up here we find solar panels. 140 of them. They’re stretched out from edge to edge, soaking up the rays.
Lindstrom says they generate about 5% of the energy the building needs. But he says even at that small percentage the company will recoup the roughly $17,000 investment in about three years.
The system’s total price tag is actually about $170,000. But Cannon Design got corporate tax credits and incentives that covered roughly 90%. After the pay-back period, Linstrom says the company will actually pocket money.
Back in the building they can watch the savings add up on the inverter meters inside. That got Lindstrom thinking. He got a bid on a system for his home. He’s decided against it for now because the payback would take about eight years. You see, businesses get more tax breaks than homeowners.
But some people say the payback time can be less. And sometimes it just doesn’t’ matter to them.
Joan Bozer was at the American Solar Energy Society Conference held in Buffalo, New York. Bozer was showing off pictures of her home’s $30,000 solar system. It cost her half that after incentives. The payback will take a while—about eight years. But Bozer says that’s okay.
“Because it doesn’t make any difference to me if it’s five years or ten years what the payback period is. I want the solar panels, like people in their house they put on the roof they want, or they put on what they want and this is what we want – solar panels on the roof. That’s how we want to do it.”
But as green-minded as she is, Bozer admits that federal and state incentives gave her the final push.
While everybody can take advantage of recent federal tax credits, state incentives vary. Some are generous, and some offer homeowners nothing. Some local governments are offering low-interest loans on top of the federal and state incentives.
Neal Lurie is with the Solar Society. Lurie says incentives are creating demand and that’s driving down the cost of solar systems.
He says systems cost about 30% less than last year.
Lurie says with lower prices and tax incentives, some homeowners can have solar without much – or no – money out of pocket.
But how soon will solar catch on with the masses? Lurie predicts in less than six years.
“We’ll see solar technology a low-cost provider of electricity, even lower priced than fossil fuels without incentives. I think that when that happens we’re going to see it go from being something that people are looking at and starting to do to something that is truly common-place, much more than people may actually expect today.”
Others think solar will really take off in just three years. Solar installers are already gearing up. Some say they’ll double their workforce by the end of this year.
Cities have started to use car sharing programs in order to save money (Photo by Ed Edahl, courtesy of FEMA)
Car sharing has long been considered a green
alternative to owning a car. Both in terms of
expense and the environment. Companies like
Zipcar have made this concept mainstream in
a lot of urban areas. Now some cities are
trying out car sharing with their municipal
fleets. Tamara Keith has more:
Transcript
Car sharing has long been considered a green
alternative to owning a car. Both in terms of
expense and the environment. Companies like
Zipcar have made this concept mainstream in
a lot of urban areas. Now some cities are
trying out car sharing with their municipal
fleets. Tamara Keith has more:
Karyn LeBlanc works in the Washington DC department of transportation, so maybe it’s not surprising that she was one of the first to try out the city’s FleetShare program.
“It’s this one over here, right here, says 6067 is the license plate on it.”
A white Honda Civic powered by natural gas is waiting for her in a parking lot behind a city office.
She went online to reserve the car and it’s expecting her. At least the very smart computer transponder thingie in the front windshield is expecting her. LeBlanc presses something that looks like a credit card up to the device.
“So, we place this right here and you hear that little click and the car opens.”
The tank is full, the keys are inside, and LaBlanc is off and running.
(sound of driving)
“I would say I use fleetshare 2 or 3 times a week for any meeting that I need to go to or that I need to get to. So I go where I need to go. I park it. I go to my meeting. I get back in the car and I go back to the office.”
For people who use Zipcar this process will sound very familiar. The company has simply brought its car-sharing technology to Washington DC’s municipal fleet.
So far DC has about 60 new cars outfitted with Zipcar gear. But here’s the remarkable thing, those 60 cars are replacing 360. How? The new cars are getting a lot more use than the old ones.
“We’re getting up to 71% utilization on all these cars.”
When we spoke to him, Dan Tangerlini was DC’s Deputy Mayor.
We’re standing in the middle of a municipal parking lot. On one side there are empty spaces where the fleetshare cars park – on the other side there are just a bunch of white city cars.
“You see all this white iron around here. All these DC government vehicles that are kind of sitting static because these are assigned to individuals and those individuals don’t have a reason to be in that vehicle right now.”
Tangherlini says this system will save the city about 6 million dollars over the next five years – which is welcome at a time when budgets are tight.
Which might explain why Scott Griffith’s phone keeps ringing. He’s Zipcar’s CEO and says the company is now in talks with 25 cities.
“They all have the same challenges, not enough tax money, too many cars. They do need to move people around during the day and we’re trying to make that happen in the most efficient way.”
But this isn’t just about money. Griffith says when people share cars they end up driving more efficiently. When they have to book in advance rather than a bunch of individual trips they stack all their stops in one trip.
