When energy companies look at the cost of building a new, natural gas fired power plant they use a metric for investment called the spark spread to calculate the cost of natural gas and the potential profit from converting its energy into electricity.  A combined cycle gas fired turbine can convert the energy in natural gas with >80% efficiency.

When a coal power plant is being considered, the dark spread is used in a similar way to compare the cost of coal with the value of potential electrical sales.    The larger the spread, the more potential for revenue and profit.

Climate change and external costs related to climate mitigation and offsetting have historically not been included in these calculations.  But more and more, they are a factor and become relevant-especially because the global warming potential of coal and natural gas power is different for the same amount of energy, creating a potential advantage for natural gas.

So what is the “fart spread” that I am proposing?  This would be a term for calculating the potential profitability of recovering bio-gas and other waste gasses for use.  Right now the “fart spread” is negative in most cases, i.e. it is more expensive to recover the potential resources than the value they will have on the market place.  Carbon credits have the potential to bridge this gap, but with the way current climate change policy making has gone in the US, that is not likely to happen soon.

An innovative solution to economic crisis and global warming debate that every environmentalist and business owner can agree on

If the scientific consensus is that we need to cut greenhouse gas emissions, then policy makers should focus on cutting emission, not filling the governments coffers with a carbon tax or auction.

This article appears in the June edition of Politics Magazine (formerly Campaigns & Elections)

With environmentalism firmly in the mainstream, you don’t have to press your body against a sappy tree or show your toes in a pair of Birkenstocks to prove you care about protecting the planet. Campaigns can win over millions of voters with a politically neutral environment-friendly message.

Going green will distinguish you from your opponent and connect the campaign’s message to voters with an effective call to action. If you do it correctly, it’s an inexpensive and easy way to build support among your constituents. Many of the steps you take to harmonize your race with the environment will also save money, earn media attention and improve your relationship with supporters. However, do it incorrectly and your efforts will seem phony and effectively backfire.

Follow these nine rules and recommendations for the best results.

Rule #1: Going green is for both parties
There are voters you need to reach with a positive environmental message regardless of your party affiliation. A Gallup poll released in March 2009 at the height of the economic crisis shows that between 70 and 80 percent of people are still worried about environmental issues despite the poor economy.

Rule #2: Narrow your focus
Because the environment can be a broad topic, you need to limit your message to issues that can be addressed within your district. Begin your green initiative by connecting it with the values and environmental concerns that affect local voters.

Want to talk about clean energy and water? If your district is urban, consider purchasing renewable energy for your office and touring a rooftop rain garden. If your district is rural, meet with farmers who are successfully conserving water and producing renewable energy. Wherever you are located, there is something green going on that you can be a part of.

Rule #3: Going green is interactive
Begin by asking your supporters what they do to help the environment, and then schedule a campaign event that focuses on their feedback. This could be a trip to the local wetland to learn about water quality, a carbon footprint survey sent to your email list or a roadside litter clean-up outing with volunteers from your campaign. Invite your supporters to join the campaign’s effort and put a report on your blog and in a press release. By demonstrating tangible leadership, you will establish your credibility with voters and environmental interest groups.

Rule #4: Tap into more green from your donors
Analyze the action steps you can take to go green and ask donors to sponsor this effort. Most campaign donors are flooded with the same fundraising appeals every election cycle, but by asking them to sponsor specific elements of your green initiative—such as effi cient yard sign distribution, reducing paper waste with microtargeting or cutting and balancing carbon pollution—you will give them a better reason to send dollars to your race.

Rule #5: Go public with your effort
Connect the campaign’s message with voters by sending them news updates about your efforts to go green. Include tips from the lessons you have learned with your fundraising letters and relevant direct mail. Monthly emails describing your progress to use less paper, decrease your carbon footprint or help improve a local stream or park will remind voters and the media that your campaign is determined to improve your district. To maintain your green credentials, always use either 100 percent post-consumer recycled paper or paper that is FSC-certified to be from sustainably managed stock.

Rule #6: Make every event green
Whether it is your kickoff breakfast or an evening reception, use local food and produce, avoid disposable plates and flatware unless it is biodegradable and keep servings small. You can go a step further and offset the carbon emissions for your guests if this fits with your message. Use a folded note card on each table to explain your green initiative.

