The real science fiction is that fish swimming in the river. (Popular Mechanics)

Those who rage about the underused bounty of natural energy that surrounds New York City, rage no more. As the 10-year journey to get the Roosevelt Island Tidal Energy project (RITE) up and running has finally been sunk. To the bottom of the East River, that is.

According to The Roosevelt Island blog, work will now begin on the RITE project, owned by Verdant Power,  after the renewable energy company gained a license from The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The project will do more than just help clean up the environment but also also help people keep their houses, with Verdant allowed to sell the energy generated, to local customers.

"A long-term affordable housing plan will not be able to overcome the reality that we heat, cool, and power our homes in an inefficient way," Jonathan Kalkin, former Roosevelt Island Operating Corp Board Director, told The Roosevelt Islander, "This creates the scenario of an affordable home without affordable power. A person should not lose their home because they can’t afford their electric bill."

Under the license Verdant will build 30 turbines on the East River bed, using tidal currents to generate electricity. During previous prototype testing, six turbines operated for 9,000 hours with complete success, delivering 70 megawatt-hours of energy.

“FERC’s pilot process is doing what it should: allow for exploration of new renewable technologies while protecting the environment,” said Jon Wellinghoff, FERC Chairman.

sduffy@observer.com

"With concerns over climate change intensifying, electricity generation from coal, once reliably cheap, looks increasingly expensive in the face of the all-but-certain prospect of regulations that would impose significant costs on companies that emit large amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

As a result, utilities' plans for new coal plants are being turned down left and right. In the last two-and-a-half years, plans for 83 plants in the United States have either been voluntarily withdrawn or denied permits by state regulators. The roughly 600 coal-fired power plants in the United States are responsible for almost one-third of the country's total carbon emissions, but they are distinctly at odds with a growing outlook that embraces clean energy."

The Times piece goes on to discuss the expense of the technology to capture and store carbon and the expense and unreliability of renewable sources of energy. This is a worn out argument. The article also presents the usual environmental and industry advocates arguing on each side of the issue. The Edison Electric Institute can be relied on to argue that new technology will cost too much and threaten our electric supply. I wonder what old Thomas Edison would say if he knew that his name is now being used to oppose the development of new technology?

Why does this tired argument keep getting repeated? The cost figures on carbon capture and storage are based on assumptions that cannot be tested. We don't really know how much this will cost. The estimates that carbon capture and storage will more than double the cost of coal fired power plants is clearly too high. Since it hasn't been done, it's easy to see why investors would believe that the first ones will be quite expensive. I'm sure that's true, but it's not really relevant. The private sector should not and will not pay the cost of developing this technology. Government will need to subsidize this until it becomes cost effective.

The debate on carbon dioxide regulation seems caught in the same rhetoric we saw in the 1970's and 1980's over more conventional environmental regulation. There was similar discussion about how arbitrary and sudden government regulation was going to shut down American business. Anyone who actually observes regulation in this country knows that the "business of America is business". Regulations are implemented slowly, with negotiated schedules and great care. Businesses are given plenty of time to clean up their act. Moreover, regulations and rules allow the good guys to do the right thing and compete on a more level playing field. And without environmental regulation there is no pressure to develop new and cheaper technologies that produce without polluting.

As for the cost of renewable energy; solar power, wind power and battery storage prices will also come down as the technology develops. Think of computers. The computer I am writing this on sits on my lap and is more powerful than the million dollar plus mainframes of the 1960's. As mass markets are developed and technology is refined, prices come down and today's infeasible ideas become tomorrow's everyday experiences.

How do we get this done? How do we go from here to there? In the case of computers, a lot of the basic Research & Development came from the Defense Department and NASA. Our rockets, missiles and space capsules needed smaller, more powerful computers. And then there's the internet that was also developed by government: Our military computers needed to communicate with each other. One thing led to another and eventually we had an internet. Government paid the costs of development and then it was turned over to the private sector and a new industry was created.

