Tag Archives: Obama

Obama and George Will — Cherry-picking the facts on climate change

Posted: January 29th, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: The Green Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Whenever I write a column on climate change, I am almost guaranteed to receive a few emails from the Coachella Valley’s climate skeptics, citing their evidence that any claims to a scientific basis for global warming are baseless and a hoax.

My quoting of President Barack Obama’s inaugural address in my Jan. 27 column quickly brought an email directing me to George Will’s column first published in the Washington Post and reprinted in The Desert Sun.

Will challenges the President’s reference to “raging fires” with figures suggesting that wild fires have decreased since 2006:

“Are fires raging now more than ever?” Will writes. ”(There were a third fewer U.S. wildfires in 2012 than in 2006.) Are the number and severity of fires determined by climate change rather than forestry and land use practices? Is today’s drought worse than that of the Dust Bowl, and was it caused by 1930s global warming?”

Joe Romm, writing on the Think Progress website, argues that Will is willfully (pun obviously intended) cherry-picking the facts.

“2006? Seriously, George Will . . .  If you wonder why in Hell (and High Water) Will just happens to pick the year 2006, you need look no further than the above graph of annual U.S. acreage burned from the National (Interagency) Fire Center.

“For Will . . . the ‘decline’ since the record-smashing 2006 disproves climate change. In Will’s logic, unless ever year is worse than the previous year in all respects, humans are not suffering the effects of global warming.”

Being a primary source kind of person, I went to the NIFC website and took a look at the chart tracking number of wildfires and total acreages burned. The numbers are revealing.

Yes, in 2006, there were 96,385 fires destroying 9,873,745 acres of land. That averages out to about 102 acres per fire.

In 2011, the comparable figures are  74,126 fires and 8,711,367 acres, averaging out at 117 acres per fire.

The 2012 figures continue the upward trend, with 67,315 wildland fires burning 9,211,281 acres for an average of 136 acres per fire. So while the number of fires varies wildly, the intensity and impact are on an upward trajectory — as the President said.

That speaks to another issue — Will’s editorial cherry-picking — which Romm takes on as well.  

“Will coyly asks, ‘Are the number and severity of fires determined by climate change rather than forestry and land-use practices?’ The key debater’s word there is ‘determined.’ It should be ‘increased.’

“The goal of disinformers and their media allies is to create a straw man whereby those who accept the overwhelming judgment of science are accused of saying global warming is the sole cause of a given extreme event, rather than an aggravating cause.”

Romm ends his article with a graphic from a 2010 presentation by John Holdren, the President’s science advisor, projecting the increase in acres lost to wildfires for each 1 degree Centigrade increase in the earth’s climate. The Southwest deserts, including the Coachella Valley, could be in for a 74 percent increase.

Climate change experts have long said that one cannot look at specific regional weather or extreme events; the bigger picture of climate change is much more complex and convincing.

 

 

Obama puts climate change on second term agenda

Posted: January 21st, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: The Green Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , ,
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At his Inauguration in Washington, D.C., President Barack Obama has spoken out strongly on climate change and renewable energy.

None

“We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.

“None can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought & more powerful storms.

 ”The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long…But America cannot resist this transition; we must lead it.

“We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs & new industries – we must claim its promise.”

In response to the inaugural address, the greenies on twitter are happy campers.

 

 

Presidential debates: Is climate change on the agenda?

Posted: October 1st, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: The Green Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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In advance of Wednesday’s first presidential debate, environmental groups across the country have been pushing hard to get questions about climate change asked and answered by Democratic incumbent President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Gov. Mitt Romney.

Exhibit 1: ClimateSilence.org, a website launched last week by Friends of the Earth Action and Forecast the Facts, which charges that, even in the midst of this summer’s crippling storms and droughts, both candidates have remained silent on climate change. The site includes a timeline, mapping out both candidates statements and actions from 2007 to present day, rating them from affirmation to denial, along with the following summary.

