One Blue Marble Blog

Poster by Darrin White

With one bold stroke, President Barack Obama has changed the game. If Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff are not paying attention, Canada’s economy will soon be in tatters.

How do I know? Easy. Just this week, Environment Minister Jim Prentice said that his government will work closely with an Obama administration, adding that Obama’s environmental principles are “virtually identical” to those of the Conservatives.

Well, we’ll see on Tuesday. But unless the Conservative budget is groundbreaking and farsighted — two qualities for which this government isn’t known — and layered with programs that will hasten a Green Revolution in Canada,** then we are lost. We’ll become poor relations, unable to compete on the same world stage as the Americans.

Now, everyone knows the first part. The U.S. Congress has unveiled a $825 billion stimulus program that will invest heavily in infrastructure and job creation. More than $54 billion of that funding includes money to hasten an American transition to a low-carbon economy. Obama has pledged $11 billion to modernize the electrical grid, $8 billion to boost renewable energy, and more than $18 billion for energy-efficiency retrofits and home weatherization packages.

If you’re an environmentalist, those numbers made you happy, but you probably weren’t dancing in the streets.

And then Obama’s team dropped a bomb, the quiet provision that changes everything. The back story is important. About a month ago, Obama’s man — California Rep. Henry Waxman— waged a divisive battle with Michigan Rep. John Dingell for control of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee. The contrasts between the two men are remarkable. Dingell is a champion of big business, the Big Three, and laissez-faire politics, while Waxman has fought hard for cleaner air and water, and corporate responsibility.

Waxman unexpectedly prevailed, ousting the man who had held the chairmanship for a generation. And this week, the California Democrat added a provision to the $825 billion package: any state that accesses these federal funds are required to “decouple” utility profits from sales. That means utilities have the potential to make more money by reducing their customers’ electricity demands than they would by promoting consumption.

As a result, California-style energy programs will sweep across the United States, and electrical utilities will be investing hundreds of billions to bring energy efficiency to their customers. Coal might be a cheap, but energy efficiency is cheaper still. In California, demand for electricity has remained steady for three decades. In the rest of the US, it has grown by 60 percent.

A wave of clean tech investment will transform how Americans use energy. Millions of homes from Maine to New Mexico will be insulated, and smart meters will be installed everywhere.

Smart meters are revolutionary devices that control home energy use; they actually communicate with utilities and enable customers to use energy when rates are lowest, so they can run energy-hungry appliances like dishwashers, and clothes dryers when demand on the grid is low and rates are cheap. Smart meters can reduce power bills substantially, and American utilities will now pay to install them because they, too, can make money. Plans for new power plants will be mothballed, leaving even more money for the energy-efficiency war chest.

But that’s just the beginning. Utilities will also throw their considerable weight behind electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) that can run for 50 miles or more solely on electricity. These vehicles are already in the last stages of testing and will be on the market by 2010. America’s clean transportation industry will become a juggernaut.

Battery-powered cars will be crucial to American utilities because they can work as mobile energy storage centers that regulate supply. Millions of these cars and trucks will eventually work in tandem with power companies, providing energy to the grid when demand is high, and recharging overnight when power generators have excess capacity, but nowhere to put it.*** Since electricity supply from renewable sources fluctuates by its very nature, PHEVs and EVs will make it easier to plug those power sources into the grid, ushering in a era of clean energy. Most Americans will jump at the chance to cut their annual gas bill by 75 percent. Money that once went to OPEC — and Canada — will now stay in the U.S.

The noise you hear is Alberta’s Tar Sands dreams deflating. With this one provision, Obama has signaled that he doesn’t want dirty energy to power America’s future.

I don’t expect Harper to understand. He’s a 19th-century politician in a 21st-century world. His political fortunes are tied to Alberta, and he will fight tooth and nail to lock us into a fossil-fuel economy.

If Tuesday’s Conservative budget doesn’t decouple utility sales, doesn’t include billions for energy efficiency, doesn’t support wind and wave energy development in Atlantic Canada and BC, doesn’t provide incentives to transform Ontario’s transportation industry… then we’re lost. Our children will pay for our shortsightedness.

This budget must be visionary. If not, the Coalition must bring down the Conservatives. There is not a moment to lose.

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*The Harper poster was created by Darrin White, an artist, art administrator and social activist. The poster is available for download at his site.

** Four former Canadian Prime Ministers and a number of environmental groups are calling for a green investment that will help our country keep pace with the US.

The Electric Vehicle connection to the utilities is called V2G for Vehicle-to-Grid. It’s set to revolutionize both industries.