Car sharing isn’t new for cities like Chicago, San Francisco and Philadelphia. They’ve had programs in place for some time where city workers can use cars loaned out by private car sharing companies. They use the same one the public uses.
Eli Masser helped form the relationship in Philadelphia between the city and the non-profit Philly Car Share which he co-founded.
“One of the benefits of car sharing with municipalities or most businesses for that matter is residential demand is in the evenings and on weekends and most business demand and municipal demand is during the day.”
Which means those cars are busy well beyond the 40 hour work week. Critics say this model is far more efficient than what Zipcar is doing in DC. But Masser says there’s an even better model – a hybrid of DC and Philly.
Ideally cities would have a relatively small city-owned fleet of shared cars and even heavy machinery. But most city workers would car-share with the public.
The price of a barrel of oil has jumped
up from $45 to nearly $70 in just
three months. And gas prices have been
creeping up too. Rebecca Williams reports
these prices are out of sync with the usual
rules of supply and demand:
Transcript
The price of a barrel of oil has jumped
up from $45 to nearly $70 in just
three months. And gas prices have been
creeping up too. Rebecca Williams reports
these prices are out of sync with the usual
rules of supply and demand:
Right now there’s a huge glut of supply of oil – and at the same time, weak global demand for it.
Ruchir Kadakia is a global oil market expert. He’s with Cambridge Energy Research Associates.
He says speculators are driving oil prices up.
“People believe that with positive economic growth in the future there will be greater demand for oil. So they start to buy up oil in anticipation of that demand recovery.”
So these speculators are making money while most of the economy is in a slump.
But Kadakia thinks the realities of supply and demand will eventually catch up and drag oil prices back down.
“The pain we’re feeling at the pump today is probably going to be the worst we feel all this summer.”
He thinks gas prices might actually get back below two dollars a gallon.
Congress is trying to work out a bill that would mean bring in a clunker, get cash towards the purchase of a new high mileage car (Photo source: Flicka at Wikimedia Commons)
On Capitol Hill, there’s growing momentum for legislation called “Cash for Clunkers.” In fact, there are several bills circulating in Congress and the details are in flux. But the general idea is to use tax dollars to encourage people to trade their old gas guzzling clunker for a new fuel efficient car. The hope is to help the slumping auto industry and the environment at the same time. Tamara Keith gives the environmental claims a test drive:
Transcript
On Capitol Hill, there’s growing momentum for legislation called “Cash for Clunkers.” In fact, there are several bills circulating in Congress and the details are in flux. But the general idea is to use tax dollars to encourage people to trade their old gas guzzling clunker for a new fuel efficient car. The hope is to help the slumping auto industry and the environment at the same time. Tamara Keith gives the environmental claims a test drive:
At DarCars, a Toyota dealership in Silver Spring, Maryland people are shopping for cars.
But business is down.
Tammy Darvish is vice president of DarCars automotive group. Here’s how she describes “cash for clunkers.”
“It’s money from heaven.”
Well, from angels in Congress anyway. Bring in a clunker, get cash towards the purchase of a new high mileage car.
“I think they were talking about $4,000 or $5,000 or even $2,000. Whatever it is. Any incentive that you could add to the manufacturer incentives and the dealer incentives just make it all the better deal for the customer.”
And as we walk around the lot, Darvish points out plenty of cars she figures could qualify as fuel efficient replacements for clunkers. Like this one that gets 35 miles to the gallon on the highway.
“So here’s a Corolla and it’s not a hybrid technology vehicle and it’s still getting great gas mileage and all the manufacturers have vehicles, you know in those ranges.”
But not everyone is sold on the merits of a cash for clunkers program.
Dan Sperling heads the Institute for Transportation Studies at University of California Davis.
“What it mostly does, and we should be honest about it is it stimulates vehicle sales.”
He says this is more an economic policy with a green polish.
“It is supporting the use of more low carbon efficient vehicles, that’s good. It is supporting the automotive industry. That’s good. The problem is, it’s a very expensive way to do that.”
Whether a federal cash for clunkers program will be able to claim environmental success will largely come down to what counts as a clunker – and just how fuel efficient the car that replaces it needs to be.
For example, one version of the legislation would allow any car 8 years old or older to be junked in exchange for cash.
But an 8 year old car isn’t exactly a gelloppe. That’s younger than the average car on the road.
Bill Chameides is dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University.
“I would say that cash for clunkers programs that only put a requirement on the age of a car, from an environmental point of view is a real clunker, if you pardon the pun.”
To really analyze the environmental impact of a program like this Chameides says you also have to consider what it takes to manufacture a new car. And it turns out a lot of greenhouse gas emissions come from building a car.
“When you drive that new car out of the showroom, you already have 1 year of carbon dioxide emissions already in the atmosphere.”