Sometimes national security drives the development of technology- sometimes it is public health. Cities like London developed sewers and indoor plumbing to prevent disease. Cities like New York developed a hugely expensive water supply system because local sources were polluted. I'm sure someone was saying: Do you know how expensive this indoor plumbing will be? We will all go broke installing these pipes and pumps everywhere!

More recently we had some of the same arguments raised against paying the cost of installing air pollution devices on cars and power plants and against spending billions of dollars on sewage treatment plants. We did all of that and the economy continued to grow. In fact, the economic benefits of cleaner air and cleaner water far outweighed the costs.

Here is the fundamental truth that it is time to face: Just as we needed to develop new public health technologies to survive in cities when they went over a million in population, we must now invest in world-scale technologies to survive on a planet of seven billion people. The climate problem is the first planet-wide stress we know about. Others will surely come. We need to learn how to develop and implement the 21^st century equivalent of indoor plumbing.

We are capable of making this transformation but it requires that we escape from the environment- economic growth tradeoff paradigm we see on the front page of the Sunday New York Times Business Section. We need to work on the push and pull of carbon dioxide reduction. We need to regulate and set a cap on carbon dioxide.  This should be done with mandatory reduction targets, a tax on fossil fuels and a trading system to allow the most efficient reductions possible. In addition we need to spend money on the basic and applied technology of carbon sequestration, renewable energy, energy transmission and energy storage. We need cheaper and smaller solar receptors and cheaper and more efficient batteries.

Clean coal may be a fiction in 2009, but if we are to use coal for electricity, we must develop better ways to mine and burn coal. As my Columbia colleague Klaus Lackner eloquently argues, no matter how fast we develop renewable energy, we will continue to use fossil fuels for many years. He estimates the costs of sequestration will come down dramatically as technology and a mass market is developed. The problem is developing the technology and mass market. Government can and must stimulate the technology and market.

In the long run fossil fuels will be more expensive than other sources.  Fossil fuels are finite and must be mined from within the planet. They will get harder to mine and scarcer and for those reasons will eventually be more expensive. We need to accelerate the development of the new technology of energy. Let's end these 20^th century debates once and for all and get on with the job.

In McCain’s case, a relatively sophisticated energy policy is masked by the absurd and almost obscene mantra of “drill baby drill”.  For both candidates, the support of nuclear power represents attraction to a strategy that is simply infeasible in the United States. Unless they plan to build nuclear power plants on military bases, local communities in this country will always use their veto to defeat power-plant sitting. Not in my backyard (NIMBY) is not just a cute phrase around here – it is political reality.  I guess it sounds muscular and “no-nonsense” to support nuclear power, but every minute we spend promoting nuclear power in this country is a minute wasted. If you don’t believe me, go to the North Shore of Long Island and visit what remains of the Shoreham Nuclear Power plant. Built at a cost of $6 billion in 1989, it has never generated any commercial power, and cost almost $200 million to decommission. People in Long Island are still paying the costs of that “power plant to nowhere.”   

Nuclear power is too centralized, too capital intensive and too politically contentious to be a serious contributor to our energy needs here in the United States. I rarely waste much effort in making these points because I think the forces of economic and political gravity will bring nuclear power down – it really doesn’t need my help. I know nuclear proponents say that before people are forced to sit in the dark they will turn to nuclear power. Fortunately for all of us that won’t be necessary. Our country wastes so much energy that we can meet much of our increased needs with enhanced energy efficiency. Coupled with the development of renewable energy, we should be able to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, without needing nuclear power. 

The economic crash around us is scary and will cause great pain, but it may also represent an opportunity to put our economy on a more sustainable footing. In the second presidential debate October 7th, Senator Obama recalled John Kennedy’s national goal of reaching the moon by the end of the 1960’s. He then seemed to call for a similar “stretch goal” for renewable energy. He and Senator McCain both explicitly connected renewable energy and energy efficiency to renewed economic growth and green jobs. Obama cited the case of computers and the Internet as mass consumer items that developed as a result of government-funded basic research. Both candidates articulated the basic formula that we need to replicate: Government-funded basic science and engineering research, leading to new technology that is then transferred to the private sector. The private sector takes that new technology and develops the consumer goods that lead to new products and economic growth. 