Rule #7: Capture the environmental benefit (and the phone numbers)
If you have purchased an SMS short code, ask event attendees to send you the distance that they traveled so that the campaign can offset the green house gasses for them. It will cost about $.35 for each attendee to make their travel carbon neutral, and the cell phone numbers you capture will help keep your database updated.

Rule #8: Go green as early as possible
Start your environmental initiative early and update it consistently to help establish your authenticity with environmental issue voters. Kathy Dahlkemper defeated six-term incumbent Phil English in Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District and began counting carbon emissions nine months before Election Day.

“I felt it was extremely important that my campaign be a carbon-neutral campaign because it clearly signifies the importance I place on the issue of becoming a cleaner, greener world,” she said. “I made this pledge early in the campaign and it resonated with voters. I believe they took this as a sign of my commitment.”

John McCain was fortunate to be able to establish his environmental message and climate change plan before “drill, baby, drill” became a campaign slogan. Any later and it would have been impossible for him to remind voters of his environmental message.

Rule #9: Follow through with your commitments
If you pledge to run a green campaign and then fail to implement and communicate the environmental improvements you have made, your campaign’s green initiative will seem phony. Avoid this mistake by putting a campaign staffer or volunteer in charge of your green initiative from start to finish. Establishing environmental credibility early in the race can preempt negative attacks, but this is irrelevant if your campaign goes green and then fades to brown.

The Washington Governor will rely on reducing cars in a state without transportation alternatives

If you have visited Seattle, you may have noticed that there is no mass transit.  A fleet of buses try to bumble through busy streets and highways, but they might contribute to more gridlock than they alleviate. Washington’s Governor has suggested drivers cut back, but this zero-sum solution making is what gives climate change advocacy a bad name among conservatives.

The solutions need to be constructive, collaborative, and intelligent.  Governor Gregoire’s errant policy making is going to make people angry at environmentalists, and contribute to severe leakage of polluting industries to regions where they are left alone.

For instance, if she successfully pushes through laws that restrict industry-such as commercial trucking or the manufacture of cement clinker in Washington State-then these industries will simply move out of state and take the jobs with them.  Cement from China is already cheap, and trucks have no problem crossing state lines to pick up a load.

Washington’s Governor needs to offer industry something in exchange for their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas pollution, otherwise the policies will not accomplish any positive affect for the environment.

There will need to be tax cuts or other incentives tied with reducing greenhouse gas. If state-or the federal government-imposes a cap on emissions, it will make businesses less competitive in the global economy unless there is a policy to make the investment profitable or revenue neutral.  If policy makers ignore this reality, the results will not be a reduction in pollution, but rather a movement of pollution to less regulated locations.

President Barack Obama is torn between the competing interests of two major supporters.  One, the Democrat Governor of Massachusetts and early campaign supporter Deval Patrick to build a windfarm off the coast of Cape Cod; the other, Senator Edward Kennedy whose ocean view would be changed by the proposed renewable facility.  In an article posted on Brietbart.com, it is clear that the roadmap to renewable energy has many tears, regardless of the political party.

If the President is set on spending trillions of dollars in stimulus over the next two years,  he ought to invest in infrastructure that will secure our energy independence.  This project will be litmus test of that intention.

Perhaps windmills will annoy elites with ocean front property–similar things must have occurred when Eisenhower built out the national highway system.  Good for Obama is that allowing this project to proceed will have the double benefit of securing renewable energy, and snubbing a special intrest group…if it gets approved.

When we start calling bureaucrats “czars” is it any wonder that we attract socialists?

The Washington Times has just uncovered the dirt on Barack Obama’s earth friendly pick for climate change Czar(ina)

This may prove to be one of the most difficult jobs in the new administration in terms of criticism and public attacks.  There will be roadblocks placed from the front by those who disagree about how to regulate carbon emissions, and then there will be many of volleys of arrows launch from the back by the environmental lobby who cant stand to think that any person but them could make money by cleaning up the Earth.

Obama transition spokesman Nick Shapiro said  that “Carol Browner was chosen to help the president-elect coordinate energy and climate policy because she understands that our efforts to create jobs, achieve energy security and combat climate change demand integration among different agencies; cooperation between federal, state and local governments; and partnership with the private sector.”

Those are good priorities for the office of “climate change czar,” but socialists are certainly not the ones who will make real progress on environmental problems.  Without regulating our economy further back into the pre-industrial age (god save us from recession),  there will need to be well managed and directed investments made by the private sector to update power plants, invent new energy saving technologies, discover new ways to trap and store green house gas etc.  The real changes come from investment by entrepreneurs who develop new methods and new technology, then apply them to make a profit.  Sorry, that is just how it works.

In the words of Robert Kennedy, “Obama’s vision of de-carbonizing our economy begins with a market-based carbon cap-and-trade system designed to put downward pressure on carbon emissions. He will invest billions to revamp the nation’s antiquated high-voltage power transmission system and press for cost-saving building and appliance standards that would cut our energy demand by half.”  These are goals every free market advocate could agree with.

This writer just hopes Obama’s newpick does not forget to do first things first, especially as the arrows begin to fly.

The best way to reduce greenhouse gasses is to build a marketplace for emissions that sets a price for pollution, not attempt to command and control behaviors through regulations.  Right now, there is talk of an EPA tax on greenhouse gas that would charge farmers around $150 for each cow and up to $20 per pig based upon their relative carbon footprints (New York Farm Bureau estimates).

This is a bad idea.  The tax will have no effect except to raise the price of farming and food products, and drive more family farms out of business.  The result will not be a reduction in greenhouse gas, rather a new burden for families trying to buy food and more destruction of the working landscape that connects Americans with the land.

First, where would the money from such a tax go?  Please don’t tell me that it will go into a “technology fund.”   That is simple political code for being lost in a bureaucracy.  The investments that need to occur in order to clean up the methane from these dairies are being made right now by entrepreneurs who see a valuable energy and environmental resource in the manure.

Second, this proposed tax is a misplaced penalty.  A good politician knows that taxing things is a good way to reduce them, and incentives are a good way increases a behavior.  Taxing cows will harm our single best source of milk…farms!  Instead, there should be a framework for creating incentives for measurable reductions in CO2.  That will let farmers figure out the best way for their farm to keep producing milk and to reduce CO2.  If farmers and investors are allowed to buy and sell their reduced pollution (create a carbon offset), then they will invest private money in the projects, and implement them in an efficient way.

At Standard Carbon, we are 100% in favor of reducing greenhouse gasses, but we are not in favor of destroying the livelihoods of American farmers or singling out and crippling the industries that create jobs and opportunity in our country.   We can have economic and environmental prosperity at the same time if we use a market based approach like cap and trade.

On Election Day, CNN Headline News interviewed Standard Carbon’s Brendan Woodward to discuss the carbon footprint of the presidential election. In the full interview, political hypocrisy was discussed as both candidates have proposed cap and trade regulations, but not chosen to follow them on a voluntary basis.

The climate change impact of the two candidates was large-requiring the equivalent carbon offsets of more than 18 square miles of new forest to grow for 10 years.  For Barack Obama, this would have required about $700,000 to purchase enough carbon offsets, or a mere 1% of his 3/4 of a billion dollar campaign budget.

Air travel, commuting, office space, paper, direct mail, meetings and event, fundraisers, and get out the vote (GOTV) activities all contributed to each carbon footprint.

Can we actually reduce CO2 if the president is full of hot air?  Perhaps.  Watch the short segment that aired Tuesday morning:

The US Presidential race has resulted in clouds of hot air.  Currently, Barack Obama leads John McCain in estimated CO2  gas emissions with over 77,000 tons to John McCain’s 58,000.  Combined, the carbon footprint of the two candidates is equal to planting 3 million trees.  Read our full report:

Barack Obama and John McCain Carbon Footprint Analysis

Unlike former candidates Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, Obama and McCain have done nothing to offset their carbon footprints.  This has not kept them both from talking tough on climate change.

Candidates in races for US Congress to county council have taken action to fight climate change before election day through our carbon neutral campaign program.  They deserve a little respect.

There is a recent documentary film called Call+Response that I want to let everyone know about.  We are posting this because many of the people who are on the front lines of climate change advocacy are also on the front of other human justice issues. If you happen to be in one of the major cities where this film is opening, it is worth watching.  There are people trapped in slavery around the globe, and to pirate a line from the presidential race, “we are the ones we are waiting for.”   Please go see it and sign up to help out!