In 2008, both political parties nominated presidential candidates — Barack Obama and John McCain — who promised to address the climate crisis with mandatory caps on carbon pollution. Four years later, the arithmetic of climate change has become even more dire. Yet the rhetoric of the 2012 candidates has moved in the opposite direction. For President Obama, climate change has gone from an “urgent” challenge worthy of major speeches and comprehensive legislation, to an afterthought, fleetingly mentioned at occasional campaign events. Mitt Romney, meanwhile, has backpedaled from weak acknowledgement of the basic science to outright mockery of the carbon crisis. While there is clearly a difference between these two positions, neither come anywhere near the honesty and leadership that the problem demands.

At the same time, nine nonprofit groups — the League of Conservation Voters, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Sierra Club, the National Wildlife Federation, The Climate Reality Project, MomsRising.org, GlobalSolutions.org, iMatter Campaign and Moms Clean Air Force — dropped off 160,000 petitions for PBS newsman Jim Lehrer, who will moderate the first debate in Denver, urging him to ask the candidates about climate change.

“Millions of voters will be watching this first presidential debate to hear how the candidates plan to address the nation’s most urgent challenges – and the American people deserve to hear a substantive, meaningful conversation about confronting the climate crisis and building a clean energy economy,” Vanessa Kritzer, 0nline campaigns manager at the League of Conservation Voters, said in a press release announcing the petition drop.

On the Climate Progress website, Daniel J. Weiss, senior fellow with the Center for American Progress Action Fund, has three questions on climate change and energy policy for the candidates.  Two challenge Romney on his past statements and actions, such as his opposition to the increasingly rigorous fuel economy standards enacted by Obama. Weiss’s question for the President urges him to be more specific about his plans for addressing climate change and energy issues if he is re-elected.

Recent polls indicate that voters are concerned about climate change, want the candidates to address the issue and are ready to support leaders who can offer a plan for the nation’s transition from fossil fuel dependence to clean energy.

Most enlightening is a report, “Climate Solutions for a Stronger America,” from Breakthrough Strategies & Solutions, a consulting firm focused on climate change and sustainable development.  The report puts together polling information showing voters’ rising concerns about climate change and support for clean energy, with a game plan for political messaging.

Key findings include:

– Three out of four Americans now acknowledge climate disruption is real, and more than two out of three believe we should be doing something about it.

– Oil industry propaganda and misinformation is being pushed back by the force of the wildfires, floods, droughts and violent weather than people see with their own eyes.

– Voters are strongly supportive of clean energy, and extremely distrustful of oil and coal companies who distort science and oppose responsible policy.

 – Voters are hungry for forward-thinking solutions and can-do leadership. Yet few leaders are talking about this issue. There’s a huge political opportunity here.

 Enough said.

 

Another solar manufacturer defaults on DOE loan guarantee

Posted: June 29th, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: The Green Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Abound Solar, a Colorado-based solar panel manufacturer,  announced Thursday it is ceasing operations and will be filing for bankruptcy, and yes, it had a loan guarantee from Department of Energy, raising the specter of another Solyndra.

But, as reports across the Internet are being quick to note — the company had only drawn down $70 million of its $400 million loan guarantee, and it had about $300 million in venture capital and private investments.

Concerns about undue influence by high-rolling Democratic party donors  will likely also not be an issue, as the firm drew both red and blue investors.

According to a report on Bloomberg Businessweek website, Abound’s investors included –

– Pat Stryker, the billionaire heiress of a medical devices company, who has been a big fundraiser for President Barack Obama.

– Raymond Debbane, who has donated to Republican candidates including Rep. Darrell Issa, the California Republican who led an investigation of the U.S. Energy Department loan guarantee program.

In addition, Abound’s energy loan application earned a bipartisan letter of support from Indiana lawmakers due to the the company’s plans to build a plant in the state.

Republicans Sen. Richard Lugar and Rep. Dan Burton and then-Sen. Evan Bayh and Rep.  Pete Visclosky, both Democrats, signed an Oct. 30, 2009 letter to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, voicing “strong support and encouragement” for the company’s loan application.

GreenTech Media has a good behind-the-scenes report on the events and market forces leading to the company’ s decision to close its doors, laying off 125 employees.  While the company cited competition from low-cost Chinese panels as a central cause for its failure, GreenTech reports it hit a cash-flow crunch as it was trying to ramp up a new,  more efficient version of its thin-film panel.