As we struggle to untangle our economy from the financial mess that envelopes us, it‘s a good idea to return to the basics of wealth generation. The type of creativity that drives a modern, post-industrial economy requires careful use of resources and the application of new technology to meet human needs. When we invent new technologies that help people in their daily lives, we often improve quality of life and create wealth. It is clear that reducing the cost and environmental impact of the energy we use is an urgent priority. A technical breakthrough on renewable energy could have the same impact that we saw with the light bulb, the automobile, refrigeration, the computer or the Internet. It may be wishful thinking, but the other night during the second debate I got the clear impression that both of our presidential candidates get it. If only we hadn’t wasted the past eight years….

New York City has been built by people who dreamed large and were able to project into the future. Imagine the city without Central, Van Cortland or Prospect Parks. Could downtown have been possible without a subway system? How crazy was it to get the city’s water from a hundred miles upstate? Many of the city’s great institutions from the Public Library to my own university have benefited from forward looking leadership. With PlanNYC 2030 and this latest proposal on alternative energy, the Mayor must be given enormous credit for adding his voice to the chorus of visionaries that built this place.

The Mayor invited proposals from private organizations to develop wind, solar and water current energy projects. New York City has lots of buildings, water front and land that could be used for pilot projects—some of which could succeed and generate meaningful amounts of electricity. Bloomberg is taking the opportunity to place renewable energy on the political agenda. In contrast, our federal officials are reading polls that show that 70% of the public wants to drill for oil in fragile environments and everyone starts looking for photo ops on oil rigs.

Other than “drill, drill, and drill”, Senator McCain’s new favorite solution to the energy crisis is to build more nuclear power plants and build them fast. I do not share the deep fear that some have of nuclear technology, and accept the argument that plants can be made as safe as other technology we use every day. However, my argument against nuclear is that it is complicated to manage, centralized, capital intensive, produces waste we cannot detoxify and impossible to site given the U.S. federal political system. I think it’s a technology we should skip, and instead develop something that is more practical and waste free. As Mayor Bloomberg indicates, direct solar, wind, river currents and tides are all available in this coastal city.

The size and influence of the federal government dwarfs all other American institutions and so we look to Washington for leadership and the impact that only the feds can achieve. Unfortunately, the last two decades have seen little but gridlock out of the District of Columbia. Neither Bush I, Clinton, nor Bush II were able to do much to come to grips with our critical issues. The current President Bush’s initiatives were nearly all misguided. For that reason we’ve looked to state and local governments for creativity and solutions. Maybe that’s the right place to focus our attention anyway. The public policy problems we face these days require lots of learning to solve. How do we improve High School graduation rates? End homelessness? End hunger? Ensure housing? Develop carbon free energy? Maintain clean water? Maybe these problems are best solved at the community and local level- where it’s easier to see and learn from our mistakes. The scale of the federal government is seductive, but maybe we should only turn to Washington when we’ve already figured out what needs to be done.

On the other hand, it's probably a bad idea to give up on the federal government. It's true that when you compare Mike Bloomberg to George Bush you want to focus your attention on City Hall rather than the White House.  Still, if we look back, just like New York City, this has nation has long been a creative and forward looking force in the world. It built an agricultural science that fed the world, developed a transcontinental railroad, landed men on the moon, created world-leading basic and health sciences, defeated totalitarianism, cleaned its air and water and built a working class into the middle class. Not bad for one country. It’s just that lately we don’t seem capable of accomplishing much of anything. This is a critical moment for the United States. We surely need better quality leadership in our national government, but we are fortunate to have a political structure that allows state and local governments to build creative programs without the approval of Washington. Mike Bloomberg has once again provided creative, forward looking leadership. He deserves our support and our gratitude. He has mine.