So, to make up for those emissions, he says cars getting junked have to be real gas guzzlers, and the new cars need to be gas sippers.
“If we want to sell this as an environmental program we need to make sure that it’s focusing on really making a difference in the amount of gasoline we use, the amount of CO2 we emit. And therefore we need to have a limit on the miles per gallon of the scrap car. It need to be way down at the bottom of the spectrum. And we need to have a limit on the new car. It needs to be up high on the spectrum.”
There’s disagreement in Congress about what the mileage requirements for the program should be.
It’s one of those details yet to be worked out, that will determine just how green cash for clunkers will really be.
These Suzukis at Ken Butman's dealership, which were in high demand last year, are now sitting unsold (Photo by Samara Freemark)
Chances are, you haven’t bought a new car this year. Auto sales are down across the board – including in the small car and electric-gas hybrid markets. Now some dealers and automakers are proposing a way to move some of those cars: increase the gas tax. Samara Freemark explains why the same people who sell cars might want to make driving them more expensive:
Transcript
Chances are, you haven’t bought a new car this year. Auto sales are down across the board – including in the small car and electric-gas hybrid markets. Now some dealers and automakers are proposing a way to move some of those cars: increase the gas tax. Samara Freemark explains why the same people who sell cars might want to make driving them more expensive:
It was almost exactly this time last year that Ford dealer Ken Butman
traded in his pickup for a Suzuki hatchback.
His Ann Arbor, Michigan
dealership had been selling Suzukis for a couple of years. But they got
really popular last spring when gas prices jumped. Butman ordered a big
shipment to keep up with the demand.
“These are the Suzukis. These little cars get good gas mileage. And
they’re so cute. Look at them. Look at this one here. It’s got a little
rack for your skis. Look at
that.”
But those cars – the ones Butman ordered a year ago – most of them are
still here. They’re still sitting on his lot. Not moving.
“It was strange because they were so hot. For awhile there you couldn’t
give a big car away. And everybody was rushing to the small cars. And then
just as quickly, about when the price of gas came down again, we saw a
complete reversal. Like a light switch. That’s how fast it cut off.”
It’s been like that all over the country. Dealers who last year had
waiting lists for hybrids and small cars suddenly have a lot of extra
inventory. Sales of hybrids are way down from last April, mostly because
gas costs about half what it did last year.
Brett Smith is an auto analyst with the Center for Automotive Research. He
says consumers only really care about fuel economy when gas prices are
high. When gas hits about 4 dollars a gallon, consumers switch to fuel
efficient cars. When prices drop again, so do sales of efficient cars.
“Look at what’s happened every time we’ve had an energy crisis. We’ve
gone to smaller cars for a couple of years, and then the consumer has gone
back to larger cars. Why? Because at that fuel price they can get away with
it, they can justify it.”
It’s a real problem for dealers. It also worries auto manufacturers who
have poured money into developing hybrids and have a lot of new models due
to come out this year.
And that’s why some people who sell cars have begun to push for
increasing the gas tax.
Dealers and auto executives might not seem like the first bunch to line up
behind a tax hike. Traditionally they’ve lobbied hard against anything
that makes driving more expensive.
But a high tax – and therefore, higher gas prices – could get all those extra
hybrids moving again.
Michael Jackson is the CEO at AutoNation. That’s the
nation’s largest chain of dealership.
Jackson wants to see gas at four
dollars a gallon – the figure at which many analysts say consumer behavior
changes. And he thinks the government can keep prices at that magic number
with a floating tax.
Auto makers have been a little more cautious. But some top executives at
American companies have called Jackson’s ideas ‘smart’ and ‘worth
looking into’.
Smith says they believe that higher gas taxes could
stabilize the market for fuel efficient cars – making investment in new
technologies a safer bet.
“The car companies will rarely come out and loudly say, things like, ‘we
think there needs to be a gas tax.’ But almost all of them will say on the
side, if you want people to drive more fuel efficient cars, the best way to
do it is a gas tax.”
For now, though, it might not take a big tax to bring gas prices back up.
Oil trader Anthony Grisanti is the president of GRZ Energy. He says an
economic recovery would do pretty much the same thing.
“Shouldn’t be any doubt about it, once the economy picks up, say,
beginning of next year or year after that, you’re going to start to see oil
prices go higher.”
And that means prices at the pump would go up too.
Proposing higher gas taxes – especially of a couple of dollars a gallon – can
mean career suicide for politicians. So a big hike in the gas tax seems
iffy. But if gas prices rise as the economy recovers, dealers might see
those fuel efficient cars move off the lot again.
The Energy Information Administration says power bills could also fluctuate based on whether we develop cheap low-carbon coal technology. (Photo source: Frank C. Muller at Wikimedia Commons)