The firm awaited $10 million from the DOE and $10 million from its investors, but had a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem. The DOE was waiting for the investors, and the investors were waiting for the DOE. Abound’s venture investors include DCM, Technology Partners, GLG Partners, Bohemian Companies, and Invus. DOE money is milestone-based and comes with very specific spending covenants.

Abound’s management found itself in a very sticky spot, locked in a survival race between burn rate and ramping up the factory to run at high enough utilization to lower costs and generate revenue and eventually profit. Add impatient investors, a flinchy DOE, and a media faction hungry for Obama DOE scandals — and it was a queasy mix, almost from the start.

The Department of Energy, possibly learning from Solyndra, has been trying to stay ahead of the story with a post on its website, putting this latest failure in context.

Damien LaVera, deputy director of the DOE’s Department of Public Affairs, acknowledges that loan guarantees to solar manufacturing firms do carry higher risk, but that they account for only 4 percent of department’s loan guarantee portfolio.

In the case of Abound, he said:

Because of the strong protections we put in place for taxpayers, the Department has already protected more than 80% of the original loan amount. Once the bankruptcy liquidation is complete, the Department expects the total loss to the taxpayer to be between 10 and 15 percent of the original loan amount.

The bigger question, he says, is whether the U.S., which invented solar technology, is going to cede the field in manufacturing to China, which in 2010 alone provided $30 billion in subsidies to its solar manufacturers.

Some in Washington believe that the United States cannot, or should not, compete with China when it comes to solar manufacturing – and aren’t willing to make any investments or take on any risks to win the global clean energy manufacturing race. Meanwhile, China . . . is surging to capture roughly half the market. That’s because China realizes this is a huge global market and a competition worth winning.

We respectfully disagree with those who are willing to cede thousands of high paying jobs and the innovations to come over the next decade and beyond to our competitors in China and around the world. Americans invented solar technology, and with the right support our companies can out-innovate and out-build any competitor, anywhere in the world. 

The recent ruling from the Department of Commerce, slapping high tariffs on Chinese-made solar cells will have little impact on Chinese dominance in the market, most experts agree, because the major Chinese manufacturers are setting up to circumvent the tariff by moving their operations to other countries.

The climate isn’t the only thing that’s changing

Posted: April 27th, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: The Green Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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After being on the political backburner for much of the election season, climate change and what the U.S., its politicians and businesses should do in response, could become a major focus of the campaign, according to a new poll released Thursday.

Based on a survey of 1,008 adults, 18 and over, conducted March 12-30 by Yale and George Mason University (margin of error +/- 3 percent at 95 percent confidence level), here are a taste of the findings:

– 72 percent of Americans think climate change should be a priority for both the president and Congress, with 12 percent saying it should be a very high priority, 28 percent, high and 32 percent medium.

 – 92 percent think developing clean energy sources should be priority for the president and Congress, with 31 percent rating it a very high priority, 38 percent high and 32 percent medium.

 – 58 percent say that Congress should be doing more to address climate change, while 54 percent say President Obama should be doing more to address climate change.

 – 83 percent think that protecting the environment either improves economic growth and provides new jobs or has no effect on jobs and growth.

 – 79 percent support funding more research into renewable energy such as wind and solar.

 – 55 percent said climate change will be a key issue in determining their vote for president this year, with 3 percent saying it would be the single most important issue and 52 percent saying it would be one of several important issues for them.

 Pundits and political analysts are already pronouncing climate change and energy as this election’s wedge issues, and President Barack Obama looks to be getting ahead of the curve in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, which came out earlier this week.  Responding to a question about the Keystone XL pipeline, the president staked out his position on climate change.

“Part of the challenge over these past three years has been that people’s number-one priority is finding a job and paying the mortgage and dealing with high gas prices. In that environment, it’s been easy for the other side to pour millions of dollars into a campaign to debunk climate-change science. I suspect that over the next six months, this is going to be a debate that will become part of the campaign, and I will be very clear in voicing my belief that we’re going to have to take further steps to deal with climate change in a serious way. That there’s a way to do it that is entirely compatible with strong economic growth and job creation – that taking steps, for example, to retrofit buildings all across America with existing technologies will reduce our power usage by 15 or 20 percent. That’s an achievable goal, and we should be getting started now.”

Romney’s position on energy, which barely mentions wind and solar or climate change, can be found in his platform. A recent article on the GreenTech Media website gives a quick rundown.

What I find most interesting is his blind spot on green jobs and energy. Here’s what he says about the connection between jobs and energy production.

“Producing more domestic energy would create good jobs and bolster local economies in a wide variety of energy-producing regions that effectively ‘export’ their product to the rest of the country. While countless jobs are engaged in the actual energy-production process, they are a small fraction of the full workforce that benefits. For instance, before the first barrel of oil is pumped out of the ground, entire industries are hard at work creating the equipment and providing the services used in drilling, production, and the long chain of supporting industries that brings energy from inside the earth to the consumer.”

It doesn’t seem to occur to him that solar, wind and other renewables have similar material value chains stretching across the country and renewable projects create secondary jobs and economic activity in local economies.

 Obama’s focus on sustainable energy and jobs is an “unhealthy obsession,” while his focus on fossil fuels and unraveling environmental regulations is not?

In the meantime — if you are at the intersection of Palm Canyon and Alejo tomorrow (Saturday) at about 11:45 a.m., you may run into a flash mob of dancing polar bears — or people dressed up as polar bears dancing.

The event, which will run a scant 15 minutes, is part of a national chain of dancing bear events organized by the Sierra Club to protest Shell Oil’s plans to start drilling for oil this summer in the Arctic’s Beaufort and Chukchi seas—home to the entire population of U.S. polar bears.

Find out more on the Sierra Club’s Chill the Drills web page.

 

 

Staying sane about Solyndra

Posted: September 15th, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: The Green Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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I got an email from a reader recently taking me to task for my lack of comment about Solyndra, the Northern California solar company that went bankrupt at the end of August and is now at the center of a political feeding frenzy in Congress and the media.

The Republicans clearly smell blood and the Department of Energy’s loan guarantee program, President Barack Obama and solar technology in general are the bait.

Are there balanced views to be had out there?

A good starting point is Brad Plumer’s blog post “Five myths about the Solyndra collapse” on The Washington Post website, which does a lot of wheat and chaff separating, from the White House’s role in pushing the loan approval (a qualified maybe) to whether we can blame it all on China (convenient, but no).

The key point he makes is on the question of whether the government should be involved in renewable energy financing.

Plumer writes: “Actually, there’s reason to think the private market is drastically under-investing in new energy technology. As a new report from the American Energy Innovation Council lays out, the utility sector spends just 0.1 percent of its revenues on R&D — the average for U.S. industries is 3.5 percent. The electricity sector is heavily regulated and capital-intensive — power plants last for decades and turn over slowly — and hence tends to focus less on innovation. What’s more, many objectives that may be in the public interest, such as reducing carbon emissions, aren’t fully valued in the marketplace right now.

“As such, the AEIC report concludes, “Energy innovation should be a higher national priority.” Right now, the federal government spends a middling amount on energy research (about $3 billion in 2009), compared with the sums lavished on the National Institutes of Health ($36.5 billion) or defense research ($77 billion). And the AEIC report recommends public support for all aspects of the innovation process, from basic research to pilot projects to helping companies commercialize their products. (Solyndra was in that last phase.)”

Marian Wang on Pro Publica also has put together a good recap of what’s happened to date, with lots of links to primary documents such as the Republicans’ investigation released Wednesday and the Government Accountability Office’s 2010 report on the DOE loan guarantee program.

Wang’s most trenchant observation comes on the issue of the U.S. government’s track record as an investor:

“Ultimately,” she writes, “Solyndra was a failed investment decision on the part of the government, which, unfortunately for taxpayers, isn’t unusual. Consider the billions in bailout dollars that were lent to banks that, like Solyndra, ended up bankrupt.”

Along the same lines, GreenTech Media has a chart comparing the government’s loss on Solyndra to the billions it’s shelled out for military boondoggles. I tried to download it so I could include it in this post, but it’s just too big, so get a look by clicking here.

I could probably spend the rest of the day on the Internet reviewing the Solyndra press, but I’ll end here with a link to Darren Samuelsohn’s piece on Politico.com, talking with renewable energy leaders and other political folk about the public relations’ nightmare the scandal has created for the clean energy industry in general.

Paul Bledsoe of the Bipartisan Policy Center gets to the heart of the matter with his argument that the main misstep for Obama and the Democrats was to promote the loan guarantee program as a jobs creator.

As quoted in Samuelsohn’s article, Bledsoe said renewable energy advocates are suffering from unfair expectations and budget debates best described as “famine-feast-famine.”

“The real problem was trying to sell incentives for clean energy narrowly on the basis of a green jobs program,” he said. “I think that put a level of expectation on the sector that was unrealistic and was never really the primary focus on incentives for clean energy in the early years.”

With the stimulus funding, “you try to get a decade worth of funding done in 18 months,” Bledsoe added. “It’s inevitable there are going to be mistakes.”

Which is not to say that the green economy — including solar, wind and green building– is not creating jobs, as noted in an email blast the Natural Resources Defense Council sent out on Solyndra.

Some of the figures:           

– In 2009, there were 2.2 million green jobs in America, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. By July of this year, the number was 2.7 million, according to the Brookings Institution. That compares with 375,000 jobs mining coal, producing oil and gas and turning fossil fuels into consumer products.

– About 87,000 Americans now support their families by designing, building or installing wind turbines, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nationally, we’re getting 3.3 percent of our electricity from wind, according to August data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Texas, the oil capital of the world, now gets 8 percent of its electricity from wind turbines, and those projects are helping to keep ranchers and farmers viable as well.

 – As of 2005, green building projects in the U.S. were worth about $3 billion a year. Today it’s about $54 billion. In 2015, this will be a $145-billion market, according to McGraw Hill Construction. By then, green construction will support as many as 8 million American jobs, according to estimates by Booz Allen.

 

Obama’s rollback on smog regulations

Posted: September 2nd, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: The Green Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
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Air quality in the Coachella Valley won’t be getting any better any too soon with today’s news that President Barack Obama has put a hold on stricter smog controls the EPA was about to issue.

Here’s the news in nutshell from the Associated Press:

“President Barack Obama on Friday scrapped his administration’s controversial plans to tighten smog rules, bowing to the demands of congressional Republicans and some business leaders.

“Obama overruled the Environmental Protection Agency — and the unanimous opinion of its independent panel of scientific advisers — and directed administrator Lisa Jackson to withdraw the proposed regulation to reduce concentrations of ground-level ozone, smog’s main ingredient. The decision rests in part on reducing regulatory burdens and uncertainty for businesses at a time of rampant uncertainty about an unsteady economy.

“The announcement came shortly after a new government report on private sector employment showed that businesses essentially added no new jobs last month — and that the jobless rate remained stuck at a historically high 9.1 percent.

“The withdrawal of the proposed regulation marks the latest in a string of retreats by Obama in the face of Republican opposition. Last December, he shelved, at least until the end of 2012, his insistence that Bush-era tax cuts should no longer apply to the wealthy. Earlier this year he avoided a government shutdown by agreeing to Republican demands for budget cuts. And this summer he acceded to more than a $1 trillion in spending reductions, with more to come, as the price for an agreement to raise the nation’s debt ceiling.”

To read the full AP report, click here.

Meanwhile — response right and left has been what one would expect.

Climate change  skeptic organizations such as the Heartland Instititute, see the move as a rightward feint by the President but still not the regulatory gutting of the EPA they’re looking for.

A statement from James M. Taylor, a senior fellow on environmental policy at the Institute, reads:

“While President Obama’s announcement that he is withdrawing EPA’s draft ozone standards is a welcome development, EPA continues down the path of economic destruction by imposing costly carbon dioxide restrictions in the name of fighting speculative global warming. If the president is serious about relieving EPA’s oppressive burden on America’s economy, he will call off the dogs regarding EPA’s carbon dioxide restrictions, as well.”

Meanwhile, environmental groups are responding with dismay and a strong refutation of the conventional wisdom that regulating air pollution is bad for the economy.