"In the course of his first 100 days, Governor Paterson has shown that he can work effectively with the Legislature and that he understands the importance of an environmental agenda. But the real tests lie ahead. New York will mostly likely miss the deadline for the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative launch in September, and there is an enormous gap in funding for the MTA that grows larger each day. A strong executive will be essential to meeting these challenges."

Some specific accomplishments include:

• Renewable Energy - Net Metering A few weeks ago Paterson announced "an agreement with the Legislature on energy legislation that will authorize increased development of renewable energy with a process called net metering", which should foster investment in renewable energy in the areas of solar, wind and farm waste. This law gives small scale generators of electricity the right to add the electricity to the grid and then only be charged for their net subtractions of electrical power after they get credit for the power they added. As Paterson noted; "... those businesses with large roof areas present enormous opportunities for hosting solar energy facilities. If those kinds of resources are fully realized, it could relieve significant stress from our already over-burdened utility grid and improve our energy independence."

• Brownfields Legislation. One of the unanticipated impacts of the 1980 Superfund toxic waste clean-up program has been to make it difficult for businesses to operate on land that had been contaminated with toxic waste. This is because as soon as you take title to the land you also own all the potential liability from any toxics that ever escaped from the land. This has had the effect of causing industry to abandon inner city "brownfields" and build factories on exurban and even rural "greenfields". Greenfields have no toxic liabilities. Ever since this problem became known, governments have been trying to encourage brownfield redevelopment without losing the benefit of Superfund's rigorous liability provisions.

• Green Procurement In April Paterson signed an Executive Order to create a New York State "Green Procurement and Agency Sustainability Program," which will help State agencies to procure green products and services.

• CO2 Sequestering Coal Plan. In June, Paterson announced "State support for an advanced coal power plant in Jamestown. Advanced coal technology could represent the next major step in addressing global climate change while also helping to diversify the state's energy supply and create "clean-tech" jobs Upstate. The plant - which would be the first of its kind in the world - will serve as a demonstration facility for a promising new technology that captures carbon dioxide (CO2) and sequesters it underground for permanent storage."

• Congestion Pricing and Mass Transit. . Although it had no practical impact, the Governor did support New York City's Congestion Pricing plan. He also convened the MTA's Ravitch Commission to look at the problems of funding mass transit in New York over the next decade. Improved mass transit is one of the highest priority items on the state's sustainability agenda.

• Green Buildings. He won approval of a new program that will enable the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) to provide financial incentives to New Yorkers who "go green." The Governor and First Lady Michele Paige Paterson have also initiated the "Greening the Mansion" initiative, to retrofit the NYS Executive Mansion to enable it to be certified as a green building.

While all these steps provide an indication that Governor Paterson cares about environmental issues, we do not yet know how effective he will be. On the biggest early test of his clout, congestion pricing, he was boxed out of the action by Shelly Silver. Perhaps we should attribute that to rookie miss-steps. (Not the kind of "green" governor we are after...)The next test will be far less visible but far more important. The 1996 Environmental Infrastructure Bond has been fully spent, and a new Environmental Infrastructure Bond Act is needed to improve outdated environmental infrastructure across the state. Sewage treatment and water filtration plants that were built in the 1980's and 1990's are due for modernization.

Governor Paterson has replaced the ridiculous confrontational style brought by disgraced former Governor Spitzer with a calm, consensus building approach. People like him and want to cooperate with his program. His obvious intelligence, determination, good humor and charm are tremendous assets to his emerging administration. Can he overcome the dysfunction and pay-for play tradition of one of the worst state governments in the United States? Can he build a governing coalition that acts in the public interest instead of for the benefit of special interests? The jury is out, but I remain hopeful.

I am grateful for the research assistance of Rachel Dannefer, Masters Student, Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs.