The PLAN

I've given it a skim, and here's my conclusion: It's extremely good. Exceptional in some places, slightly nebulous in others, perfectly in line with expectations in yet more, but also perfectly in line what we should expect from good public servants at this point, and certainly more than I expected from Obama.

$150 billion--billion--in clean energy research should shut up Shellenberger and Nordhaus, although perhaps they oppose raising that money with the sorts of regulatory policies they seem intent on killing. I expect they do. Still, at a third-or-so of our Pentagon budget, that's a damn impressive initiative.

The fact that he's proposing we auction all the carbon credits is crucial, though at this point he'd appear downright illiberal if he responded to Dodd's and Richardson's and Edwards' proposals by going the Lieberman route.

But on carbon capture:

Obama will significantly increase the resources devoted to the commercialization and deployment of low carbon coal technologies. Implementing these technologies as soon as possible is vital to the transition to a clean energy economy and will help other nations dependent on coal reduce their emissions as well. In addition to addressing new facilities, Obama will work to ensure that existing coal facilities are retrofitted with carbon capture and sequestration technology as soon as it is commercially available. Obama will use whatever policy tools are necessary, including standards that ban new traditional coal facilities, to ensure that we move quickly to commercialize and deploy low carbon coal technology. Obama's stringent cap on carbon will also make it uneconomic to site traditional coal facilities and discourage the use of existing inefficient coal facilities.

This--"new traditional"-- is fancy pants language for "no old-school coal plants, but plenty of IGCC plants and we'll cross our fingers that CCS technology is available in time." It's basically the same thing Edwards is saying, and it's incredibly risky. What it means is that, if Obama's president, we can expect to see a great share of that $150 billion going to CCS research.

He's a bit nebulous--at least to my untrained eyes--in the section about building efficiency. I don't exactly know what to do about the inefficiency of existing infrastructure, and apparently neither does he. But this all is quite good:

Phase out Traditional Inefficient Light Bulbs: For over 125 years, Americans have used the same incandescent light bulb technology, which consumes much more energy for the same results as newer lighting technologies. Barack Obama supports the effort led by Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) to update federal lighting efficiency standards to ensure that new lighting technologies are phased into the marketplace. As president, Obama will implement legislation that phases out traditional incandescent light bulbs by 2014. This measure alone will save American consumers $6 billion per year on monthly electricity bills and will save 88 billion kilowatt hours of electricity per year. By 2030, this change will result in greenhouse gas reductions of nearly 28 million tons of carbon.

Invest in a Digital Smart Grid: Like other pieces of infrastructure, such as roads and bridges our energy grid is outdated and inefficient, resulting in $50-100 billion dollar losses to the U.S. economy each year. The 2003 East Coast blackout alone resulted in a $10 billion economic loss. Like President Eisenhower did with the interstate highway system, Barack Obama will pursue a major investment in our national utility grid to enable a tremendous increase in renewable generation and accommodate 21st century energy requirements, such as reliability, smart metering, and distributed storage. Obama will invest federal money to leverage additional state and private sector funds to help create a digitally connected power grid. Creating a smart grid will also help insulate against terrorism concerns because our grid today is virtually unprotected from terrorists. Installing a smart grid will help consumers produce electricity at home through solar panels or wind turbines, and be able to sell electricity back through the grid for other consumers, and help consumers reduce their energy use during peak hours when electricity is more expensive. Obama will direct federal resources to the most vulnerable and congested areas and rural areas where significant renewable energy sources are located, as well as work toward national transformation of our energy grid in partnership with states and utilities.

Perhaps more later.