Here’s Frances Beinecke, executive director of the National Resources Defense Council, blogging on the group’s web site:

“In the case of ozone standards, the costs wouldn’t have kicked in for several years, long after the current economic downturn. And keep in mind that in 2010, the top 10 utilities had a combined $28.4 billion in profits and $7.5 billion in cash balances. They can afford to embrace innovative pollution controls and protect their customers’ health.

“Meanwhile clean air investments yield enormous returns. The smog standards would generate $37 billion in value for a cost of about $20 billion by 2020. Take together, Clean Air Act standards generated approximately $1.3 trillion in public health and environmental benefits in 2010 alone for a cost of $50 billion. That’s a value worth more than 9 percent of GDP for a cost of only .4 percent of GDP. The ratio of benefits to costs is more than 26 to 1.

“Americans know it’s cheaper to stay healthy than it is to pay for asthma attacks, missed work days, emergency emergency room visits, and hospital stays.”

Again, why this is important in the valley is that our air quality is tightly linked to Los Angeles and Long Beach — much of our bad air comes from the ports in those two cities. So cleaning up the air there, the goal of the proposed tighter restrictions, would have had a knock-on effect for air quality here.

The new fuel efficiency standards

Posted: July 29th, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: The Green Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
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President Barack Obama today announced new fuel efficiency standards that will bring America’s passenger and light truck fleet to an average of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.

What this means in practical terms is an increase of 5 percent efficiency per year  for passenger cars, putting them over 60 mpg by 2025, and 3.5 percent for light trucks, taking them to about 43-44 mpg by 2025.

Figures from the White House project the new standards will save 12 billion barrels of oil, keep 6 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and save American consumers $1.7 trillion at the pump between now and 2025.

What is significant is that the new standards represent an agreement by all major automakers — Ford, GM, Chrysler, BMW, Honda, Hyundai, Jaguar/Land Rover, Kia, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Toyota and Volvo, which together account for over 90 percent of all vehicles sold in the United States – as well as the United Auto Workers (UAW), and California, which has historically had tighter standards than the U.S.

An article on The Atlantic Wire pulls together a range of reactions, from skeptics saying the agreement still has too many loopholes that will allow the automakers to drag their wheels in implementing the new standards to those who say the new rules are too strict and will cost too much. The general consensus is that the new standards will be a big deal, if they actually work.

Greentech Media also weighs in with a rundown of 10 technologies, current and in development, that could be used to get us to 54.5 mpg.

Ceres, a Boston nonprofit working on sustainability issues, released a report today projecting that the new fuel efficiency standards will create jobs and help the economy. Reaching 54.5 mpg by 2025 could add between 350,000 and 600,000 jobs to the economy by 2030, the report says.

California has had a key role in all this because the state’s stringent fuel-efficiency standards had, as Gov. Jerry Brown said in a press call today, ”been the object of antipathy from auto companies and some of the pundits in going off in the wong direction.

“The agreement today is about regulation. It is regulation that will advance the well-being of the country by encouraging innovation and the reduction of fuel consumption and the reduction of greenhouse gases,” he said. ”This is the brightest light I’ve seen shining in Washington in many a month.”

But concerns are already being raised that by signing on to the the federal standards, the state is giving up its role as the nation’s leader in setting high fuel efficiency standards and pushing for cleaner cars in general.

Joining Brown for the press call, Mary Nichols, chair of the California Air Resources Board, said, yes, the state will follow the federal standards on greenhouse gas reductions and fuel efficiency, but will continue to push automakers for cleaner cars when it comes to other pollutants. The state is also not giving up on its zero-emissions vehicle initiative, she said. And the agreement also calls for a mid-term review, which would occur around 2018.

“California has a policy of moving in the direction of a fleet of vehicles that are fuel cells, that are plug-ins – 15 percent by 2020 and well beyond that by 2050.” Nichols said. ”The reason we’re able to do this is we have a power grid that is relatively clean and we have an integrated policy (that looks at) how we are going to be charging vehicles off peak, finding ways to make charging systems more efficient. It’s not one set of standards we’re working on here.”