CBS 5 KPIX’s Green Beat reporter Jeffrey Schaub talked to Pacific Environment and residents of Antioch yesterday about PG&E’s plans to build two new high capacity natural gas power plants in Eastern Contra Costa County.

However, KPIX’s account yesterday is overly simplistic and implies that a power plant is the panacea to economic woes faced by residents in the far eastern corner of Contra Costa.

In reporting, KPIX inaccurately led viewers to assume the following:

1) That a power plant creates long term economic development and jobs when in actuality the construction of a power plant requires a few hundred temporary employees for a few years. And after that, only a few dozen highly specialized employees are needed for its on-going operation. This is not a long term solution for the region’s economy.

2) That this is the only option for Antioch’s development. Ironically, a day after the KPIX piece appeared, an article appeared in the East Bay Express “Activists Try to Block Green Tech in Berkeley” . It would certainly behoove Antioch to roll out the red carpet for these new industries that actually will employ people for the long term. Let Berkeley’s loss be Antioch’s gain!

These points were missing from the report:

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Posted by Doug Norlen

Today, the U.S. Export-Import (Ex-Im) Bank announced its official carbon policy.

Ex-Im Bank’s policy does nothing to curb the agency’s growing overall portfolio of greenhouse gas emissions.  In fact, applications to Ex-Im Bank for greenhouse gas-emitting projects are skyrocketing after the financial crisis, as project sponsors seek public subsidies to prop up economically and ecologically damaging projects.  Ex-Im Bank continues to subsidize fossil fuel-related transactions despite the recent G-20 pledge to phase out fossil fuel subsidies.

Ex-Im Bank touts is support for renewable energy and energy efficiency, yet in recent years its support for these transactions represent less than 2% of its overall energy portfolio.

Ex-Im Bank’s carbon policy perpetuates the approach taken under the Bush Administration and undercuts the Obama Administration’s claim to international leadership on climate change.

Read the story as reported by Environmental Finance here.

Last week I spent three days in cool rooms at the Sustainable Shipping Conference in San Francisco with an incredible array of experienced people, from Port directors and shipping company executives to air pollution specialists and NOAA scientists – all focused on how to make shipping cleaner.

After endless Power Point charts of daunting statistics about NOX, SOX, Particulate Matter (PM), and Carbon Dioxide (CO2), everyone seemed to be in agreement that shipping is a dirty and dangerous business, year round.

• Shipping burns some 350 million tons of heavy bunker fuel
• Ships emit about a billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2)
• Ships contribute 17% to the U.S. PM inventory, and 18% in California
• 100,000 cancer deaths worldwide are attributable to shipping

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Castelanelli Brothers Dairy cows stand patiently while their barn is cleaned - their manure heads to a sealed lagoon, where it turns into methane gas and high quality fertilizer.

What a great experience I had in the past few days. Unforgettable! I have probably learned more information in the past ten days than I normally do in two months. On November 8th Pacific Environment brought a group of Siberians from Lake Baikal area to the Bay area to learn about renewable energy and energy efficiency. Tatiana Molchanova, the Deputy Head and Tatiana Tivikova, the Chief Ranger of the Pribaikalsky region of Buryatia, and a well known journalist in Ulan-Ude, Sergey Basaev, participated in the exchange.

The purpose of the exchange stems from the current rate and type of development plaguing the Baikal region: privatizing public property in the area has resulted in the saturation of both legal and illegal dwellings in the area, which have escalated the cost of electricity for the local people. Now the Russian government plans to invest more in infrastructure in the region in order to increase the quantity of hotels, restaurants and other recreational establishments on the lake’s shores. This – if not monitored correctly and not using environmentally-efficient methods – could cause tremendous cultural, social and environmental tension in the area, including between tourists and the local residents. California and, particularly, the San Francisco region, which is considered to be the second greenest city in the U.S, have a lot to offer in terms of learning about green technologies. We hoped to give our Baikal participants the opportunity to learn from government offices, businesses and other organizations about renewable energy and planning.

We visited a ‘green’ hotel, a renewable energy and sustainable living demonstration site, a geothermal power plant, a wind farm and a dairy that uses methane digesters to generate electricity. The group also met with local legislators to learn about California’s renewable energy policies, renewable portfolio standard, and energy efficiency standards.

Overall, I think the exchange was a real success and that our participants got a ton of useful information that can potentially lead to real projects in Pribaikalsky region. They are now back in Buryatia, full of ideas and eager to jump into projects in their own communities. That success had a lot to do with the valuable information and tips they got from meetings or tours.  I think it was especially valuable to show them the entire spectrum of various technologies – wind, solar, geothermal, methane, and complement this knowledge with what they learned about energy efficiency. Results will be long-term, and I am looking forward to organizing a follow-up exchange and working with communities back in Siberia.